Seeing Death Clearly

Send us Fan Mail What happens to someone who is grieving when the funeral is over and everyone else returns to their normal lives? Grief doesn't follow a schedule, and some of the hardest moments can come weeks or months after a death, when the support begins to fade. In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen talks with Kelly Edmondson, a nurse...

Send us Fan Mail Death is everywhere in movies, television, and the news, yet talking about our own mortality is something many people avoid. Why are we so fascinated by death while also being afraid of it? And could facing the reality of dying help us live more meaningful lives? In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen talks with psychologist and...

Send us Fan Mail Grief isn't just something we experience when someone dies. It can show up during major life changes, the end of relationships, aging, and losses we may not even recognize as grief. Learning to acknowledge these experiences can help us better understand our emotions and find ways to move through them. In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , host Jill McClennen, a death doul...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, Sarah Vosburg shares the complicated reality of caregiving, grief, memory care, and learning to give herself grace for decisions made during an incredibly difficult time. Caring for a parent with dementia can mean making difficult choices without knowing whether there is a “right” answer. Host Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celeb...

Send us Fan Mail What could end-of-life care look like if caring for people who are dying became more of a community responsibility? In this episode, Jill talks with nurse Hannah Fowler about small, community-based homes for people at the end of life and the role these spaces can play for people who may not have family, caregivers, or a safe place to die. Hannah shares how her work in nursing and...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , I talk with psychology professor Dr. Anya Schultz, who teaches a course on the Psychology of Death and Dying. Her classroom gives students permission to explore subjects many of us are taught to avoid, often leading them to question their assumptions about death, grief, funerals, and what it means to say goodbye. Anya shares some of the ex...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , I’m joined by writer and father of six Steve Beal Sr. for a conversation about family stories, grief, faith, and what we can learn when we take the time to really listen to the people who came before us. Steve shares how traveling with his mother to New Brunswick, Canada, to visit aging relatives eventually led him to begin recording the s...

Send us Fan Mail When Lila Glasoe Francese’s sister Carolyn was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2015, life changed quickly. Carolyn underwent surgeries and a trial treatment before dying 13 months later at just 46 years old, leaving behind a seven-year-old son and a family learning how to live with an enormous loss. In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , Lila joins death doula and funeral celebr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , I’m joined by hospice nurses and end-of-life doulas Jan Booth and Trish Rux, authors of Dying Matters: Eight Conversations That Can Change Your Life. We talk about why conversations about serious illness, caregiving, and end-of-life wishes need to begin long before a crisis. Through their years of hospice and palliative care experience, Ja...

Send us Fan Mail Today, I’m joined by long-term care specialist Raymond Lavine for a conversation about something many of us don’t think about until we’re already in the middle of it: how we’re going to manage and pay for care as we get older. Raymond and I talk about what long-term care actually means. It isn’t necessarily medical care. It can be help with bathing, dressing, eating, getting to ap...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , I’m joined by end-of-life doula Sonja Koenig for a conversation about grief, family, advocacy, and what it really means to prepare for the end of life. Much of Sonja’s perspective has been shaped by the death of her brother Juan, a Marine who lived with serious health challenges for 16 years, including kidney failure, dialysis, COPD, and h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen talks with life coach, author, and publisher Mia Godfrey about what it means to rebuild your life after profound loss. Mia's story is one of resilience, but it isn't a story of "getting over" grief. Instead, it's about learning to carry loss while continuing to move...

Send us Fan Mail When someone dies, the grief is only part of what families are carrying. Along with the emotional pain often comes a long list of decisions, paperwork, phone calls, family dynamics, and practical tasks that can feel impossible to manage while you're mourning.  In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen talks with Sarah Baldwin, f...

Send us Fan Mail Death doesn't have to be a taboo topic. In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen is joined by Annalouiza Armendariz and Wakil  David Matthews, interfaith ordained ministers and co-hosts of the End of Life Conversations podcast. Together, they explore how talking openly about death, dying, and grief can reduce fear, strengthen c...

Send us Fan Mail Host Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant, speaks with Northern California end-of-life doula Lori Goldwyn about death doula work, grief, and end-of-life planning. Lori explains how childhood fear of death, her background in women’s health, and her mother’s death in 2010 moved her from birth doula work into hospice volunteering and then end-of-life doula care after t...

Send us Fan Mail Death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen hosts Philadelphia-based medical historian Brandon Zimmerman to discuss his 2024 book, “Dissection Photography: Cadavers, Abjection, and the Formation of Identity,” about medical students (1880–1930) taking souvenir photos with cadavers and what the images reveal about coping with death through humor, ritual, and discomfort.  Brando...

Send us Fan Mail Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant, hosts Seeing Death Clearly and talks with Ralf Ellervee about preserving life stories as a lasting legacy that supports grief, healing, and conscious living. Ralph shares how interviewing his grandfather—an Estonian surgeon deported to Siberia at age nine—showed him how easily memories can be lost, especially with dementia, seri...

Send us Fan Mail On Seeing Death Clearly, death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen speaks with transpersonal psychologist Dr. Irene Blinston about her research on grief healing, consciousness, and paranormal encounter experiences. Blinston explains the psychomanteum—an environment of darkness, quiet, sensory reduction, and angled mirror gazing originally developed by Dr. Raymond Moody—wher...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly , I speak with Lori Rizzo, a death doula in the Philadelphia area, about her transition from corporate leadership and training into end-of-life care. Lori shares how her personal experiences led her to this work and why she has become especially passionate about supporting individuals living with dementia and the people who care for them. We...

Send us Fan Mail Death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen hosts clinical psychologist Batya Ludman and Jewish educator Gina Junger to discuss their book, The Jewish Journey Through Loss: From Death to Healing, and how Jewish mourning traditions support grief and healing.  They explain active rituals like shoveling dirt at burial, tearing a ribbon or garment, and sitting shiva as a week-lon...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk with Alexander Josephson, a Toronto-based architect whose father's cancer diagnosis unexpectedly led him into the world of digital legacy and remembrance. When his father asked him to design a memorial, Alex began thinking about how we honor and remember the people we love. In a time when so much of our lives exists online, he wondered if there was a b...

Send us Fan Mail On Seeing Death Clearly, death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen talks with Wendy Juergens about grief, dying, and healing through writing, including end-of-life planning and conscious living. Wendy shares the story of her son Nick, a Navy veteran who died by suicide nearly 14 years ago at age 32, and how writing her book, Hey, It’s Me, helped her stay connected to him, l...

Send us Fan Mail Jill McClennen hosts a conversation with David Zartman and Joanna Franco from Caring House, a nonprofit hospice home in Torrance, California. They explain that Caring House serves people in the final days or weeks of a hospice journey, staffed 24/7 by caregivers, and works with many hospice agencies because it is a non-medical residential care facility.  Families can visit freely,...

Send us Fan Mail Host Jill McClennen, a death doula, end-of-life care planner, and funeral celebrant, interviews Laurel Hill Funeral Directors Tasha Dugan and Amanda Kyle about what funeral directing looks like behind the scenes. They discuss embalming and body preparation, service planning, costs, flowers, paperwork, and supporting families from the first call through the funeral.  Amanda shares...

Send us Fan Mail Death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen speaks with Matt Fogelson about growing up in 1980s Manhattan, then losing his workaholic father to lung cancer when Matt was 19 and his father was 46. Matt describes carrying unspoken grief for decades, using pain to stay connected, and how family silence around dying robbed them of meaningful end-of-life conversations. He shares h...