Doing End-Of-Life Right
How does one do things right at the end of life? There are many ways to answer this question, as varied as all of us. In this episode, we continue with our Grief, Loss, and End-Of-Life series. Co-hosts Shonte Drakeford, Ashley Fernandez, Natalia Green, and Lisa Laudico speak with Julie McFadden, aka Hospice Nurse Julie; Jennifer O’Brien, author of Hospice Doctor’s Widow; Cal Cates, Hospice Massage Therapist; and Sundari Malcolm, Birth, Death, and Grief Doula.
Meet the Guests of this Episode
Julie McFadden, BSN, RN
Julie McFadden, BSN, RN, has been a nurse for 14 years. She is highly experienced in the Intensive Care Unit. But for the past 5 years she has focused her work on hospice and palliative care in California. Seeing the vast scale of TikTok’s ability to reach people, she decided to share her experiences and the information she has gathered about death and dying. It was her intention to challenge the idea that talking about death and addressing it head on is taboo. By educating people and disseminating some of her own experiences she hoped her videos would help people become more comfortable with talking about death.
What Julie didn’t expect was to become a viral sensation seemingly overnight. It turns out people are very curious about the end stages of life and what happens when they die. In her original viral video, called The Rally, she discusses what many of her patients experience as they begin the process of nearing the end of life, experiences science can’t explain. Her popularity grew after an article in Newsweek discussed her videos and her unusual ability to educate people on the topic of death. After articles appeared in various other publications, Julie’s following has grown to over 500K on TikTok and over 40K, and growing, on Instagram. She continues to be passionate about normalizing death through her educational and inspiring videos on social media and hopes that people will begin to view death as a natural aspect of life, and to the extent possible, diminish the overwhelming fearfulness it generates.
Jennifer O’Brien
Jennifer O’Brien has helped thousands live and love more fully by recognizing that: at the end of life comes death; family caregiving is both the hardest job and the greatest honor most of us will ever face; and grief is abundant love with no place to go. She is the author of The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal, an art journal filled with beauty, practical insights, humor, and heart. The book has won a Nautilus silver award in the Death & Dying/Grief & Loss category, a Next Gen Indie Book gold for Relationships, an Independent Publishers (IPPY) bronze for Gift, and an International Impact Award for its Design.
For more than 30 years she has been a practice management educator of physicians and served as CEO for two large medical practices. She authored 45 articles and made hundreds of presentations. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree in organization development from Loyola University –Chicago. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Cal Cates
Cal Cates is an award-winning writer, published researcher, international speaker, and the founder and Executive Director of Healwell, a non-profit whose mission is to improve quality of life for people affected by acute, chronic, and serious illness. They have trained thousands of healthcare providers in skills of resilience, self-awareness, communication, and forgiveness. They have dedicated their career to advocacy in healthcare, massage therapy as social justice, and to revolutionizing education for healthcare providers. Cal has trained with Roshi Joan Halifax, Ram Dass, Frank Ostaseski, and other leaders in the field of contemplative care and has created curriculum and written for trade journals on topics ranging from end of life care to interdisciplinary education to racism and the endless ways that humans make it hard to live in successful, equitable harmony.
Sundari Malcolm
Sundari Malcolm is the Director of BIPOC Wellbeing for The Dinner Party At 27, and after 7 years of being her Caregiver, Sundari lost her mother to Breast Cancer. At 31 years old, she lost her father to Brain Cancer. Since then, Sundari has dedicated her life to the support of those managing a diagnosis and the transformation that follows. Outside of her work as the Director of BIPOC Well- being for TDP, Sundari is a birth and death Doula. She is a Yoga and Meditation teacher and the founder of Soul Sundari Wellness. She is an expat to Germany and a recent publisher of the book Grief Gems!
