When We Die Talks

Anonymous #56 — How Do You Grieve Someone You’re Relieved Is Gone?

Content note: This conversation talks openly about abuse, addiction, a death by overdose, and suicide, including the caller’s own history with suicidal thoughts and attempts. Nothing is described in graphic detail. If you’re struggling, you can call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time (US). The caller also talks about Alternatives to Suicide (Alt2Su), peer-led, non-clinical groups where people can talk openly about suicidal thoughts with others who’ve lived with them too. After their oldest brother died of an overdose, the caller and their oldest sister could say something to each other that nobody else in the family would: they were relieved. He had hurt the caller, and he’d gone on to hurt others in the family. Now it wasn’t happening anymore. Whenever they tried to say that around the adults in the family, they got the same answer every time: we can’t talk about that, because he’s dead. “I’m just trying to speak the truth,” the caller says. The call opens with what happens when we die. The caller thinks there’s probably nothing, an everlasting nothingness, and that comforts them. Not knowing for sure comforts them too. They talk about their own history with suicidal thoughts, how hard it’s been to say any of it in a therapist’s chair, and the peer support groups that finally gave them a place to say it. Grieving their brother has been the most complicated loss of their life. They’re grieving a relationship they never would have had, and they’re still asking how much space he should get at all. His addiction has made them more careful with their own recovery: “That’s like the only thing I got from him.” They can still say he deserved help he never got. The night before their sister called with the news, they dreamed about him and drew what they saw the next morning. The week he died, they asked for a sign in blue. A blue bus they’d never seen before showed up on their route every morning that week. They don’t believe in any of it, but “if something were to make me believe in it, maybe it would be that.” In this conversation: Why the idea of nothing after death comforts the caller Being afraid to be fully honest in a therapist’s chair Alternatives to Suicide (Alt2Su) and non-clinical peer support “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” and families that won’t make room for the truth Relief, then guilt, then shame about the guilt Why carrying someone with you can mean carrying the pain too Compassion for someone without letting them off the hook A dream, a drawing, and a blue bus Memorializing people by doing the things they loved Why the best memories are usually the small ones Book recommendation: Broke: Patients Talk about Money with Their Doctor by Michael Stein. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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BONUS — Three Years Of Talking About Death

Content note: One voicemail near the end describes being shot and a near-death experience, with some strong language. The episode also talks about pet loss and euthanasia. Three years ago, this project started with a phone number and one ask: leave a message and tell me what you think happens when we die. The first messages ran six minutes long, and the voicemail cut them off at three. For the anniversary, one of the early callers asked how my thinking has changed, so this one’s just me. I still can’t get past the idea of nothing. What’s shifted is how I hold it. About six months ago I had the number dialed to have Jackson, my 18-year-old dog, put down. My finger hovered over the call button, and I was frustrated that years of talking about death didn’t make it hurt any less. I talk about how the big question became a door into the conversations, an idea about giving that I brought home from a meditation retreat, and why “who am I?” has become the other side of the same coin. I also read the Rumi poem Don asked me to read for him one more time, and this time I get the line right: “Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?” After that, I talk about what’s next in year four, and I share a handful of voicemails from the inbox. I recorded the last few minutes after a six-day mindfulness of death retreat. Frank Ostaseski was one of the teachers, and he said that all of your ideas about how you will be in your dying are just ideas. I end on one question: Is this the life I want to live? In this episode: How a voicemail line turned into a podcast Reaching 100 callers, and why the format is staying the same Control, surrender, and almost saying goodbye to Jackson Dāna, and what I hope callers and listeners take with them “Who am I?”: meditation, psilocybin therapy, and peeling back the layers like an artichoke Rumi’s “I died as mineral” and Don Plans for year four: community gatherings, Nemosene, and End Well Voicemails from the inbox, the first ones on the show in almost a year Comfortable with death, or comfortable talking about it? Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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3rd Anniversary Giveaway

I’m away on a meditation retreat and I know this isn't how one is supposed to use a podcast, but I didn’t want anyone to miss this. To celebrate three years of the When We Die Talks project, I’m doing a giveaway. Each winner will win a set of books which feature a book from some amazing people. These include books from Darnell Lamont Walker, Ben Reeves, Sara Rian, or Kacie Gikonyo, a few picks from the books our anonymous callers have recommended, and my personal favorite, Illusions by Richard Bach. To enter, answer the question I ask every caller at the end of our conversations: “What’s one thing you still want to experience in this lifetime?” Enter here: https://www.whenwedietalks.com/giveaway Entries close Friday, October 30. Four winners will be chosen at random and announced on November 2. You don’t need to like, share, or follow anything to enter. You must be 18 or older, and your answer may be shared anonymously as part of the project. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

Anonymous #55 — What Do You Believe About Death Once No One’s Telling You What to Believe?

Content Note: This episode includes a brief mention of suicidal thoughts in childhood. This caller pictures death as floating in a dark bathroom lit only by a nightlight, so comfortable you forget where your skin starts and stops. You arrive with a cannonball, whether you jumped or got shoved. Then you settle into what they call a soup. The people and pets you loved aren’t floating next to you. They’re more like a cold spot brushing past your feet in a lake, there for a second and then gone. Nobody handed them that picture. They grew up Mormon and homeschooled, two hours from the nearest Walmart. At seven or eight, they got a Kindle Fire with open internet. For the first time, they had something that answered their questions without talking down to them. They held off on baptism until ten and finally agreed just in case they were wrong. They also used their last question for the missionaries to ask what the church planned to do about Slender Man. The soup took shape years later in a float tank. Part of the reason they went was a lifelong fear of the dark. If they were wrong about everything and ended up in a coffin underground, it was going to be dark down there, so they made themselves lie in it. They came out deciding this is what death is. If they’re wrong, that’s fine with them. These days they work nights as an EMT. The first time losing a patient didn’t hit them, being not sad made them sad. A therapist suggested putting those calls away in a mental filing cabinet and coming back to them when they’re ready. They still haven’t figured out how to use it, so the papers are still sitting in a box somewhere in their head. What they still want from this life is to be known. It doesn’t need to ripple the pond. They just want it so that if someone searched for them, they could find them. In this conversation: Death as a soup, a dark bathroom, and a nightlight Growing up Mormon, homeschooled, and isolated A Kindle Fire and asking two missionaries about Slender Man Leaving the church and trying to get their records back Float tanks and facing a fear of the dark Night shifts as an EMT and the mental filing cabinet Wanting to be known Book Recommendation: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. Giveaway: When We Die Talks turns three in November, and to celebrate, there’s a book giveaway. From October 21 to 30, answer the question every caller gets at the end of their call, “What’s one thing you still want to experience in this lifetime?”, for a chance to win one of four book packages. Enter at whenwedietalks.com/giveaway About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #54 — Does It Take Almost Dying to Start Living Differently?

Months into a stay at a rehab hospital, with both arms and both legs broken, the caller found out the crystal they always carried in their pocket had been sitting in their bedside drawer the whole time. They couldn’t reach for it. Their best friend, who ran physical therapy there, handed it to them. That night they had the most vivid dream of the morning of the wreck: pulling away from the house, making one stop, and realizing inside the dream that they knew what came next. They were 29. The driver, someone they had met that weekend to travel to a wedding, was killed. The caller has no memory of the wreck itself. What they remember is everyone telling them God must have spared them for something, when they were already asking it themselves: I’m still here. Thank God. What does he expect me to do now? Their life before was a good one, and they say so plainly. Still, it turned. They borrowed a term from combat veterans and call that day their alive day. They celebrate two birthdays, and at some point they realized they had lived longer after the wreck than before it. Humor was there long before any of it. As a toddler, they told jokes at family funerals so people could laugh. Decades later, during their dad’s 20 days in hospice, they could still hear him chuckle. In their words, if you can laugh while you’re in hospice, your life has been pretty spectacular. They’re an electrical engineer by training, and they think about death in terms of energy, which can’t be destroyed and only changes form. As a kid in the Methodist church, they wanted to know where their soul was before they were born, and no one could tell them. They’ll admit they can’t prove anything, but they don’t believe the antecedent of the pronoun “I” disappears when the body stops. Their faith widened into theosophy, an interfaith seminary, and eventually ordination. It started with a free lecture at a psychic fair, given by a woman with “Reverend” in front of her name, titled “All the voices inside your head aren’t yours.” Before the wreck, they say, their thoughts about death were about seeking afterlife insurance. After it, the focus moved to making sure this life is the best it can be. In this conversation: Surviving a wreck that killed the driver, someone they’d met that weekend No memory of the wreck, and the dream that brought the morning back An alive day, two birthdays, and more years after than before Jokes at family funerals and a dad who still laughed in hospice Energy, thermodynamics, and why they believe something of us continues Where the soul was before we were born Reincarnation and life as a series of lessons “Thank you for coming to me today. What have you come to teach me?” From afterlife insurance to living this life well Book recommendation: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. Live Q&A: On October 15 at 5:30PM PDT, I'm doing my first-ever live Q&A on Substack. Ask me anything. You can send questions ahead of time by text, email, Substack or Instagram. Add it to your calendar here. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #53 — What Would It Take to Accept That You're Going to Die? (2-Year Anniversary)

The caller was five or six when they started lying awake at night, scared of death. What frightened them was the idea of not existing at all. That wasn't something a kid could bring up to adults, so they mostly thought about it alone. Around the same time, their mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was the 1980s, and nobody explained much to the kids. When the cancer came back years later, the caller figured she'd get better, because she had before. A few days before their 14th birthday, at their own birthday party, their dad and aunt took them and their brother into another room and told them their mom wasn't going to survive. Then they all went back to the party. On the caller's birthday, they were called to the school office, where their dad and brother were waiting to tell them she had died. She was 39. These days, the caller spends that birthday honoring her, and honoring themselves too. At 30, newly insured after becoming a nurse, the caller begged their doctor for a baseline mammogram. They didn't feel anything wrong. Their mom had been diagnosed at 30. The scan found stage one breast cancer, and the caller had a 3-year-old daughter at home. They went through one of the strongest chemotherapies there is. Lying in bed through it, they felt closer to death than they ever have, in a strange, almost mystical space they describe as being between two worlds. Zach brings in a question Don once asked him to take to someone who had fought cancer: how do you fight to live and make peace with dying at the same time? The caller says treatment felt almost safe, because something was being done. They also swung between feeling strong and completely crumpling, never knowing which way it would go, like Schrödinger's cat. Almost 20 years later, after years in labor and delivery helping people give birth, the caller was working in primary care. They were telling newly diagnosed women to look at them: almost 20 years out. Then, in 2024, they felt a lump. Stage two this time, in a couple of lymph nodes. They had assumed that getting older, and facing it a second time, would leave them more ready. It didn't. The beliefs that once softened the fear, built on reading all of Sylvia Browne's books, had fallen away. Now they're leaning toward nothing at all, like before we're born. Now 51, and working on it with their therapist, the caller says plainly that they haven't found acceptance. When Zach asks what it would take, they wonder if it might be hearing that it's terminal, that there's nothing left to do. Right away, they add that they don't want to be like that. They love being alive, even with all the hard parts. They don't want to be a vampire and live forever. They'd just like to make it to their late seventies or eighties. In this conversation: Fearing not existing since age five or six, and carrying it mostly alone Sylvia Browne, life reviews, and coming back to learn lessons Letting go of those beliefs and leaning toward nothing, like before birth Being told at their own birthday party that their mom wouldn't survive Guilt about being a moody young teenager who was scared to visit their mom in the hospital Asking for a baseline mammogram at 30, the age their mom was when she was diagnosed Feeling "between two worlds" during chemotherapy Don's question about fighting cancer and accepting death at once Why the recurrence was harder, and not feeling any more ready Death cafes, therapy, and finding this podcast on Instagram A therapist's reframe: believing your body feeds the earth is a kind of belief, too The 30% figure they've never asked their oncologist about This episode marks two years since the first episode of When We Die Talks. It's also the show's 100th call. Caller numbers and Anonymous episode numbers don't line up, since not every call becomes an episode, which is how the 100th call ended up as Anonymous #53. Thank you for listening, whether this is your first episode or you've been here since the start. Live Q&A: On October 8 at 5:30PM PDT, I'm doing my first-ever live Q&A on Substack. Ask me anything. You can send questions ahead of time by text, email, Substack or Instagram. Add it to your calendar here. Book recommendation: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #52 — Can You Grieve Without Suffering?

Content note: This episode includes open, direct discussion of suicide, including details of the caller finding their son after his death and the caller's own suicidal thoughts in the months that followed. If you are not in a place to listen to this one, that's ok. This week's caller is a psychic medium who spends their days holding space for other people's pain. Ten months before we spoke, they lost their 21-year-old son. For the first five months, they cried every day. Their brain still scans the house for him, and it's only now starting to slow down. Every morning, before their feet hit the ground, they make a choice. The way they see it, you can get better or you can get bitter, and they refuse to get bitter. They still grieve and they still cry, but to them grieving and suffering are two different things, and they refuse to suffer. We talk about what they believe happens when we die: hovering over your own body, then a review of your life that shows you how you made other people feel. They also see Earth as a school where the soul keeps coming back to learn. They talk about growing up in Catholic school afraid that their gifts would send them to hell, and about knowing things about their clients back when they were a 22-year-old esthetician. Now they say nature is their church and love is their religion. They didn't get through the last ten months alone. Their husband, their other son, their friends at the salon, and other mothers who had lost children all gathered around them. Their son still sends signs: a bee, a flickering light, a song coming on. They're taking the love they had with him and loving other people more deeply than ever before. In this conversation: Grieving vs. suffering, and choosing better over bitter every morning What they believe happens when we die, from hovering over the body to a life review of how we made others feel The first ten months after losing their son, and why it took a village to get through them Love that changed form, and the deeper compassion it brought to their work Live Q&A: On October 8, I'm doing my first-ever live Q&A on Substack. Ask me anything. You can send questions ahead of time by text, email, Substack or Instagram. Add it to your calendar here. Book recommendation: Finding Meaning by David Kessler. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #51 — Why Does Talking About Death Sound So Woo-Woo?

Content note: This conversation talks openly about drug addiction, recovery, overdoses, and near-death experiences. The subjects are heavy, but the call itself is warm, curious, and funny in places. If today isn't the right day for it, that's okay. The first time it happened, the power went out in the bathroom where the caller had collapsed, and their phone dropped into SOS mode. Nothing else in the house lost power. They've been asking what that meant ever since, and the question of energy and consciousness sent them down a rabbit hole that runs through the rest of the conversation. The caller came close to dying several times during a stretch of addiction, and two of those experiences changed how they think about death. In the one they describe most closely, they were out for thirty or forty minutes by their best guess. They felt themselves pulled slowly toward a tunnel of light at about the speed of a monorail. They heard their own voice tell them to wake up, then say they didn't want to, then say it wasn't their time. The closest they can get to describing the feeling is the moment they first saw their child. From there the conversation covers a lot of ground. The caller grew up with a parent who told them to question everything, so by ten or eleven they were reading the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist texts. They describe dreams where their childhood dog visits, young and healthy and waving a paw, and how they tell those apart from ordinary dreams by how they feel on waking. They talk about tarot, a Ouija board they never closed, and a hike where the whole forest suddenly went silent. They also explain why most people in their life hear all of this as woo-woo, and why they keep saying there's some truth to a little bit of everything. They close with the one thing they still want to do: build a house off the grid in Alaska, and someday be buried at the top of a mountain. In this conversation: Near-death experiences, and the tunnel of light the caller describes Why the caller compares dying to going home, and to the moment they first saw their child A power outage in a bathroom and the caller's questions about energy and consciousness Dreams as visits from loved ones and pets, and how to tell a visit from an ordinary dream What the caller believes comes after death, including staying earthbound, reincarnation, and other planes of existence Growing up with a parent who said to question everything, and reading the Bhagavad Gita as a kid Mysticism, tarot, and why the caller thinks intention is everything Why talking about death and spirits gets written off as woo-woo, and the caller's take that "pseudoscience is still science" Book recommendation: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. See the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #50 — Is It Okay to Have Made Peace With Dying When They Need You to Stay?

Content note: This conversation includes discussion around a terminal diagnosis and a period of chronic suicidality. If you aren't in the right space for this today, that's ok. This week's caller is the other half of last week's conversation, the one living inside the diagnosis instead of beside it. They have a former colleague who once opened a tense workplace meeting with three words: I believe everybody. That idea has stuck with them ever since, and it shapes how they think about death now, including their partner's hope that some part of them will linger like the wind. The seizures and fainting started in their twenties. Doctors initially suspected a rare blood cancer. A blood specialist eventually landed on the real answer: a rare, idiopathic bone marrow disorder, diagnosed in 2018 with an initial timeline of three to five years. There's an irony they've sat with. As a teenager, they spent years convinced they wouldn't live past 40, a belief tied to a period of chronic suicidality they've since moved past. Getting an actual terminal diagnosis as an adult, after growing to love the life they'd built, made that old certainty something they never wanted to be right about. They've done two rounds of grueling experimental treatment, daily injections for six weeks with isolation before, during, and after. The first happened in the early months of COVID, while on immunosuppressants that made a single infection potentially fatal. Neither round was for themselves. Both times, it was for the people who weren't ready to lose them yet. They talk about the work of their life in specific terms: living in pursuit of liberation for the people they love, so that when their time comes, the work feels done. Most people in their life don't bring up their dying. One friend changes the subject every time it comes up. Another, a rabbi, is one of the few who can sit in it with them comfortably. In this conversation: A colleague's three words that shaped how our caller thinks about death and belief The years-long path to an idiopathic bone marrow diagnosis, and the doctors who got it wrong before one got it right A teenage belief about mortality that turned out to be true for reasons no one could have guessed Choosing experimental treatment for other people's sake, not their own What it means for our caller to feel like their work is done Book recommendations: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib and Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #49 — Is It Okay to Need Them to Stay When They've Made Peace With Dying?

Our caller's framework for what happens after we die starts with basic physics: energy can't be created or destroyed. From there, they work backward. If someone survives a traumatic brain injury and comes out unable to remember who they used to be, wanting different things than they did before, are they still the same person? Our caller thinks so. Just changed. It's the same logic they apply to death itself. Their partner has a terminal illness, and has had it since before the two of them met. Long before this relationship, their partner had already lost two former partners, one to a drunk driving accident and one to COVID, so grief wasn't a new subject between them. Their partner has a phrase for it: grief and joy are sisters. Our caller didn't understand that phrase at first. They came to understand it slowly, through other kinds of loss along the way. Early in the relationship, our caller caught themselves hesitating before telling their partner they were upset about something, wondering if it was worth rocking the boat. They decided almost immediately that it wasn't a real option. Treating a partner more carefully just because they're dying, they realized, isn't a relationship. It's something closer to caretaking. So conflict stayed on the table, same as it would for anyone. They've also thought through the practical side of death more than most people twice their age: a natural burial, wrapped in muslin, buried with flowers, composted into the ground. They want to be in the room when their partner dies, and to help prepare the body afterward, if their partner is willing. They've watched pets die, watched a grandmother taken off life support, even sat in on autopsies during a college internship. Their reasoning: avoiding death doesn't protect anyone from it. It just means it's kicking your door in later. In this conversation: Believing energy can't be created or destroyed, and what that might mean after death Traumatic brain injury and the question of what makes someone "still themselves" Grief and joy as "sisters," a phrase passed down from a partner who has lost two previous partners Refusing to let a terminal diagnosis change how conflict gets handled in a relationship Planning a natural burial, human composting, and witnessing death firsthand Book recommendation: Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #48 — Would You Believe a Sign From the Dead More If Someone Else Had the Same One?

The caller was raised by two atheist parents who explained death the way you'd explain any other natural process: you die, you break down, you go back into the earth. They never fully believed it. Their grandmother offered something else, reincarnation, and the caller spent years circling that belief instead, even as they kept collecting moments that didn't fit cleanly into either story. The strangest one came from their own child, three years old at the time, who had a sudden and vivid memory of dying somewhere else entirely, complete with a name and a place, then lost the memory completely an hour later like it had never happened. Years after that, the caller fell for a partner with the opposite belief system, a devout Christian convinced God would save them even as cancer made that less and less likely. In the days before the diagnosis came back, a crow flew into the caller's office and died at their door, an omen their grandmother had always warned them about. The caller was in the room when their partner died, and watched something shift in their eyes in the final moment. About a week later, the caller's bed shook like an earthquake and they dreamed their partner came to them inside a ship, telling them not to be afraid. When the caller mentioned it to their sibling as a strange story, the sibling said they'd had their own dream that same night, one that ended in a single word only the caller and their partner had ever shared. The caller never told their sibling that word. What they landed on by the end of the call wasn't a belief. It was contentment, and boundaries they'd fought hard to build. In this conversation: Being raised by two atheist parents, and the reincarnation their grandmother taught them instead Their child's sudden, unprompted memory of a past life at age three, and how completely it disappeared after A crow that died at the caller's office door in the days before their partner's cancer diagnosis came back The dream the caller had the week their partner died, and their sibling's corroborating dream the same night A family religious confrontation at the caller's father's bedside while he was dying Choosing contentment and strong boundaries over a settled answer about what happens next Book recommendation: Henry and June by Anaïs Nin — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #47 — When Someone Dies Why Does Everyone Stop Saying Their Name?

A note before we start: This episode includes discussion of a suicidal crisis and the loss of a pregnancy. If that's more than you can take in today, that's okay, come back to this one when you're ready. The caller keeps their twin daughters' ashes inside a teddy bear on a shelf beside their bed. Most mornings, they say good morning. The girls' names were Scarlet and Violet, named, in part, for Pokémon. Long before that loss, the caller had already been thinking about how to speak to someone who's grieving. Sitting with an aunt who'd lost her son to COVID, the caller decided to just ask instead of guessing: Do you want me to say his name? Her answer was yes, it made her smile. Bobby. That same instinct, ask, don't assume, is what the caller carried into everything that followed: a partner lost in Afghanistan, a German Shepherd named Whiskey who stayed by their side through a suicidal crisis, and a pregnancy loss they now understand, through the work of Dr. Katherine Shear, as complicated grief. In the middle of that loss, a stray cat showed up outside their door and never left. They named him Sergeant Scout. In this conversation: Losing a partner in Afghanistan, and years later, twin daughters during pregnancy A period of suicidal crisis, and finding a way back from it Asking an aunt whether she wants to hear her late son's name, and carrying that question into their own grief A German Shepherd named Whiskey, and a rescued cat named Sergeant Scout Learning about complicated grief through the work of Dr. Katherine Shear Deciding, deliberately, how they want their daughters spoken of Book recommendation: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #46 — Can You Hope for an Afterlife That Was Your Partner's Worst Nightmare?

Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide, physician-assisted death, psychosis, and serious illness. The caller and their late partner met when they were nineteen. For the better part of a decade they were each other's person, the one you call with good news, bad news, or at 4am when you can't stop thinking about what it will feel like to stop existing. For most of that time, the caller was the one afraid of death. Their partner wasn't. Then their partner, searching for anything that might work against treatment-resistant depression, tried psilocybin. It went badly enough that they developed schizophrenia. The person who used to be at peace with the idea of nothing spent the rest of their life terrified of a very specific something, an afterlife they'd seen in that trip and believed was waiting for them. What follows is not a straight line. There's electroconvulsive therapy and the brain damage that came with it. A period that looked, briefly, like hope: the partner coming out as trans, seeming more alive than they had in years. A breakup that was really an act of care. A vein at the temple that only shows when someone is dangerously underweight, and doctors who looked past it. And, in the end, something the caller is careful to call by its real name: a death with dignity, chosen with a death doula, not a crisis. The caller talks about all of it, including where they are now: still afraid of death, but less afraid than before, because for the first time in their life they're the one hoping something comes next. Not despite what happened to their partner, but because of it. Stay through to the very end of this one. Our caller shared a story after our conversation was over that's worth the listen. In this conversation: What it means to lose someone who was, for years, more at peace with death than you were A mushroom trip that triggered psychosis, and the years-long shift that followed: electroconvulsive therapy, a gender transition, a slow physical decline Talking a partner through the idea of dying by choice, and the legal patchwork around death with dignity A friend's theory that memory is physical, and what that means for grief Growing a bat flower, and what it means to still want to see something bloom Book recommendation: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here. Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #45 — How Would You Know If a Message From the Dead Was Real?

Our caller was sitting in a college class when a professor, mid-lecture, turned and looked directly at them and asked what it might have been like to be sheltered with your partner under a mantle in Pompeii, watching ash come down. The caller says every hair on their arm stood up. That was the professor's window into something he already suspected about them. Years later, at an artist market, a stranger asked for a reading. The caller doesn't usually charge, and doesn't usually push, but something came through anyway: a message from the woman's late grandfather, gone three years, about a Salisbury steak dinner at a nursing home and a family joke he'd sworn her father to secrecy over. The woman called her father on the spot. He confirmed it, word for word. The caller was raised in the Bible belt, got kicked out of a few churches as a kid for asking the wrong questions, and has spent years since building a belief system with room for all of it: heaven, reincarnation, nothing at all, and fifty other doors besides, none of them locking anyone out for good. These days, they're also working toward a graduate degree in forensic anthropology, with the goal of helping identify people found in mass graves so their families can finally bring them home. In this conversation: Growing up a medium in the Bible belt, and what got them kicked out of church The professor, Pompeii, and the moment logic stopped being enough A grandfather's message about Salisbury steak that convinced a grieving family The horse spirit that's followed the caller their whole life Believing in "fifty doors" instead of one version of the afterlife Studying forensic anthropology to help identify people in mass graves Book recommendations: The Giver by Lois Lowry and Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian (see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here) Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #44 — What Do You Lose When You Carry Other People's Pain?

Content note: this episode centers on suicide loss, discussed directly. If that's not something you're in a place for today, it's okay to sit this one out. Our caller found their housemate in the home they shared, staged in a way that made sure they'd be the one to find him. He'd also been their romantic partner at one point, and one of their closest friends. The application that got them on this call was written about a month shy of the one-year mark. They used to believe in ghosts, built on a childhood theory that energy can't be created or destroyed, so it has to go somewhere. Standing alone in that house afterward, they gave it every chance to prove them right. Nothing came, and that absence is what moved them somewhere new. In the days after, they became the one holding the certainty for everyone else. Friends kept saying it wasn't sinking in, that they couldn't believe it. And our caller, having seen it themselves, became the person other people leaned on to say it was real. A recurring dream followed: finding him alive again, undone each time by a conspiracy where everyone who loved them had lied to punish them. Even inside the dream, the relief of him being alive outweighed the betrayal. In the years since, part of that dream became true in its own way. Not him coming back, but the blame that landed on them anyway. In this conversation: A childhood theory about ghosts built on thermodynamics and energy Losing a friend to suicide in middle school, and an aunt's suicide years later Becoming the one holding the certainty for a friend group that couldn't accept what happened A PTSD diagnosis and a recurring dream about a faked death Losing a shared friend group after the loss, and where the blame landed A missing stretch of memory that swallowed a birthday Avoidance, discomfort, and getting through a worst-case scenario that actually happened Book recommendation: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling (see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here) Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #43 — Is Being Forgotten Worse Than Dying?

This week's caller calls themself a radical death advocate. Not because they think dying is good, but because they see it as a part of the life cycle we're better off accepting than fighting. They're mostly at peace with the first death, the physical one. It's the second death, the one where your name stops being spoken, that they're still working through. From there the conversation moves through an ofrenda they keep in their home for a close friend they lost suddenly last year, and what it means for that friend to become part of the conversation every time someone new comes over. They talk about Day of the Dead, growing up between two countries, and a choice to focus on the decades someone lived rather than the last week of their life. They end on where they'd go first if they could see more of the world. In this conversation: Being a radical death advocate, and choosing to accept dying rather than treat it as the enemy The idea of two deaths: the death of the body, and the last time anyone says your name Building and keeping an ofrenda, and what it means to talk about someone you've lost every time a friend visits Reframing grief around a lifetime lived, instead of the final days of it Wanting to see more of the world, starting with the Caucasus Book recommendation: Unwind by Neal Shusterman All Anonymous Book Recommendations: View the full list Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube. About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #42 — Who Takes Care of the Person Who Is Living for Everyone Else?

This week's caller was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when they were 22 months old. They've spent their entire life managing something that can genuinely kill them in either direction, and death has been a fact of daily life rather than a distant idea. From there the conversation moves fast and wide. A reference to Coco and what it means to be remembered. The Big Bang and where the energy to start it came from. Consciousness, and why science still can't explain it. Being raised Catholic and no longer able to fully believe it, while also not able to fully let go of it either. There's a period in high school the caller went through completely alone, lying to their parents and saying nothing to their friends. It's what diabetics call burnout, a point where the constant work of managing a condition every hour of every day just becomes too much to keep up. Out of it came a decision to spend their nights taking calls from classmates instead of asking for help themselves, some of those calls going until 2am. That decision turned into something more permanent: a sense that their own survival isn't really about them. It's about their parents, their brother, their friends, and the people they haven't met yet. In this conversation: Coco, the Big Bang, and what it means to be remembered after you're gone Diagnosed at 22 months old, and growing up inside a condition rather than adjusting to one The freshman year burnout no one else knew about, and what came out the other side of it Sonder, The Egg by Andy Weir, and the idea that no one else's unkindness is really about you Living for other people as a stated philosophy, not a coping mechanism Book recommendation: The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson All Anonymous Book Recommendations: View the full list Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #41 — If Life Comes from Death, What if Nothing Ever Really Ends?

This caller was born into death. Their mother survived a rare, near-fatal condition as an infant only because a doctor happened to be at the house that day, checking on a dying sister. That's the reason this caller exists at all and it sets the tone for everything that follows. From there, the conversation opens into a full cosmology the caller has been building for years: reflections in a bubble, a lava lamp as a model of consciousness, the Mandelbrot set and what fractals might have to do with the soul. Robert Monroe's astral projection experiments, the CIA's Gateway Project, a childhood spent doing dream interpretation. It moves fast and doesn't ask permission to be believed. It just asks you to follow. Underneath it all is a caller who grew up Pentecostal in the Bible Belt and never stopped asking the questions the room didn't want asked. Including teaching themselves pieces of Greek and Hebrew just to check if the Bible had been translated right. That same refusal to accept an easy answer is what eventually led them somewhere stranger, and more spacious. This is a good one if you're drawn to big, unresolved ideas that don't tie up neatly. It asks you to sit with concepts you may not have language for yet. But it lands, at the end, on something disarmingly simple. In this conversation: A doctor, a dying aunt, and the coincidence that let the caller's mother survive infancy Astral projection, Robert Monroe, and the CIA's Gateway Project The Mandelbrot set, the Buddhabrot, and fractals as a model for the soul Growing up Pentecostal, teaching themselves biblical languages, and learning not to accept easy answers A string of losses across adolescence and what they taught the caller about impermanence Book recommendation: Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe All Anonymous Book Recommendations: View the full list Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #40 — Does It Matter What You Believe About Death, As Long As You Actually Believe It?

This caller doesn't come from a place of loss. They come from a place of curiosity, and a theory they've spent years quietly assembling. It starts with reincarnation. But not the straightforward kind. Not a linear return to another body in the next moment. The caller imagines all points in time as equally available. Past, present, future. When you die, you pick a new life from any of them. From there, the conversation moves into the one electron theory: the idea that a single electron might be tracing a path so vast and complex that, from our perspective, it looks like billions. And the caller's question: what if souls work the same way? We also talk about non-duality, about the grief they're able to feel versus the grief they're expected to perform, about the Catholic upbringing that they've mostly moved away from, and the one part of it that still quietly unsettles them. And at the very end, after an hour of theory and philosophy, the conversation lands somewhere unexpected. This is a good episode if you enjoy ideas. If you're comfortable sitting with a framework that's genuinely unusual and doesn't resolve neatly. The caller isn't here to convince. They're here to share what helps them. In this conversation: A theory of reincarnation that isn't tied to linear time The one electron theory, and what it might mean for the soul Non-duality, and why the caller thinks separation is something we invented Consciousness as a gradient scale, with humans nowhere near the top The grief they feel versus the grief they know how to show A Catholic upbringing, a mostly-abandoned belief system, and the one fear that stayed Book recommendations: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh and Morning, Noon, and Night by Spalding Gray All Anonymous Book Recommendations: View the full list Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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Anonymous #39 — Can You Stop Needing to Know What Happens When We Die?

This episode includes an open and personal conversation about suicide, suicidal ideation, and suicidality, including experiences from childhood. If you're in a tender place with any of these themes, please take care of yourself first. If you need support, Thrive Lifeline is a great resource. This caller has spent most of their life in relationship with death, and they'll tell you that relationship started before they had words for it. A first-generation Filipino American who grew up without a fixed sense of home, they found their way into community death care not through a course or a calling they could name, but through the accumulation of things they survived and the people they stayed for. What brought them to this work was loss. What keeps them in it is something harder to explain: a sense that being present for someone at the end of their life is less about training and more about showing up with your whole self. This is a conversation about learning to live inside uncertainty, and finding that the mystery of death doesn't have to be something you solve. In this conversation: What it means to grow up without a fixed home, and how that shaped an early, complicated relationship with death Witnessing a parent's suicide attempt as a child, and carrying that in relative silence for most of a lifetime How a family crisis became the unexpected doorway into community death care Volunteering to sit with people who are actively dying, and what that actually looks like The idea that suicidal ideation is more common than most people admit, and what changes when we stop treating it as unspeakable Settling into "I don't know" as an answer to what happens when we die, and why protecting the mystery might matter more than solving it Book recommendation: The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus All Anonymous Book Recommendations: View the full list Video Episode: If you'd like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube About When We Die Talks: When We Die Talks is a podcast built around anonymous conversations about death, loss, and how contemplating mortality shapes the way we live. If you’re new here, start with the Episode Guide. It’s designed to help you find conversations that match where you’re at—curiosity, grief, hesitation, or openness. Stay Connected 🌐 Website: whenwedietalks.com 📰 Substack: When We Die Talks 📸 Instagram: @whenwedietalks ▶️ YouTube: When We Die Talks ✉️ Email: zach@whenwedietalks.com Want to share your thoughts? Leave a voicemail at 971-328-0864 and share what you believe happens when we die. Messages may be featured in a future episode. If you’d like to have a full conversation, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at whenwedietalks.com.

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