End of Life Doula Donna

Master Gardener Fern

In this episode, the TWWU team interviews a Master Gardener appropriately named Fern.  She grew up in a family of gardeners. Her maternal grandfather was President of a garden club and her grandmother and mother were both avid  gardeners active in garden clubs. She learned to grow, can and freeze vegetables and fruits from an early age. All her married life, she's had a garden, raising food for her family. When she lived in Ohio, she became a Master Gardener. Fern has been active in garden clubs everywhere she's lived and is currently the President of Sunflowers, a  Richfield garden club and also serves on the Richfield Garden Club Council.

End of Life Doula Donna

Have you ever wondered what a doula is? Have you ever heard of a doula? Birth doulas have been around for a while but death doulas? Actually, the preferred term is End Of Life doula and that will be our focus in this episode. Today, end of life doulas are bringing greater meaning to what happens at the end of our lives. Donna, a trained end of life doula, will explain how she uses the sounds and music of the harp in her doula position. She has a Masters of Theology, with an emphasis in Spiritual Direction. She is working on her certification as an End of Life Doula from INELDA  which is the International End of Life Doula Association. Donna is a newly certified “Holistic Clinical Harpist”. Donna has many interests and talents. During this podcast we will focus on her end of life doula training, and experiences, as well as using her harp as an end of life doula.

Santa Dave

In this episode, we interview Santa. He explained, in terms we could understand, how things work up nort dere, and on that magical night. We finally got the chance of a lifetime to actually talk to Santa and ask him all the questions we wished we could have asked back when we were little kids. Then, toward the end, we talk to Santa's alter ego Dave, who explains what it's like to portray the jolly old elf, Santa.

Brian from Ireland

Brian Kaller is a Missouri-born journalist who has lived in Ireland for many years,  researching traditional ways of life. He has written for the American Conservative, First Things, Mother Earth News and Irish newspapers, as well as on his web site oldschoolschool.org [http://oldschoolschool.org/].

Important Conversations

Between what we see or hear and our emotions about what we experienced there are stories. Stories create feelings and judgements. We can not change the loop we have created until we change the stories we tell ourselves.  When you absolutely can't avoid having a serious discussion and the stakes are high, how can you recognize the dangers and avoid disaster? In this episode, we review some advice offered by the book Crucial Conversations in chapter 6 "Master My Stories."