Hi everybody. Welcome back to Becoming the People. I'm Prentice Hemphill. I recorded this episode about a month ago, I think is my guess. And at the time, I wasn't where I am right now, which is dealing with a very serious medical issue from a close family member.

I'll probably say more at another time, but just suffice to say, I am dealing with a lot of the themes and issues that we talk about in this episode of the

podcast.

And so I guess what I really want to say to us all is that we might think that these ideas,

this planning around death and dying, is something we can put off for some other day.

And I guess I want to be an example and say that we actually can't.

The time is always right now, and as much as our culture and society tries to relegate this to some other time, It puts a lot of us at the end of our lives

in crisis not to have thought about or planned out how we want to address not only our end of

life, but our living even right now. So this episode is an interview with Ilua Arthur, who, you know, it's a, I sometimes joke that I do this podcast in order to talk to the people I want to talk to.

And it has widely expanded my friend base, actually, to do this podcast.

And Alua Arthur is one of these people that I felt such resonance with her work and her approach

that she was already my friend in my mind.

I'm glad to know through this podcast that that feeling was somewhat mutual.

But a little Arthur to me is such a clear voice on what dying could be in this culture if we actually brought it into the main,

if we brought it into the center of our lives, of our community, that we didn't just put it off to the side,

put it off for another day, that if we actually let it change how we live

right now, that might have a significant impact on our experiences of our lives, our connections

with our loved ones, and really, I think, how we build the world as it is. So Alua Arthur,

if you don't know, you should know. She is a death dula.

She's a writer.

She founded an organization called Going With Grace.

She trains other death dula's.

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