 I'm Marsha Joyner your host for navigating the journey. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices for the end of life care and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we can shift from not talking about dying to talking about it. It's time to share the way we want to live at the end of our lives. It's time to communicate about the kind of care we want and don't want for ourselves. We believe that the place for this to begin is not in the intensive care unit. Together we can explore the various paths to life's ending. Together we can make these difficult conversations easier. Together we can make sure that our own wishes and those of our loved ones are expressed and respected. If you're ready to join us we ask you navigate the journey explore the options and choices for the end of life. This is a conversation that every one of us needs to have yet few are prepared for it in life. Too many people in our society have no idea how to properly help a loved one who is at the end of life. We don't know what to say how to act or what needs their loved ones have. Today's guest is my dear friend Jade Young hospice educator and chaplain and Jade and I have been friends for 40 years maybe a long time and I have known Jade from watching her for all these years and all of the real caring about people about the environment about the planet and so she is a perfect person to be with us today to have a conversation about the end of life the end of life choices and all of the things that go with it that you have seen over the years. Now we started together in the hunger project hunger project even before even before that many projects together yes and for those of you that may see wonder what all of this has to do together with the hunger project the caring for in the Old Testament in the New Testament in the Quran in the Book of Mormon and any other book it says that we should love our neighbors that we should care for the sick and the dying we should feed the hunger as a society we haven't done that so it's people like Jade that might remind us that this needs to happen and she is always doing caring for our neighbor so that I'm gonna say there are many of us out there who are and I think have that desire to help and to alleviate the pain and suffering yeah so tell me now about your hospice educator now what what is a hospice educator what do you do exactly well why I've added even while I'm basically a hospice chaplain meaning we provide spiritual care and counseling and guidance for a terminally ill patient and their families it's important to include the families because once a person is diagnosed with something terminal and very serious it affects everyone in their whole family system I have found in my own work over the years though educating people about what hospice is as a service and what it is not is also very important to their sense of being at peace with the situation so I really want them to understand like what hospice can provide and that it's while it includes the medical care of someone it also includes far more than that it's about the health of their relationships it's about their emotional well-being and their spiritual well-being so it's the total person that really becomes involved and that we want to look after so is the family included in that yes yes very much so so often when I would visit a patient for the first time I would always call ahead and ask if some of the significant family members can be there if they couldn't because of work schedules or whatever that was fine but we really find that the more the family members are also informed and educated and understand they've really entered like a new landscape and you know if you're entering a new landscape or a new kind of country let's say where you may not know the geography it really helps to have a guide or a little bit of a roadmap it does and I've told this story before one day everything was fine in my life and the next day I'm a caregiver yeah the next day my mother who we had for the last year of her life with hospice I didn't know what to do yeah yeah I had been a daughter for all those years now my role the role is changed and honestly it was it was well it was a blessing in the long run but at first I was like now what do I do right it can create a lot of confusion and chaos and I would say first of all even a certain level of apprehension and anxiety yes because you really don't know what's involved or what's expected of you and how to fulfill this new expectation so is there a way to broaden that education so that that we're not talking about just the family of this particular loved one but how can we broaden this conversation which is what I want to do broaden this conversation so that the public begins to see that the end of life is as sacred as the beginning yes yes how do we reach out I would have what do we do where do we go from here well I would say Marsha first of all your show is one of the examples of how we can begin to broaden the reach and bring this topic out of the closet I would say so that more and more people can really engage with this that it can become I would say even socially acceptable you know rather than a topic we shouldn't talk about right rather than it being taboo which is still is for many places and ethnic groups where we don't want to talk about that that's a no-no yeah so I think this idea that you know we do so much to prepare and celebrate the birth of a child because it's a normal natural thing and there's the beauty of that and I think we have as a culture been so taught that death and dying is a very fearful process rather than it's it's actually a very natural process of life it is I don't know anyone who's not gonna get there that part of the journey you know so no matter what your education or your station in life you know we will eventually encounter that but we haven't seen to include that as part of our overall that you know this is part of what life is yes we have you know birth we have midlife and then we also have end of life which as you said is a very sacred and beautiful you know my grandchildren some of them I got lots of grandchildren but they were born in Waini Valley on a farm so they see animals right they understand the cycle yeah so for them it's a little different but for people who don't grow up with animals and the cycle of life this is not something that they understand right you're right they're just scared oh my goodness and then we see all the horror stories on the what do you call it the television and nobody gets to die peacefully at home surrounded by the beauty and the families right I would say peacefully and gracefully it would be lovely if we can introduce more of that into this whole conversation well I want to do that yeah so we need to we need to move out of the realm of this quote where now I hate to bash anybody's religion especially my own however the Catholics are into martyrdom it's the whole religion from the beginning for 2,000 years it's been about martyrdom and the suffering all the Saints were suffered so how do we move past martyrdom and suffering into a the beauty of moving from this life to the next so Marsha we'd have to do a five-hour series to answer that question so I would say though I think first of all rather than look at the big picture of that because that's that's like a monumental it is it is but if people could begin to in their own lives look at where are they so for example for myself when my mother passed away in the 80s and in the late 80s it was the first significant death in my family I would say and for we were prepared medically let's say there was a lot of information about her condition she was diagnosed with cancer which is I think a very common and frequent thing many families now have to deal with and of course the news was still very startling and difficult to absorb and accept now even though hospice was available it was still not what I would call a family household you know name word so there were there was very little around in terms of support to help us interpret and understand what was going on okay emotionally you know medically again we had lots of information but for the families to understand the relationships and and what to anticipate in the next several days or weeks to come so I'm gonna just say it was a very difficult time you know for us to deal with the reality of my mother being diagnosed and even though we tend to relate to the medical field as having all the answers and all the solutions they were unfortunately unable to do very much for her we have to go to break okay and we will be back and I want to hear more about your mother and your father and they're passing and let's let's just go to break and then we can talk more sure okay hi I'm Ethan Allen host of likeable science on think tech Hawaii I hope you'll join me every Friday at 2 p.m. to discover what is likeable about science we bring on scientists of all you're astronomers physicists chemists biologists ecologists and they talk about their work and more importantly they talk about why you should talk about their work why you should think about their work why you should like their work I help them bring out why their work is understandable why it's meaningful why people should care about it why people should support science we have a good time we talk about current events of interest we talk about a historical event sometimes we dig deep into their research why they do what the joys and delights and frustrations of their work are and in all we show a real world of science a real world of likeable science I hope you'll join us every Friday at 2 p.m. and we're back Jade for those of you that tuned in in the middle of the show which this is my dear friend Jade Young and she is a hospice chaplain and educator yes and you do something else with with seniors also oh well I also do a lot around the topic of aging and how can we age in a conscious and mindful manner so that rather than aging being just a decline and something to be avoided that we can maybe it's it's actually a new adventure you know and that this part of life too can open up some new opportunities for us and that there's always ongoing growth and development no matter what age we are so is this conversation included in that yes I would say I would say and maybe let me just fast forward a bit and talk about the education part of right Marsha because I think for many people by the time if a loved one or even yourself if you've been diagnosed with a particular series condition and you realize that maybe your options are limited or the doctor now has said you have limited time and you know the whole conversation about getting your affairs in order and you know people are then put into a state of panic right and emotional distress well that's a very difficult time at you know to think more rationally and in a grounded fashion so much of my work is as much as I can is to do what I call upstream education and one of the things to really just understand is that we all have seasons of life right you know just as there's spring there's a summer of life there's the fall and then there's winter okay and that nature has its natural cycle of you know the rebirth the birthing process in spring the flourishing in the summer the maybe gradual decline in the fall and then winter and just as we human beings have a very similar kind of life process but each of them has its own what I call beauty and wisdom and power but again we're not taught that either in schools or in life yeah and so again just if we could have more of these conversations I'm going to say just out in the public or in our schools or our churches our faith communities are also great places where people can come together well I really want that to happen because I think when the doctor says get your affairs in order that's a panic mode that's a button pusher right so if we can have this conversation or get rid of that phrase if the doctors could just get rid of that phrase get your yourself in order you know wait a minute you know so maybe we should back up spoken in that is that you're about to die at some point which is what the doctors have difficulty often in saying and the patient is not quite prepared to hear that right either so we need to work on the languaging as you know yes and I think we need to work on even conversations that help to normalize that this is a normal process of life not to be feared or avoided well with my sense of adventure I'm sure there's something over there something out there yes yeah we're still waiting for a memo yes as to what it is yes nobody will all my friends I know nobody's come back to tell me yeah yeah but I'm certain that there is and so I don't have any fear and watching my mother pass was so beautiful that I thought oh this is wonderful there was no no emotional upset you know yeah there's tears because you miss a person sure but you miss a person when they move to California so you know I just thrilled thrilled at the opportunity at the prospect of that maybe we can move this conversation out into the bigger world yeah so that people understand the choices that they have that they can make the choice yeah that the choice is theirs is theirs yes I might want to mention that and talk about bringing it out into the greater public arena there are two really amazing books that have been written recently one was on the best sellers list of New York best sellers list when air because when breath becomes air written by a doctor himself who was diagnosed at the height of his own career of being trained as an internist and then finding out that he had lung cancer that all these back pains and everything wasn't just hard work and you know not enough sleep but it was really a very serious condition and that he and his wife who is also a medical doctor had to face into all the questions that their patients had to face into and it was only then that he really began to see from the inside out what it was like this reality that patients are thrown into the other book is called being mortal so I'm just going to use those two as examples where those are the kinds of things again written by a medical doctor and PBS has made a wonderful documentary I saw that was wonderful being mortal yes so it raises I mean those are great what I call educational tools a church could show this to their group a rotary club could show it it begins the conversation it gives someone people topics to you know generate questions about concerns about and one of the things that I liked about being mortal was when he had to confront well we're taught to do no harm and then we keep doing things medical things medical procedures that are doing harm yes yes and he had to face at what point do I back off of that right at what point do I tell me enough and those are tough questions at what point does an invasive procedure really become much more harmful to the patient you know where do we draw the line and and how do we even arrive at that choice you know is it a conversation then the patient needs to have with the with the doctor and the family family yes because again the family is really impacted by all of this my daughter is a hospice nurse and she tells the stories about everything is going fine and then some family member comes in upset that you're not doing this for mama and you're not doing that and then everything goes haywire do you see that frequently actually frequently someone who hasn't been in touch with the family or is living on the mainland or simply has a different maybe a set of religious values and beliefs which are different from the patient and the rest of the family so if anything by the time the conflict has arisen though I'll I'm almost guaranteed that this conflict has surfaced before right but they've never really had the time or or desire to address it so by now though it just becomes I would say one of those opportunities for great courage on everyone's part and an opportunity for great healing and reconciliation but it takes a commitment on everyone's part to kind of move through some of the differences it's okay to have differences but how can we still work together for the well-being again focusing on the needs of the patient and and remembering I guess I think we have to remember that it is the patient's choice it is not ours yeah we can't choose for the patient the patient has to choose and the patient should choose early like now when I'm healthy yes when I without the emotional upset yeah yeah without all the emotional filters and the sense of panic and the stress and you know to be able to think in a manner where you're able to look at all the options and really ask yourself what would be the most appropriate for you what would be the most even nurturing and comfortable for you right you know given your values and your personality yes I think that well this is a beginning this is a really good start we want to say just a few words here that I don't want people to think that this is an either or if you are belong to a religion that you chose to belong to this religion and they say that that you don't have this choice then that's what you do you do whatever because you chose that religion you should choose to follow their dictate however their religion should not dictate how you enter the end of life and I think that's that's the thing we have to get clear on we have to really get clear that it's okay to follow your religion it's not okay to have your religion impose on me and I think that's that is one of those issues that we have to get really clear about and you have to think well now if I'm going to Castle Hospital where that is a religious hospital obviously the choices are different so we have to begin to think then clearly on what we're doing and that again is that conversation we have to have early in life yes again earlier the better the more proactive the better the more upstream the better and the more information I think it's important to have you know so you do understand what your options are I love that upstream I love that phrase yeah well you know and if you talk about like the water the source of water the more upstream you'll get generally the clear the more pure the water is that by the time it gets downstream it may have picked up debris right it may have picked up you know pollution along the way so yeah I just think again it's really to the benefit of that individual and the family again I want to really be sure that we include all the members at least the significant members because their lives will be impacted just as mine was with my mother right you know her well-being and knowing anticipating that she would be gone was you know an emotional shock to the system so we all have to learn to deal with that but I will say I want to just add this one piece that sometimes there are so many hidden gifts in all of this Marsha on a personal level to learn about something called compassion we don't talk about that much at all in our culture or spiritual well-being but these are huge huge topics and so important I think to our overall how we live how we live on the planet how we treat each other yeah and we're back to to all of these traditions and religions because in all of them that is it is paramount is how we treat each other you know and one of the ten commandments is caring for your neighbor you know loving thy neighbor as I self and so we have to compassion I love that we have to begin to think and in allowing your family member your patient with compassion to make choices that that's to me that's a real nugget here that you're right we don't say it we really need to allow and by allowing that is the compassion allowing people to make their choices and God I love you we have been together through so much and I expect that we'll keep going in this direction because I do want this conversation to move out into the broader we've got to do this well I'm glad to have been a part of this Marsha and I'm just honored to be here well and we will look forward to now stay tuned because we are going to have we're going to move out into the world we're going to have this conversation at a broader place thank you Jade it's a pleasure being with you as always I love I love