Kayley Harris and Dr Ginni Mansberg teamed up to discuss ways to improve the approach to death in our culture, on their program Healthy Living, on 2GB, last night, prompted by their own personal experiences over the loss of their fathers.
And they invited me to share some thoughts.
Listen to the podcast of the show at the link. https://www.2gb.com/podcast/healthy-living-january-22nd/.
Dr Ginni Mansberg interviewed me about death yesterday.
Kayley asked me why I wrote the book A Good Death, a compassionate guide to prepare for the end of life, and I went back to when Mum was dying. (My interview starts at 1:07:42 on the podcast.)
“What I really was aware of, particularly for both me and by siblings was just how afraid we were,” I explained.
“And I just thought, ‘This is not good. If we’ve got more information available to us, more practical commonsense information that can just be delivered to people, it means we’re less afraid of what’s happening’.”
Before my chat they talked with deathwalker Zenith Virago (go to 55.00 at the podcast).
Zenith says “death is a great teacher”.
She said talking about death frees people up to have a better death…and I couldn’t agree more.
And just as an aside, in an earlier discussion Kayley and Dr Ginni pointed out that there are double the number of deaths from suicide as there are from road deaths.
“We get nine suicides a day. Of those, seven are from men,” Kayley explained.
Mental Health advocate Dr Tim Sharp, also known as Dr Happy was interviewed. (Go to 26.07 at the podcast to listen to his very wise advice.)
He talked about his new podcast on anger . Anger is okay but not aggression, he explained.
Thanks for the opportunity, Healthy Living!
Resources.
Read our story about men and grief. At the end of the article will be leads to others that are similar.
To find out more about Dr Tim’s work, go to:https://www.drhappy.com.au/