Latest / Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden / Presence is Medicine: Every Passage We Face with Margaret Pasquesi

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Presence is Medicine: Every Passage We Face with Margaret Pasquesi · Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden

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  speaker-0 (00:00.178)
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  I have such a cool treat for you today. This is one you probably never thought you had interest in, but guess what? A really fun guest today. Margaret Pasquazi is with me. She is a thanatologist. Get this, a musical thanatologist. So what's a thanatologist, you ask? Well, it's someone who studies death, dying, and bereavement, the psychological, social, spiritual, and cultural dimensions from of the end of life experience. They do
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  Cover areas like grief counseling and bereavement, hospice and palliative, you see why I have interest, death education, trauma and loss, and the ethics around end-of-life decisions. So a musical dernetologist is a specially trained practitioner who uses lag music, typically voice and harp, which is exactly what Margaret uses, as a form of comfort care for people who are dying and sometimes for their families. It's not performance, it's prescriptive.
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  Meaning it's improvised and responsive to the patient's breathing, restlessness, or state of consciousness in real time. It's intended to ease the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual distress at end of life. And many people relate that it helps them transition more carefully. Margaret has a really cool background as a cantor and a soloist.
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  She's worked as a cantor in the Roman Catholic tradition and as a soloist in a wide variety of spiritual settings, including church services, funerals, and weddings. And she's been on numerous TV shows. She is a delight to speak with and really interesting. I think you're gonna learn some things that you didn't even know that you want to know. Thank you for joining us today. Let's get to it.
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  Welcome to My Realm. I'm Tammy Jordan, and this is Butterfly Days, the podcast that proves you're not past your prime. You're living in it right now because women don't have expiration dates. Butterfly Days is a celebration of the extraordinary potential of Gen X and Boomer women. Throughout history, women have shared wisdom to uplift and empower one another, and you're about to learn hard earned wisdom and
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  best kept secrets from interesting, inspiring women. So if you're ready to embrace your butterfly season with confidence, find joy in the present, and create a legacy that matters, you're in the right place. No more holding back. Let's spread our wings now. Here we go!
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  speaker-0 (02:33.824)
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  Welcome to my realm. This is Tammy Jordan, and you're listening to Butterfly Days. Today, my guest is amazing. Can't wait for you to hear from her. Her name is Margaret Pasquazy, and she is, get ready, a musical phenotologist. Did I say it right? Music Music Thenatologist. Okay, we're all gonna have it by the end of the episode because this is crazy interesting. Tell us what.
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  A music zonatologist is please, ma'am.
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  speaker-1 (03:06.22)
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  So a music thanatologist is a someone who has become certified with the Music Thanatology Association International after training and it's using music by the bedside as pain relief. It's live music, it uses harp and voice.
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  speaker-0 (03:22.296)
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  That's beautiful. So my understanding is that your background is in harp and voice and that you also sing as a cantor. Tell us about that before we begin the other part. That's beautiful. So yeah, not
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  speaker-1 (03:37.006)
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  All music, thanatologists, or canter. So I did not play harp. I was like, you know, a little punk rock kid and I was in these rock bands and yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I had learned bass while in cot like electric bass my last few years of played terribly.
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  speaker-0 (03:43.671)
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  Love this.
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  speaker-1 (03:54.382)
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  Do. Right. No, actually, the cool thing about music thanatology is people come from a lot of different backgrounds. Right. So in my class alone, we had somebody who was from Wall Street. We had several nurses. Let's see, psychologist? Anyway, and people come from all over the world, which is another thing. Like we've had people who came to train from Australia, from Japan. I mean, yeah, it's like it's this
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  speaker-0 (04:24.014)
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  Extraordinary
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  speaker-1 (04:25.174)
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  I know. It's this weird calling thing. And so people ask me, like, why didn't you choose something else? Like, why this specific thing? And it was because I had an experience of a music thanatologist specifically helping a friend of my family's, who is my older sister's best friend, die. We hired someone that was in the area where she lived. And so we flew someone out who came played music vigils and the music thanatologist played
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  music vigils is what they're called. So it was I didn't think about anything else, like any other possibilities. I just guess the idea of music being able to affect the body alleviate pain. I was like, I want more
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  speaker-0 (04:55.98)
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (05:13.432)
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  Yeah. I love that. I love that. When I volunteered at Children's Hospital, Colorado, I volunteered in the NICU, and a couple of times I had people who came into the NICU and played harp. So that was extraordinary. And I gotta tell ya, the babies are big harp fans. As best I could tell. At least NICU babies.
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  speaker-1 (05:38.79)
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  Well okay, so let me explain about the harp. Because this you know, little punk rock bassist singer was like, What? Like harp? What? And it didn't even register. So I first saw it. I was in grad school and really knew that I needed to do a shift from these alternative rock bands, but wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing, though I had read a book and the name of the book has been escaping me. Cause, you know, women.
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  speaker-0 (05:40.702)
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  Yeah, please.
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  speaker-0 (06:05.995)
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  'Cause you know.
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  speaker-1 (06:07.746)
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  Yeah. And we forget things. But I remember then there was a title, there was a chapter in the book called Making Art as if the world mattered. And I love that. And so the idea post postmodernism, right? Where your war haul or whatever, right? Right. Postmodernism takes away the ego and it's no longer about the artist. It's about your good service. It's about service. Like basically art kind of as doing social change. And
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  speaker-0 (06:17.166)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (06:21.454)
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  Yes, yes.
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  speaker-1 (06:37.228)
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  So moved by that. And I got into this, I started doing these you know, it's art school, right? So I started doing these small performances for like individual people. And they weren't even performances. Like I would just sing to them because I didn't play harp at the time and like look in their eyes and people would weep. So then I started testing it. I did it with recordings, and people were not as moved by a recording of the exact same piece of music as they were live. Once you go back to the harp.
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  What happens is you have all this wo you could do an electronic keyboard, but when music is transmitted, sound is transmitted electronically, something happens to the sound wave. You don't have a perfectly smooth sound wave. So you can do experiments with this where you take like an oscilloscope, right? And you can play, let's say, like a trumpet into them, right? You'll get the note, but it'll be like a splat.
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  speaker-0 (07:10.766)
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  Mm-hmm.
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  speaker-0 (07:25.218)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (07:34.168)
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  Yeah. It's like perfect.
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  speaker-1 (07:38.126)
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  Sine wave and you I you know I don't it's not the petal harp, it's a lever harp. So it's a concert instrument. So for example, even this hospital that I worked for, they would have musicians come and play in the hallways for the for the staff. And they all said they're like, my gosh, the cello is too loud. There's a cellice. They're like, it's too loud. So to put a mute.
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  speaker-0 (08:04.652)
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  So Yeah.
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  On the cello.
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  speaker-1 (08:08.958)
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  string instrument so so if you can imagine it's a because it's a concert instrument. So in a yeah even though you can listen to I just listened to some beautiful cello music today and there's something so luscious about, you know, the Boeing and gained tones, but at the bedside it's fragile, right? So even a big harp, you know, in the NICU it's for all the babies. But then there's something really profound that happens when I play just to you.
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  speaker-0 (08:13.646)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (08:21.464)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (08:25.761)
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  It's a lot.
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  speaker-1 (08:37.291)
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  And so I'm on the certification team. We just certified some new music thanatologists. I was in Port I got to be in Portland doing that and I loved it. And one of the things, you know, they have to, you know, we have standards and competencies and ethics and they have to show that they can integrate all of these things. And so we have them play for us because they have to do harp and voice, but then they have to have the connection with the patient. So one of us would be the patient, right? And you could feel it as the patient and even the observer would be like, whoa.
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  When the candidate connected with my breath, and that gets a little complicated because you're not 12 beats a minute. It's you're creating a musical field. You have to sustain a musical field that doesn't drop while also focusing on that person when they do it, when they sync with my breath, and the experience is like being grounded, like your body.
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  speaker-0 (09:13.688)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (09:24.482)
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  Yes.
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  speaker-1 (09:36.994)
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  Grounded to the floor or whatever you're laying on, but then your mind is able to wander freely. It is such an experience of right as you've seen this. People have to come back into their bodies. We want to manage their physical pain, the emotional pain, because they need to kind of gather themselves in order to leave, you know, to
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  speaker-0 (09:47.896)
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  That's extraordinary.
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  speaker-0 (10:04.44)
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  Think that's right.
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  speaker-1 (10:05.76)
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  Yeah, there's a term in Christianity where they talk about, you know, the idea of so in Christ in Christian thought, right, Jesus, this person, Jesus, is God, right? And so they talk about God becoming man, and that's called the it's the incarnation. And so I wrote this paper. This is my paper in the school of music phenotology was someone has to incarnate and the music can help them incarnate in order to excarnate, in order to leave.
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  speaker-0 (10:21.582)
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  Flesh. Right.
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  speaker-1 (10:35.064)
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  You have to come unto yourself. Music phenotology is not a Christian thing, you know.
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  speaker-0 (10:36.889)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (10:41.462)
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  No, but but I see where you were using the the concept for your Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (10:46.798)
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  Yeah, but but no, we see atheists. Atheists are the best, right? Because life is so important because this is the only one you have, right? And doing good works, you know, a lot of atheists are like, I need to make a this is all there is. So I
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  speaker-0 (10:54.016)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (11:00.504)
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  What's Poem you do with your one wild life. Yeah. Yep, yep.
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  speaker-1 (11:02.53)
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  Mary Oliver. What are you gonna do with your w
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  Yep, 'cause you you gotta do something with it because this could be it. So this could be it. So yeah. That's
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  speaker-0 (11:12.014)
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  Could be it. Yeah. That's crazy beautiful. So you ended up in the program in Portland. Do you want to tell about where you went to school in case anyone has interest?
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  speaker-1 (11:23.786)
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  Yes. So I just have to clarify I've been doing this for started school in the fall of 2000. And it was a two year program that I did after I got my master's. Right. So then I became a certified music phenatologist. And in that two year program, when I went to it, it was in Missoula, Montana. It was part of it was a palliative care program. So it was really integrated into the city.
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  speaker-0 (11:28.142)
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  I
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  speaker-0 (11:49.752)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (11:52.236)
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  You know, people do that the harps would be coming if you were dying and which is really amazing. So and so the professional association is was created in Oregon. And that's where it's housed. And that's where we tend to have, you know, when we do certifications, people go out there. But yes, there is now an institute called the Music Accorda, Music Thanatology Institute. Yes. Perfect.
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  speaker-0 (11:57.698)
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  That is amazing.
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  speaker-1 (12:19.554)
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  Wants to just find out more information, they are accepting applications.
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  speaker-0 (12:23.766)
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  put the link on my page so if people have interest, this is a marvelous program to do really interesting work. So you receive this training. How do you start work or where do you find yourself after this?
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  speaker-1 (12:40.472)
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  Well, let me just say about the school. So it's not just music. You're not just learning to make pretty music by the bedside. So it's medical. Our competencies are medical, clinical, right? Professional.
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  speaker-0 (12:53.718)
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  Mm. Wow.
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  speaker-1 (12:56.142)
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  Spiritual psychological. So there's all these different streams that come together. You're working with a hospice team, people are hired by hospitals. So you have to be able to speak the language of everyone. Happening the how different disease processes manifest at end of life. And you have to understand the pain management because the music is not a replacement, right? Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (12:58.657)
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  Wow.
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (13:10.638)
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  Yes.
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  speaker-0 (13:25.571)
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  Only.
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  speaker-1 (13:26.454)
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  Yeah. But if somebody if somebody is just getting medication for them, you know, or they're having pain issues, when they get the medication, the music can f really fill in the gap between when the medication is given and when it kicks right. So for example, there was somebody that I saw in their home not that long ago, and the f family really wanted people have a lot of misconceptions, as you know, about the dying process about medication.
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  speaker-0 (13:50.678)
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  Yeah.
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  Mm-hmm. End of life, yeah.
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  speaker-1 (13:55.47)
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  They're worried if I start giving medication that the person is just gonna die. So we can come in and people will be agitated, even if they have hospice, right? The the family can maybe not be giving medication because in this case there were family members that were coming and they wanted her to be away.
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  speaker-0 (14:13.528)
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  To still be yeah. Yeah. Bless their heart. Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (14:17.43)
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  I know, right? Just because somebody's moving. So what how I explain it to the family? And I think, you know, that's why hospice is this great interdisciplinary team when the nurse is reinforcing medication, but also the chaplain and the social worker and the death doula and the music phenotologists are all saying, Let me let's talk about the medication. Yeah. And so I'll even whip out some of these verified scales, right? Like let's look at a respiratory distress observation scale. Here's what your mother is scoring.
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  speaker-0 (14:35.448)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (14:47.442)
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  on this verified scale and they'll go, so your mom is scoring a five on this whatever ten point scale. If it's a five, we need to be giving some medication, right? She needs a needs a little something. And and I said, think about it, like if you have a cold, because you can't treat you can't cure a cold, but you treat the symptoms, which is doing life. You can't correct cure the body, but you know, we talked about
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  speaker-0 (14:55.372)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (15:15.084)
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  Comfort
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  speaker-1 (15:15.8)
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  Body cure of the soul, right? But you need to so okay, so I have a cold, I'm restless, I can't sleep. If I take some medication that helps me and I get a good night's sleep, I actually feel better and can do better, even though we're not curing. So in this circumstance, I stayed and I played, I was like, you know, your mom's agitated here. So we we did some of the obvious things, right? Like she had a caregiver. We're like, why don't we change her? Why don't we make sure? So let's give her some medication. I'm gonna play.
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  And then we're gonna like wait about twenty
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  speaker-0 (15:46.914)
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  Right.
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  speaker-1 (15:49.186)
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  We played for about 20 minutes. She was still restless. I'm like, okay, why don't we change her and turn her? Because the last time they had turned her, because you don't just need medication, right? Like those basic things, the things we learn. Yeah. You don't intubate someone, you just turn their head slightly down. They'll drain and they can breathe, you know, like all these little things that you don't do studies on, but we being by the bedside, right, know that they total evidence. And
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  speaker-0 (16:00.046)
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  Nice.
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  speaker-0 (16:04.735)
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (16:18.698)
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  not appropriate to do the gold standard thing. You can't have a control group when people are dying. So
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  speaker-0 (16:21.772)
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  Yeah. The whole thing. Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (16:29.63)
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  We need immediate you know, support on board. Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (16:32.918)
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  Right. So it's all anecdotal evidence. But so we changed her, returned her, gave her some more medication. I continued to play. And so then twenty minutes after all that, I'm like, Well, why don't we do a little bit more? 'Cause she's still, you know, she's still having these moving her daughter had been trying to talk to her and she wasn't saying anything, she was just grunting. So we give the medication.
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  speaker-0 (16:52.974)
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  She's impeccing, yeah.
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  speaker-1 (16:55.118)
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  Finally starts to settle. And then her daughter says, Mom, how are you doing? And her mom's like, I'm doing better now. Like went from not talking at all, right? Because people get guarded. They don't talk. They don't. So the pain medication can actually help people perk up, if you will, right? Yeah. For sure. We will help them let go, but the amounts that we give are so tiny. Like Tylenol to us, right?
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  speaker-0 (17:07.127)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (17:14.478)
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  speaker-0 (17:20.034)
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  Yes.
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  speaker-1 (17:23.36)
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  cancer or that amount of pain receptors, there's not an amount we can really give that's available with, you know, they fill the little syringes gonna push somebody over the edge.
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  speaker-0 (17:31.886)
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  Yeah. No, they're not gonna they're not gonna dispense to you, you know, that kind that's gonna put you over the edge. And I think you are right. There are people who are very concerned about that. My favorite are the people who are really stuck on I don't want them to become an addict. Well, if they should live long enough to be an addict, that would be a different issue, but not in that part of the story. We're not in cure anymore. We're in comfort.
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  speaker-1 (17:57.774)
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  And we're in a limited amount of time, right? Yeah. It was the horrible thing with oxycodone, right? When it was being used for chronic pain, you know, people did get hooked and it's not what it's used for. So now it's much better, right? We have physical therapy for everything. What are all these different ways that we can manage our inflammation around pain? Life or surgery. I mean, it really is this amazing miraculous tool that
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  speaker-0 (18:05.634)
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  Yes.
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  speaker-0 (18:17.912)
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  But it should
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  speaker-0 (18:24.238)
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  Yes. You don't want anyone chasing that pain. You want to be slightly ahead of it so that they can be present so you can then figure out what's the best strategy for them to interact with whoever they might need to.
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  speaker-1 (18:38.126)
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  Right. Right. Yeah. It's so much education. So that's where the phenotological part comes in, right? I can speak the same medical team, I can
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  speaker-0 (18:46.126)
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  Yeah. Show the pain scale which is
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  speaker-1 (18:51.382)
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  Right, right. I can talk about we let like let's look this up. We have our phones. Let's look this up. These are the kind of medication you have this on board. This Atavan, let's say. Atavan is for when your mom has that furrowed brow and is like plucking and taking off her blankets and you know, but the let's say Roxanol, which is a derivative of morphine, is having a hard time breathing. Yeah. Is this rust like the here's the thing that we see a lot, right? When somebody's apneic and when they're
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  speaker-0 (19:14.478)
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  Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (19:20.234)
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  apneque when they're not breathing. They're so peaceful. And then they return breath and they're like and some people will give Adavan, but Atavan won't touch that. The return
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  speaker-0 (19:30.4)
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  is it's an opioid derivative. That's what helps. Sorry. Yes. And it doesn't make someone die sooner to use morphine, for instance. They don't give you enough to just knock somebody out. But it can be tremendous in allowing someone to relax when they breathe. Because if you get stressed on your breathing, Margaret
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  speaker-1 (19:35.35)
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  Breathing related, you know.
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  speaker-0 (19:56.728)
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  That's so hard on people because they get frightened they can't breathe. And then that builds on itself. It's better let have a little bit of the morphine, settle into that breathing, and now they can be present for whatever needs to happen next. And you're so right.
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  speaker-1 (20:12.142)
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  Right. If they die, you know, really quickly from just relaxing, like they were trying to die and weren't they were stuck. Right. So it doesn't kill them. It just it's such again, you would have to take so much
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  speaker-0 (20:17.527)
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  Yeah.
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  They were trying to die.
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  speaker-0 (20:28.382)
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  So a lot more than what they're gonna give you, yeah, in a in a shot there. Yeah. I'm so glad that we're talking about this because I do think that there are people I've had a number of people in my hospice work who are concerned about that. And and God bless you because you're trying to take care of your person in a loving, kind way. That's good. But you really don't have to worry about if there's difficulty breathing, morphine is a godsend. It's not
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  You're not going to end up with a terrible addiction issue. You're not going to take their life any sooner. Right. It's actually helpful. So this helped get your lady patient stabilized and comfortable. Because that's what we want for our people at that point. Yes.
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  speaker-1 (21:12.512)
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  And able to communicate. And so the poor daughter is probably like, maybe we could have given this sooner. And she would have been comfortable talking to everybody. Right. So so the normal thing, the way that I talk about it is like the normal thing when you're this sick and this frail is that you would be mostly resting. You would be somnulent for long periods of time. But when you're awake, you're awake, right? And so when you're not, if you're in bed agitated, that is a symptom management.
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  speaker-0 (21:20.386)
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  Yeah
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  speaker-1 (21:42.21)
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  Issue.
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  speaker-0 (21:43.414)
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  Yes, yes.
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  speaker-1 (21:45.014)
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  We were talking about the harp. So the harp is you've got this beautiful sine wave, right? So in a small space as and it's also a polyphonic instrument. So like the cello, the violin is lute, just plays a melody. Polyphonic instrument would be like guitar, a piano, which is really hard, you know, to get an actual piano and it'd be
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  speaker-0 (21:50.254)
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  Mm-hmm.
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  speaker-0 (22:06.392)
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  Yes, that's a toughie. Yeah.
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  speaker-1 (22:08.888)
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  Do an electronic keyboard, but then again the sine wave isn't right clear. So you have all this wood that goes from the ground up. You are plucking the strings and letting them ring. So you create the overtone series. Do you know about the overtone series? So you
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  speaker-0 (22:17.772)
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  Right.
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  speaker-0 (22:28.886)
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  No, it's not like but I'm I'm thinking that you get a full tone as opposed to playing
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  speaker-1 (22:34.158)
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  Only d not only do you get that full sound, you then get the octave above and then the fifth above that and the fourth above that. So it's filling this room so you can make a cathedral like sound the whole wide sound board in a really small space. So very gentle.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (22:49.678)
• 0:10
  Right. Accessible.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (22:53.91)
• 0:10
  Yeah. So I've had family members who are deaf and people will be like, I put her hearing aids in. I'm like, No, no, no, take them out, right? It's just gonna feel And people who are deaf will like, my gosh, I can feel because you know, people feel sound. They can tell is coming because of the ground moving.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (23:00.726)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (23:04.762)
• 0:10
  Well, I'm
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (23:12.012)
• 0:10
  Yeah. They're just more excited about that. So we have skin.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (23:15.456)
• 0:10
  you know, receptors all over our body that help us and yeah. So it's so now I'm convinced about the harp. For a while there I was like, I'm learning harp.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (23:17.612)
• 0:10
  Yeah, it can sound
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (23:25.202)
• 0:10
  Yeah, no, it's crazy beautiful. I love this. And so now, the work that you're doing now, so you've also now we did mention you've also been a vocalist, you've been a cantor in Catholic tradition, is that correct?
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (23:39.438)
• 0:10
  So again, I've always been this kind of I don't know, when I was in junior high at the So I'm one of ten children, right? My parents, very religious, went to mouse every of us with them. So we would always arrive ten minutes late and we're like slamming the pews down in the back of the church and God, my poor parents. The poor community that I grew up in. feel really bad for them. So very religious family. And of course I rebelled, I'm child number seven. You have to kind of stand up.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (23:49.87)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (24:08.429)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (24:09.344)
• 0:10
  So when I was in, I don't know, seventh or eighth grade at this Catholic school, so many kids got into Michael Jackson. You know, like your audience will know. Michael Jackson We were
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (24:18.238)
• 0:10
  Yeah. All into Michael Jackson.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (24:23.432)
• 0:10
  Not me girl. Not me. I was into Prince. Corvette.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (24:26.55)
• 0:10
  Little Ray I was interested I do love him. Yeah. I do love him.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (24:33.558)
• 0:10
  Right. And then so my oldest my not my oldest sister, but my the third child was off at college when I was this age. And so she was a DJ at her school. So she would send tapes back to me that had New Order. This is like nineteen eighty five, right? I or new order and all this great new wave from England.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (24:49.656)
• 0:10
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (24:54.52)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (24:57.754)
• 0:10
  So fun. So that became my trajectory. And there was a music director. Music directors were kind of new things. He was the first music director that I think we had ever had at the church I grew up in. And he trained me this little weird kid with the short, I was already
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (25:16.302)
• 0:10
  Kind of going through Number seven.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (25:18.456)
• 0:10
  Seven. Very odd kid, he trained me to be a cantor. So the cantor was like the song leader, but you do everything. So you introduce the hymns, you get everyone singing, but then you sing all these mass parts. And most you do some Gregorian chant, but it depends on the church. Some people like the churches that I sing at now, a lot of them do a variety. Like some things in the service will be chant, but then they'll also do Christian rock. But then they'll also do the old, you know, songs from the eighties, like on Eagle's Wing.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (25:48.078)
• 0:10
  You know, but
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (25:49.73)
• 0:10
  music and then they'll do, you know, so it's they'll do hymns and access Yeah. So those are my favorite because that's really exciting music to me when it there's a whole existence, even with my bleach blonde hair, like in college in art school, right? I would go to this church. I have to climb three sets of stairs in Chicago and sing. You know, like we would do improvisation, the I loved that
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (25:53.826)
• 0:10
  Turn.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (25:59.532)
• 0:10
  yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (26:19.232)
• 0:10
  Jeffrey Watson, may he rest in peace. He was such a great music director. And we would be up there and he'd be playing things on Oregon and we would be improvising on Gregorian Channel. Wow. Amazing. It was so fun. Just kept that up. Like wherever I moved, I moved out west. I lived in Portland, Oregon. I just kept cantering. I in Missoula, Montana when I was there for school. I just kept cantering. It was a great way to make money and kind of keep spiritually fit. And felt like I was on this journey.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (26:28.362)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (26:46.818)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (26:47.741)
• 0:10
  I I sang at their cathedral.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (26:49.752)
• 0:10
  I saw that at Saint Francis, you have to know I have a very special connection with Santa Fe and I'm like if she ever comes back to Santa Fe she has to tell me I'm gonna go meet her there.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (27:00.226)
• 0:10
  I love I think it's the same woman 'cause she's about our age. You might want to interview her. Carmen. She just started when we started. And so we had so much fun with her. She had just had a so that was so I did that and then when I moved back, I grew up in the Chicago area. And when I moved back here, I just started singing back at the church I grew up with as like a way to give back to them. And then I just kept other churches kept so now it's
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (27:24.046)
• 0:10
  That's amazing.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (27:30.026)
• 0:10
  I sing at five different churches pretty much every weekend. And only with Catholics, right? Everyone else, all the s have like their ten o'clock mass or their you know, whatever. Their ten o'clock church service. I and I did a seven thirty, a nine thirty, an eleven, and a four PM. Yeah. So it's yeah. So it
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (27:41.677)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (27:49.048)
• 0:10
  That's amazing. That's amazing. Part of what's cool about this is that and this is where, okay, maybe a lot of the women listening are maybe not gonna have phenatology experience. Now you probably will have a hospice experience, so we will get back to that. But what I like about what you're telling me is that as a woman at over 50, you have found a way to use an extraordinarily
• 0:10
  Interesting gift, not super common, and you have figured out how to plug it in to your real life in a way that seems really fulfilling and meaningful to you.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (28:32.246)
• 0:10
  Well that I think that's the spiritual journey, if you will, right? So I did feel I stopped drinking because things were really headed in not a great direction for me. Yeah. When I was when I started grad school. And as part of that, I was learning how to discover something that would be meaningful to me, which wasn't necessarily what I grew up with. I and this is no fault of the Catholic Church, right? It's
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (28:38.102)
• 0:10
  Please.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (29:01.624)
• 0:10
  How I interpreted, I God was very real. Like if I found a penny, I was supposed to find the owner. I was very literal. And so I would pray for things and then they wouldn't happen. And of course, I appropriately was like, Well, God doesn't exist then, right? So that was a big thing for me for a long time. But when I was really surrendering into not drinking, I really was encouraged.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (29:27.182)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (29:27.96)
• 0:10
  To create something, to find something, to maybe borrow something from someone else that would help me connect, you know, to something greater than me. And so in experimenting with that, I was trying to learn to be open minded. And so I did talk to my parents, my dad in particular, about because he meditated twice a day, you know, as a very conservative Catholic. And I was like, tell me let's meditate.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (29:35.95)
• 0:10
  To a higher power.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (29:56.44)
• 0:10
  Tell me what it does for you. Tell me. And he loved that. Like we really bonded at that time because he loved sharing that part of his life. And from thinking about God in this very black and white to really understanding, because my dad taught physics. So he would say, he's like, you know, to him, you could use the scientific method, right? Like you don't have to just, it's not faith and science would go together because what you can do with
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (30:11.303)
• 0:10
  Wow.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (30:26.082)
• 0:10
  Faith, whatever that is for you. Right. Some people believe like faith is, well, I believe in all the tenets of this particular church, right? Like there's people who are more committed to the laws and the rules and then structure. Like if I do this and this and this, that means I'm a good person. Right. This thinking was never gonna work for me. It like it just I just I'm a middle I gotta do the middle path, right? The Buddhist middle path, if I'm on either side, I really struggle with what.
• 0:10
  They now call moral OCD, right? That scrupulosity where just right. And so moral scrupulosity. Now we're going on a tangent. But moral scrupulosity is so fascinating because it can encompass things you don't think it can encompass. So with me, the Me Too movement, right? Everyone was like, so we got into all these people being canceled. Part of that is this, like I I saw it in my poor daughters. Like, I can't like this.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (31:14.36)
• 0:10
  Yeah. So
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (31:22.99)
• 0:10
  Comic anymore or this musician anymore because of these things that they did, right? And and really beating themselves up if they still liked it, or like we would have to have all these conversations. We're almost down my one daughter and I joke about, I don't know, Ferdinand or something. We've started calling this part of her that's like, no, things have to be like this. And we're like, okay, Ferdinand, you know, Ferdinand's hungry, right? We get hangry. Ferdinand, yeah, we need to take
• 0:10
  Ferdinand to get Ferdinand some food and and some gentleness, like
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (31:54.37)
• 0:10
  Yeah. And purity tests are probably not gonna provide long term spiritual sustenance.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (32:03.832)
• 0:10
  They they create shame and shame to me is the death of the spiritual connection. To watch her be like, you know, be like, no, no, just be gentle, just hold Ferdinand and be like, okay, sweetheart. Like Ferdinand's a dog. Like Ferdinand's like this big dog, right? That goes, and starts eating shoes. And you're like, okay, Ferdinand is hitting shoes. We need to feed Ferdinand. We need to like comfort Ferdinand and be like, it's okay. It's okay. Right. And it's okay for you to.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (32:05.858)
• 0:10
  Create shame.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (32:10.648)
• 0:10
  Amen.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (32:32.16)
• 0:10
  Like this artist and appreciate what they gave to you at the time. Yes. It is okay, that everything's okay. That there's not you know, and then yes, yes, but that's in direct contact. My dad would say, you know, religion is this is where we disagreed, is like there's not relative theology. There's only this is this or that, right? But again, I can get into a shame spiral so quickly that I was like, I can't do that. And plus working with the dying, you're gonna see people of all stripes. And you we used to joke that.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (32:40.152)
• 0:10
  complex
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (33:01.366)
• 0:10
  You can't cure the SOB with SOB, right? You can't cure the son of a bitch who has shortness of breath. You our job is there to change his life. We are there to care for him in that moment at the end of life. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (33:09.422)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (33:15.976)
• 0:10
  In that sacred moment.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (33:18.126)
• 0:10
  So if I walk around going, well, you're a sinner and you didn't do this right and you didn't do that right. So even my daughter, who's, you know, I think she's moved from being an atheist to now a devout agnostic, which is totally appropriate. I've been there, right? So she struggled with this concept of, is it okay to not know? Right. And there's books written about that. Like, is it Tara Brock that has right? Like uncertainty is just a part of life. And can we
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (33:30.744)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (33:41.428)
• 0:10
  She's wonderful. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (33:47.096)
• 0:10
  Tolerate that discomfort of not knowing. Yeah. You know. So yeah. So if you have this really strict view on what God is, for me, so so even a vegan, a vegan who is trying to save the world can be so rigid that it's almost an OCD kind of thing, as opposed to I I heard the best thing there was a woman, I can't remember her name. Somebody on your podcast might know that quote and we'll put it in the chat. But it's something to the effect of I don't turn away any meal made with love.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (33:51.768)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (34:16.591)
• 0:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (34:17.614)
• 0:10
  food when I choose my own food I'm vegan, but if you made me something with love, I am not that
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (34:19.81)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (34:23.906)
• 0:10
  Yeah. That is truly understanding the larger view when you're able to take blessing, see the holiness in any situation. And certainly by the time we are bedside with somebody, the judgments need to turn off quick because it's not appropriate at bedside.
• 0:10
  at the end of somebody's life to be coming in hot with judgment.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (34:55.7)
• 0:10
  That's and and the same thing for a church, right? You guys I don't Protestants don't need me to become a Jewish cantor, right? Well, I'd have to be Jewish, but I think I'd have to be Jewish. I'm not sure. But you're clergy. You're clergy, you go through like ten years of school, right? It's a very different thing. Whereas the Catholics keep are like, We need you. We need someone who sings really well. We need somebody who can
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (34:59.639)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (35:11.65)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (35:19.374)
• 0:10
  We need an army of singers.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (35:21.95)
• 0:10
  Yeah, people don't sing from the pews because everything was in Latin until the fifties, you know. So so to be able to really help people pray, and I pews, I don't there are, you know, there's social justice Catholics, there's very conservative Catholics. I don't know. I'm just you're there, I'm there to help you pray. We have that in there, right? Even you know, even if someone gives a homily I disagree with, that's always gonna happen. So I just
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (35:30.382)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (35:35.918)
• 0:10
  A lot of
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (35:52.216)
• 0:10
  I just bring the blessing that's from me for this. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (35:55.992)
• 0:10
  Yeah. Well, and they bless me right back because they're singing with me and they help me out. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why it just kept I would throw it away, like I'm not gonna sing it at church, and then I and then it would happen. And so th that's what I feel like following the breadcrumbs of my life. I kept throwing the Catholic Church away and it kept coming back. Music phenotology, it's hard work. You know, you're balancing these different things, the medical, the musical, because you're not playing songs.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (35:59.15)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (36:13.558)
• 0:10
  And I kept coming back.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (36:24.577)
• 0:10
  You're
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (36:25.676)
• 0:10
  Working with elements of music at the bedside to help that person, but you can't be practicing and you can't just be willy-nilly improvising. It really in res
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (36:35.712)
• 0:10
  It's not a performance. It's a prescription. Exactly. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (36:39.018)
• 0:10
  Yes. We we will analyze things about like what are the prescriptive elements of this mode? What's the prescriptive element of a rising an ascending melodic line?
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (36:50.222)
• 0:10
  What are you doing?
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (36:55.406)
• 0:10
  Description of an accidental, you know, like all these different ways to think about the body. And so so it has been hard. And I also married a music thanatologist. So it's just like death all the time. So we joke that our kids, when they were babies, they were Thanatala tots. Yeah. Now they're like Thanatala tweens. Thanatala tweens. Yeah. And when somebody does something, we like if you kind of goof something up, like, darn it, I goof that up. And someone will always whisper, they'll be like,
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (37:00.439)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (37:11.18)
• 0:10
  That's so good.
• 0:10
  Tell teams.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (37:23.928)
• 0:10
  You're a bad music phenatologist, like Yeah, so my kids talk about death like it's nothing.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (37:31.65)
• 0:10
  Dad Whatever it is. Although although I'm just thinking to myself, this is literally the most Scorpio household that I may have heard of. Because
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (37:44.514)
• 0:10
  What what what are
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (37:47.16)
• 0:10
  Scorpio starts, I want to say October 22nd until November 20th, 21st.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (37:54.35)
• 0:10
  So my husband was born on the twenty second. So he says, Isn't that Scorpio Sag, right, Sagittarius? He says
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (38:00.766)
• 0:10
  Well November twenty second, is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what he is, yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (38:06.048)
• 0:10
  So he will say that he like has I think he was more Scorpio and now is more set. I'm an Eric. So
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (38:11.182)
• 0:10
  Over time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. that's funny. that's super funny. Yeah. I'm Libra, but I have Scorpio rising, which is I think why I work in hospice and end of life. But then I have a Sagittarius moon and we love to learn. We also love a good party, but we're lifetime learners. Right. And so I use that in part of what we're doing here.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (38:32.974)
• 0:10
  Hundred percent.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (38:36.928)
• 0:10
  You know, the whole thing. Well, so what's that you married a thanatologist? Like, I wanna say what are the odds, but I'm kind of afraid of what the odds are on this question. But how do you find work to ply your trade to do what means most to you? How does that work for you? How do you find patience, I think I'm saying?
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (38:54.284)
• 0:10
  My husband
• 0:10
  a patience. Okay. So I think I was telling you about this book that has just come out about making meaning. It's the two guys that do design your life from Stanford. They have one now about meaning making in life, where you you're applying a design mentality. And I mean if you're reading that book, I really I really like their work.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (39:18.286)
• 0:10
  I real me too. I wanna read that book as well.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (39:20.588)
• 0:10
  Yeah. So okay, my dad, the physicist, you don't have to believe in God, right? But why not just try praying and see what happens? And I guess who would say that? He'd be like, you know, I don't believe in God, but when I pray, something changes in between my ears. And that is that cult, I feel like the spiritual practice, which I need. I know some people don't necessarily need that, but I think we all do, whether it's music or art or
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (39:29.518)
• 0:10
  I love that.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (39:48.96)
• 0:10
  Nature or whatever. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (39:50.926)
• 0:10
  Cultivating awe and wonder in your life and understand my place as one of eight billion people in the world that I'm important, but I'm not important. Right. It is a perfectness that I need to do. And it can be really hard when you've been led, right? I was really I f really felt like I was led to music synatology from you know, doing this work in graduate school, then seeing something on Dateline and I never watched Dateline. Dateline was even back in nineteen ninety-eight, was
• 0:10
  sensationalist and and they were doing this piece on music sanitology right before Christmas and I was like I was like I memorized the the URL back when URLs were new and and it was from that that we was dying that we got Jenny we got someone to come and play for Jenny, right? It was and then it and then all the things that happened because it was like there wasn't another class starting for like another year or something to get me
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (40:27.736)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  yes, yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (40:39.918)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (40:49.43)
• 0:10
  To Missoula, Montana, which was a cr I had never thought about living there. And so to get there, and then I had to learn Harp, and I like, what? So the whole time it's been difficult, satisfying. And then my husband and I worked together for 17 years. We had the same jobs for the same hospice for 17 years. And now looking back, I don't know why I didn't murder you. Like what? How were we able to do that?
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (41:00.802)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (41:13.166)
• 0:10
  Needs it.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (41:18.199)
• 0:10
  I love that.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (41:19.518)
• 0:10
  I know. We did. I mean, there's great things about having someone that you can talk to about this stuff, but he this is a perfect example. If we were seeing someone together, so can you imagine someone having two harps, we would decide who was gonna lead don't know what they're gonna do. So we used to know how to follow them. So he would lead and would start doing things that I'd be like, There's no way. Like this in my head I'm like, this will never work. And I almost want to fight with him like over the poor person. Like, what are you?
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (41:24.246)
• 0:10
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (41:33.262)
• 0:10
  individual.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (41:49.078)
• 0:10
  And yet what he did and how he did it pretty consistently, I I can't think off the top of my head of a vigil where I like, Yeah, dude, you're doing this wrong, right?
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (41:58.998)
• 0:10
  You totally screwed the vigil. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (42:02.07)
• 0:10
  Like what am I thinking? Like how powerful do I think he is? So to watch that over and over and go, Yeah, I do not know. There's not one right way. And the world is big enough for all of us our way into whatever it is. So I thought unique experience, but I've seen other people, doctors, nurses, social workers, anyone who's been working just in healthcare in general, but also hospice in particular, you do,
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (42:07.15)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (42:12.323)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (42:15.992)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  And love that.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (42:31.798)
• 0:10
  emergency rooms in particular, people can get burned out. And so practice to me is one of care. Of and and I struggle with this. I will be prone to workaholism as most women who are mothers and working mothers will
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (42:35.362)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (42:50.498)
• 0:10
  Mm-hmm. And who are passionate about what they do.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (42:54.316)
• 0:10
  Right. But you need to be passionate about like I could not live without my CPA. Right? Would I do numbers? No. But I'm so love the woman who's like
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (43:00.675)
• 0:10
  No
• 0:10
  Yeah, yeah, God bless her. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (43:06.336)
• 0:10
  Or or Manny, your editor, right? I'm right. Like he must really like what he does, right? There's some satisfaction in that, right? So when we have when we follow the breadcrumbs, many people throughout different things over the years have talked about this, but this guy, Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, right? A million hundred years ago, his thing, he does all this work on discernment.
• 0:10
  How do you just spirits from, you know, making a simple pros and cons list to you discern something because you've been, you know, it's overwhelming. There's no way you can say no to it. Like sort of like me on Dateline, I was like, it felt like that's opened up and said, do this, you know, yeah. But then there's the things where you're just like, okay, I'm really burned out. But it's like with your kids, right? Do you doubt this is really hard, but you can't give them back.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (43:57.634)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  And yeah, even like if you did just for a minute want to give back, you're not allowed to do
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (44:07.246)
• 0:10
  But you can do certain things. So what in our house is if you are not fit for human consumption, because you throw a tantrum, because believe it or not, people in their 40s can throw tantrums. Yes. So you had to take a timeout and everyone could decide who needed a timeout. And your timeout would be based on your age. So if you were five and you lost your marbles, you'd be like, and it wasn't a punishment. It was like, hey, you need some.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (44:20.47)
• 0:10
  I've heard that.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (44:36.574)
• 0:10
  Just space man.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (44:38.048)
• 0:10
  Yeah, go to your room. We didn't care if they read books. It wasn't punishment. It was just breathe and calm yourself down, then come back. Cause what you have to say is important. Hear you through the yelling. So the same thing with one of us. If I was like, I'm gonna lose it, I'd be like, All right, like mommy, time out, you know, and I'd go to the 45 minute timeout or whatever. I had kids late. Yeah. So you know what I mean, whatever it was. And so little breaks and doing those consistently, there's something.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (44:46.914)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (45:01.58)
• 0:10
  Those l little
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (45:07.782)
• 0:10
  About having an entire day where nothing is planned. And I know that sounds crazy, especially when kids are young. My youngest is now graduating from high school. I'm a little bit afraid of having those days where I'm like, myself. But when you're doing soccer and this and all the busyness, we forget that there's this beautiful peace that's available to any time. So to prayer, if whatever that is, it's also meditation. Like I started doing
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (45:20.398)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (45:36.694)
• 0:10
  Really consistently when my dad was sick ten years ago, a sister of mine recommended the app Headspace. And I love that thing. I've also done the DM meditation. I've been trained to do that and and I use them at different times for different reasons. But anything where I can help myself get quiet and come back to my body, you know, and gentle. Yeah, a a good friend of mine who teaches meditation now, she just did this course with Tara Brock, and she'll say
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (45:56.344)
• 0:10
  Super important.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (46:04.332)
• 0:10
  You say, sweet.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (46:06.232)
• 0:10
  Like instead of shaming myself, like why am I thinking this way? If everyone just behaved, I would be happy. If we just had different people in office, we would be happy. And it's like it life is never like that. It's never like it's it's okay, sweetheart.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (46:16.821)
• 0:10
  It's never
• 0:10
  It's gonna be okay. Yeah. Yeah. Literally the best thing that I've learned to say to myself in the last year is, we're gonna be okay. We got this. Let's think about what we could do. Maybe how does this look different if we thought about it different, you know, made space different. It's so beautiful how we can begin to manage each other. I don't know if that's possible in
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (46:21.538)
• 0:10
  You're scared right now. What can we do?
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (46:47.36)
• 0:10
  earlier iterations of us because I personally don't understand the impact of hormonal influence. But I know this the most of the women that I speak with over 50 have moved into a place of reduced hormones. And somehow that has given them better understanding of and control over the moment.
• 0:10
  Right. Where they can begin to think about calming themselves and they can stop worrying quite as much about whatever the perceived, you know, what somebody else was gonna think about what's about to happen or a choice you're about to make or what you have done, whatever. But there's just more space. And in your case, part of what I love, which is something that really connects with what a lot of women are listening to, is you're looking at the empty nest.
• 0:10
  In addition to the other things that, you know, what will your life look like now? And there's the empty nest is a holy space. I would say it's a liminal space. It's a a doorway between often between spaces. And it's a beautiful gift of time. And we don't always say that to women so that they know, okay. You know, you earlier referenced that really great poem about
• 0:10
  You don't need the answer now. Do remember the one you're talking about? It was a poem that you said about you don't need it was something about you don't need Yes, my gosh.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (48:25.486)
• 0:10
  I said to my soul
• 0:10
  Who is I wanna look this up because it's a famous poem.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (48:34.082)
• 0:10
  Yeah, but it's perfect for liminal spaces in your life, such as T. S. Elliot. Go ahead and share. Still hope. For hope would be
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (48:39.178)
• 0:10
  Yes, Elliot. So I said to my soul, Be silent and wait without hope.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (48:50.188)
• 0:10
  Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. There is fate.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (48:56.482)
• 0:10
  Yet faith. The faith and are all in the waiting.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (48:59.948)
• 0:10
  The love and the hope are that's where the wisdom is coming in. You're about to find out something beyond what you know or can imagine. And there is such beauty in that. And I think that's the truth of the empty nest is that there is more coming in than what you imagine. It's okay to just wait and let life, the universe, God, however you.
• 0:10
  Like to think about that, show you the next iteration. I yeah, how beautiful.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (49:34.126)
• 0:10
  Well, it's I think what's hard about it, right, is this and this goes back to I found it, it's how to live a meaningful life. And it's by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. And they're the guys that did life. Yeah, they're the design guys. And they're in the brief little interview that I heard with them, they were talking about subtraction that we think so often that we have to add.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (49:49.186)
• 0:10
  Design guys
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (50:03.658)
• 0:10
  Right. In order to have the space to make meaning, do you remember Okay, again, Gen X Women, I bet everyone's gonna remember that. The creativity book that was such a big deal. The name of it, the artist way.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (50:04.694)
• 0:10
  Mm.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (50:17.528)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (50:21.016)
• 0:10
  Guarded Julia Cameron. Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (50:23.618)
• 0:10
  This way. And she did a lot of that. Like the way to get in touch your creative self was to do the you know, the brain dumping out and and so the journal and then the the taking yourself on an artist date where you go yours down to the museum or wherever wherever you're going. And I do find I mean, even so the black and white thinking, right, can say I'm just so overwhelmed, I'm so overwhelmed, nothing's gonna fix this.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (50:28.386)
• 0:10
  With
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (50:32.662)
• 0:10
  Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (50:53.174)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (50:53.684)
• 0:10
  something small, like you when you were saying about being so tender with yourself, like well, let's think about this a different way. I would say, take that even further or maybe even further back and to say, we're gonna put this down. You know, it's like putting the joku puzzle down. And then you come back, you're like, I see it now, right? So putting down I'm not getting anywhere. I'm hitting my head against the wall. Mm-hmm. Put this problem down or this overwhelm down. And I'm just gonna go have dinner. I'll get in the tub.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (51:20.952)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (51:22.85)
• 0:10
  I'm just gonna cuddle my senior who's not gonna be here. Let's be cuddle her. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna call my other daughters at college. I'm gonna talk to my husband. I'm gonna go for that walk. Or, you know, but going for that walk, I feel like, ugh, or going to that exercise class or whatever it is. I down. It's like I can't put it down. The world will fall apart. But the more I get away from the world, even for a brief moment, yeah, and I'm reminded, like,
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (51:26.433)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (51:39.694)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (51:51.854)
• 0:10
  I don't have to fight. It's that Taoist idea of like, okay, you're fighting against the current of the river. You need to flow.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (51:58.734)
• 0:10
  Let it flow. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (52:01.112)
• 0:10
  How can I flow? And it's sometimes it's as simple as I need to eat and I will have a newer perspective as soon as I put something in my mouth.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (52:08.62)
• 0:10
  That is crazy how fast that can work. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I I have a friend who says spirit meets us at the point of action. And often we think action means I have to know the next right thing to do. Nope, actually you don't. You just need to do one small thing that needs to be done in front of you. And maybe that's make lunch. Maybe that's take a hot bath, take a walk in nature, meditate for five minutes, whatever. But
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (52:11.798)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (52:37.344)
• 0:10
  Yes, step aside and allow. And that's part of the power and the beauty of this midlife experience is that we can get creative about figuring out how the next thing comes in or the next moment of clarity comes to us. We don't have to have the vision all the way to the end, but maybe just the next moment of clarity and the beauty of that. And I'm thinking about the power of how people can call you.
• 0:10
  And you can come bedside at a moment that's also a liminal space. It's a threshold moment. It is. And there are people who are listening to this and they're like, Okay, but you didn't talk about what should I expect or why is this you know what I'm saying? Tell me about that. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (53:27.392)
• 0:10
  So it works a number of different ways, but in general, how my husband has practiced and how I practiced with him and hospital and it worked in different places. I'm part of the interdisciplinary team and I'll get called. You have to kind of train them. I wanna be called when so there's a another scale called the palliative performance scale. That assesses, you know, like you and I would be considered at a hundred percent. We can do
• 0:10
  feed ourselves, we can clothe ourselves, we can but as people become more as people decline or gets less, they become thirty percent, twenty percent, it means you've probably got days to weeks, and ten percent means you're actively dying, right? You die at hours, hours to days. So that is the time in my practice that I love to come. Absolutely love to come. So
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (54:00.397)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (54:21.048)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (54:24.008)
• 0:10
  What we would say, what he and I both say is anyone can make a referral. Like even a family member can make a referral. And then I we have to get the information about that patient from that particular team that has that patient. So there's specific questions like, what is your loved one's name? You know, because there's some people girls and the family's not interested. They're like, Yeah, yeah, well-meaning person. No, right? Because it is weird and we're okay with that. Like I, it does not offend me.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (54:42.793)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (54:53.079)
• 0:10
  Right.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (54:53.388)
• 0:10
  I do not want the harp. I get that it's weird. You have such little choice at the end of your life.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (54:58.806)
• 0:10
  Yeah. If that's your choice go for it. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (55:01.736)
• 0:10
  One hundred. So I do not get offended. So I you know, I need to know the diagnosis. I need to know the reason for referral. Is it just that because I write down my reasons for referrals as part of the palliative care domains? Domains of care. So am I addressing a physical issue, a social, spiritual issue? Or most of the time because well, it's end of life. So another domain peaceful death with dignity. Right.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (55:15.15)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (55:19.702)
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (55:23.288)
• 0:10
  The calm.
• 0:10
  Yes, yes.
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (55:30.414)
• 0:10
  So that is the most often the reason. So even if they're asymptomatic, it's a reason to go. And so fight, I tell them they can have anyone they want there. The whole family can gather. I've seen patients alone. I've seen I've been in trailer homes with the entire home and I like getting the little harp in there. I need to be able to also well so when I arrive, right?
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (55:47.018)
• 0:10
  Everybody.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (55:54.26)
• 0:10
  I introduce myself to whomever. I let them know this is not a concert. If it was a concert, it would be a terrible concert. what I do and I'm not playing familiar music. I'm not right quests. I'm not playing Amazing Grace. You know, because there's some thinking I'm not
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (56:09.73)
• 0:10
  Doing requests.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (56:12.438)
• 0:10
  Well, I mean, so some music phenatologists can, right? Yeah, because I work with music all the time. I can figure out the chords to you know most things way. Do an amazing survey to heaven, you know, like like on the harp, it's awesome because I can also rock I have to change it to a girl key, but I can rock that thing. But I'm not the point is is that I'm not there with sheet music. Like I'm there focusing on the patient and get them out of their heads and back into their bodies.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (56:20.184)
• 0:10
  Right. Yeah, stairway to heaven. You could nail it.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (56:28.246)
• 0:10
  Expectant.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (56:41.814)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (56:42.414)
• 0:10
  I'm trying to affect them physically and emotionally in a way that's new and they
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (56:49.774)
• 0:10
  Yeah. No? they're just gonna follow the old pattern, yeah. Show interest.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (56:56.366)
• 0:10
  Potentially, right? And I'm not saying familiar music is bad at all. Right. There's there's people who do music by the bedside that that is one hundred percent their thing and it definitely has its place. It's just not the way that I was trained to do the so I let them know it's not a concert. I make sure the room is set up so that everyone is around the patient and facing the patient. So they're not right, they're facing the patient. Yes.
• 0:10
  You know, I'm not gonna stop to hand somebody Kleenex, so Kleenex is just
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (57:29.678)
• 0:10
  And I have the tissue ministry, so I'm super excited. I always notice when people need tissue. So God bless you that you've thought about that up front because it's gonna be needed.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (57:40.972)
• 0:10
  Well, and when you put it there in advance, they know it's okay. And you're not sometimes when you hand somebody tissue, they can some potentially feel like, I'm not supposed to cry. I need to wipe away. Yes. And if there's gonna be a big snot fest I have been with people
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (57:57.44)
• 0:10
  You just need tissue. Yep. You need to
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (58:00.344)
• 0:10
  Get it out. So then and then I let know. So then I greet their loved one. I let them know I'm gonna do this. And then I call the person by name, whether or not respond to me. And I think the fact of whether or not they respond outwardly, which so so even small things, like if they raise their eyebrows when I greet them, you know, I mark that in my charting. Right? They if they'll just say you know.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (58:10.68)
• 0:10
  Can hear you. Go ahead.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (58:15.5)
• 0:10
  Yes. Yes. Right. Yep.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (58:23.95)
• 0:10
  huge. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So at that point. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (58:29.088)
• 0:10
  So just like I'm I know I'm Margaret and believe it or not, I've brought a harp to play for you. Yes, I know that's weird. I'll say you know, I'll say something like because that also puts the family at ease that we're not taking this too seriously. It's serious and it's important, but I think levity
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (58:37.462)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (58:46.07)
• 0:10
  It's not pretentious, but we've moved in to serve. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (58:50.22)
• 0:10
  Well, and that's and that is the right. You were talking about the liminality. Well, to get to liminality, you have to have the right of separation, right? With ritual, you have the right of separate you have or everyday time, right? So the right of separation. And you have the liminal time, but then you have to reincorporate, right? It can be really harsh if you don't reincorporate. So the right of separation is getting everyone, everyone seated. And now I say I do my little introduction.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (59:01.688)
• 0:10
  Yes.
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (59:18.434)
• 0:10
  And then I check their pulse rate, just the radial pulse with my fingertips of information. And then their breathing, I'll check their temperature just with their forehead just with my hand. And then I said, I usually make a joke, something along the lines of when you hear the harp music, that's me. You know. And so then I go, sometimes I sing I start to sing right by their bedside, depending on what's to the harp, and then yeah, I begin to play. And so it's a nonverbal
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (59:22.552)
• 0:10
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (59:40.174)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (59:48.14)
• 0:10
  Medium twenty minutes, forty five minutes. The longest ones can be like an hour and a half. That's usually if somebody s really starts to shift and starts to die.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (59:49.399)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (59:58.506)
• 0:10
  Right. You're just gonna write out.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (01:00:00.856)
• 0:10
  Yeah, people that are being extibated or coming off of pressers I want to stay with them until they either stabilize or die. So those are all and so then when I'm done, right, I like I make it more obvious that we're coming back from this very little music coming back. I might have text with the music at the end. Cause a lot of times I'm just matching my voice with the harp. So there's some harmony, but I'm not necessarily so we'll come back with text and then it's just quiet. And then
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:00:04.428)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:00:25.102)
• 0:10
  Yeah. Right.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (01:00:30.978)
• 0:10
  I'll just start to talk to people. Like, do you, you know, thanks for letting me be here? Do you guys feel confident that you know what to expect as your loved one dies? Most of the time they're like, no. I'm like, okay. So based on their this is where the phenotological stuff comes in, based on their prognosis. I not their prognosis, you know, they're dying. Based on what their diagnosis is and the symptoms, here are a number of ways that their death might look like, right? And describing these are my
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:00:57.934)
• 0:10
  Beautiful. And so
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (01:01:00.546)
• 0:10
  Favorite testimonials, like more than you have such a beautiful voice, you know. Favorite testimonials are really when people are like, my gosh, you explained it so well that we knew when the dying was starting to happen and we were able to get everyone who needed to be out of the room, out of the room, and everyone who in the room, in the room, yeah, able to be there. And that
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:01:04.61)
• 0:10
  Yeah yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:01:21.518)
• 0:10
  Yes. Yeah. What a holy, holy, frickin' holy moment. I mean, absolutely human and absolutely holy at once. Rather like a birth if you've ever been present for when a baby enters, when a soul exits, it's similar. I am so struck by the love and the intention and the concern that you are bringing.
• 0:10
  to families in this moment. And I think that there may be people who've listened to this and just did not realize how beautiful or how important it is. So if they want to find you, they can find you at margaretpasque.com. I will have that information in the show notes. Please go look at it. You'll easily be able to find it. Is there any other place that you would like them to look for you or that they can find you that you want to share?
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (01:02:13.612)
• 0:10
  Yeah. If they want more information about music sanitology, they can go to the MTAI dot org, which is the Music Sanatology Association International. They can also go to Accorda Music Sanatology Institute if they're interested in finding about out about the training. And then my husband has a TikTok, has a TikTok, yeah, because it just to help reach other people who might be.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:02:42.967)
• 0:10
  No, give me the link and I will put it on you I'll put it on this page. I'm happy
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (01:02:47.606)
• 0:10
  It's like it's like it's a weird handle. It's like at foot leg or something like whatever the handles are. I'm really bad with social media. I j you know, I just have been so blessed to not have to Most people can just contact me through my my website. But he but if they want to see because he actually does a lot of talking about things, if they want to see those shorter videos.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:02:56.93)
• 0:10
  Yeah.
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:03:09.186)
• 0:10
  We'll get the link from you and we will make sure that people have it if they want it. This is so beautiful. And what an original, interesting. I think that you should be so inspiring to women who are thinking, I really want to do something. I have an unusual skill set. You have a unique skill set and you have gotten
• 0:10
  To be able to be quiet and listen to your own heart and follow where it leads. And there are women listening to this right now that I want to encourage that this is your sign. That there are original, beautiful, and extraordinary ways that you can show up in life and serve over 50. And you may have thought that you were over 50, but you are so not. Look at Miss Margaret, go. I
• 0:10
  listen to you and I'm so moved. I know I add a lot of color into it because I do sit vigil with people and I do do this kind of work, but I think all of us can hear the beauty and the deep, caring, compassionate intention that you bring to it. And I just want you to know Margaret Pasquase Pasquasey. Pasquazy baby. Margaret Pasquazy baby. I
• 0:10
  Am rooting for you. I am so happy to know that you are out there in the Chicago area still. Is this correct? Yes. Blessing people that need you. What an extraordinary thing to know that women don't have expiration dates. Over 50, you can still be doing powerful, beautiful work. And I know from listening to you that this work is only going to increase and get
• 0:10
  differently beautiful for you in your empty nest chapter and I want to speak blessing over you at this point for that. It's a beautiful chapter and there's a lot of cool stuff that's ahead and I'm excited for you. And thank you so much that you joined us today. You have a lovely heart and I I'm so very to know you.
• 0:10
  speaker-1 (01:05:16.376)
• 0:10
  Grateful that I got to so grateful too. And I just want to tell all the women too, just really like that it doesn't have to look like this, right? It can look like your own heart knows. Your heart just needs to be attended to, right? Yeah. Attend to our hearts. And it could be, you know, I yes, I do all these church kigs, but like there's a local meditation group that I go to with these really powerful women. And and you know, finding your group of women that
• 0:10
  speaker-0 (01:05:29.153)
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  speaker-0 (01:05:44.15)
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  speaker-1 (01:05:45.39)
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  To support you, you know and and it'll evolve. And again, it's not it doesn't have to be big. Our power, as you know, as a doula, is in our presence and how we and so sometimes that just means I need a little granola bar, right? Little attending, you know, attending. Yeah.
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  speaker-0 (01:05:46.978)
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  Yes.
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  speaker-0 (01:05:56.942)
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  It's in your presence, yes.
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  speaker-0 (01:06:01.974)
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  Yeah, simple. Whatever it is
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  Yes. Yes. To care for yourself with as much love as you are for other people and in other outreaches that you may think are big or important or whatever. But you matter as much as anybody else. And when you take care of you in the truest way, you really are able to minister, to reach out, to compassionately respond to people in a way that will deeply fulfill you. I think. I think
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  speaker-1 (01:06:33.056)
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  Can't you can't give away what you don't have. It's just gentle taking care of yourself. Just so love on that woman over fifty.
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  speaker-0 (01:06:40.77)
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  Yeah. Just love on her 'cause she's amazing. bless you, Margaret. Thank you so much.
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  speaker-0 (01:06:49.078)
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  I'm so grateful you listened to this episode. I hope it was a real value to you. If there's a sister in your life who needs this message, please share it, just like women have done to lift each other up over the centuries and across cultures. Women lifting each other is so important. It's why I do this work. And to avoid FOMO and keep up leveling your own life, make sure you don't miss the next episode.
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  You may be losing hormones, but your life has given you powerful perspective. And I believe you have something to give that no one else does, that the world needs. So remember, I'm rooting for you. Let's go.