Everything End of Life.
This podcast is dedicated to talking to experts and others about all aspects of death and dying. You know, that thing we don't really want to talk about!
As a hospice carer and former psychiatric nurse as well as writer and former Theatre director, I invite guests to talk about their roles in and what to expect in the last four weeks of life. What happens to the person dying, what help is there, what to do before and after the event.
Many of the families we go in to see have one thing in common and that is that they don't know what to expect. I thought that a Podcast may help and then discovered so much to explore that is of interest to people such as alternative funerals, what do Hospices actually do, what role do religions play?
So join me for the first interview as we begin this Podcast with Clinical Nurse Specialist Becky Rix where we grasp the nettle and discuss what happens to us generally in those last four weeks.
Time to explore "Everything End of Life".
Everything End of Life.
Discovering the Healing Power of Compassionate Care with Carrie Doyle
Dive into an insightful and heartfelt discussion as we explore the rich tapestry of end-of-life care with Carrie Doyle, a dedicated soul midwife. Her journey is not only a testament to resilience following personal loss but also an enlightening look at how our experiences shape our callings. Carrie shares profound insights into the role of compassion, emphasising the importance of treating those facing the end of their lives as friends rather than patients. Through our conversation, you'll uncover the essence of integrated care, designed to reduce stress and ensure loved ones receive the support they need.
Discover how Carrie blends humour with her caregiving approach, creating moments of joy even in challenging circumstances. The dialogue flows into the importance of community connection, revealing how collective compassion can profoundly impact those navigating life’s most difficult times. This episode is a heartfelt invitation to embrace the beauty of life's fleeting moments while fostering relationships built on understanding and care. Join us as we learn from the experiences and stories that remind us of the connections that truly enrich our lives. Don't forget to subscribe, share your thoughts, and leave a review!
For those interested in what Palliative care looks like at home there is "The Last Kiss" (Not a Romance)
Available on Amazon now
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Kiss-Romance-Carers-Stories/dp/1919635289/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13D6YWONKR5YH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._59mNNFoc-rROuWZnAQfsG0l3iseuQuK_gx-VxO_fe6DLJR8M0Az039lJk_HxFcW2o2HMhIH3r3PuD7Dj-D6KTwIHDMl2Q51FGLK8UFYOBwbRmrLMbpYoqOL6I5ruLukF1vq7umXueIASDS2pO91JktkZriJDJzgLfPv1ft5UtkdQxs9isRDmzAYzc5MKKztINcNGBq-GRWKxgvc_OV5iKKvpw0I5d7ZQMWuvGZODlY.fqQgWV-yBiNB5186RxkkWvQYBoEsDbyq-Hai3rU1cwg&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+last+kiss+not+a+romance&qid=1713902566&s=books&sprefix=The+Last+kiss+n%2Cstripbooks%2C107&sr=1-1
Hello and welcome to Everything End of Life with me, jason Cattrall and guests, and my guest today is Carrie Doyle, who is not only a hospice trustee but also a registered nurse and a midwife, a sole midwife which is like a doula or is a doula, you could say and is also a celebrant. So we know about celebrants from the audio podcast from buzzsprout. So if you haven't heard that before, there's a a whole series of interviews about different people, different things, on buzzsprout. But for now, good morning and welcome, carrie doyle good morning, jason, lovely to be here okay, good, good.
Speaker 1:So for those who don't know about your past, let's just kick off a little bit with how you got to become a trustee it's a long journey, I'm sure. So how you got to become a trustee of a hospice. So where does that all begin?
Speaker 2:Right, okay, so I guess for me the whole thing about hospice started very, very early on in my life, if you like. So I'd lost my nan when I was six weeks old, lived with my granddad. My granddad died when I was very young, so I'd had a lot of bereavement, if you like, and, as a child, witnessed a lot of bereavement anyway, so sort of fast forwarding always had my mum. My mum was constant, but my dad was an alcoholic and that was quite traumatic, a quite traumatic childhood. But it does um lend itself to you learning how to care, how to care for your siblings, how to care for for your um parent that is being abused all the time.
Speaker 1:So it actually sets the scene for that, if you like, and you know, I've got to say I've heard this quite a bit is when you have a either an abusive parent or a difficult parent, the, and you have to then become the parent in a sense, so you could become in the caring role and that leads you into a caring role professionally as well. Is that something that kind of you identify with?
Speaker 2:that's exactly right. There's a lot of research and I can't recall a specific piece of research, but there is a lot of research around that, around that, and I guess there is something around that that need to be needed, that sits within you, and I think you have to be very aware of that as you go through your career, in your life, because it can be very positive, but it can also have a negative aspect and I guess, um, you know, when I was at school, I left school with no qualifications. I was a real rebel. In fact. I didn't go for to school for a year. It was an absolute nightmare for my poor mum and, of course, at the time they didn't have telephones. So we didn't have a phone anyway, but there was no way that my mum knew I wasn't in school until the school board person turned up and then she knocked ten shades of the eye of me.
Speaker 1:Wasn't it a truant officer? Was it a truant officer? That's what it was. Wasn't it a truant officer?
Speaker 2:was it a truant? That's what it was. It was a truant officer, but everybody, all the naughty kids in the town, knew the truant officer. It was all they've been said at your house anyway. So, um, and I wanted to be a journalist and never, ever thought I was brainy enough. And my little mum, who's lovely, she was always saying you know, um, going to nursing, you'll always put food on the table, you'll always have a job, and actually that is that is right, um, and anyway, in the end I applied to do my nursing, met a fabulous, fabulous tutor at old church who, um, gave me a place to do my SRN and latterly I contacted her just to say thank you for the chance and the opportunity that she'd given me. She was beautiful, she was absolutely lovely, always believed in me, very eccentric, and I think we we connected on that score. Anyway, went through my nurse training long story short, really went into district nurse training long story short, really Went into district nursing, met some amazing, lovely people, but always had a bit of a passion for end-of-life and palliative care, and my first course actually was at St Helena, and at that point in time St Helena was the biggest education provider for palliative care, and I'm talking sort of late 80s, early 90s.
Speaker 2:It was amazing and I'd just passed my driving test. I used to travel in with two other girls from Thurrock who used to laugh at me in my driving because I was a bit of a nutcase. We used to roll out of the car park at St Helena's either, you know, always a little bit late, laughing really like we've just been fits. And there was a. There was a tutor there, terry McGee, and Terry was another really important person in my life. She totally got me and she spoke about how people were individuals, which was something I always felt. And those little things you know, those little things like making sure that at the end of life, people can see out the window. You know, why do we put people miles away from a window?
Speaker 2:Those little things that connect us with the earth, if you like, and then for me.
Speaker 1:And the hospice. It's got to be said, if you look out at most windows in the hospice it's beautiful. They've really, you know, at St Helena I know because you know I used to work there but they, if you look out of any window, it's all green and little ponds and so it really is something. I think it's a very good point. You know, you need to be able to look out the window and I think from almost every bed you can look out the window in St Helena and that's beautiful, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Because we are part of the earth, we're part of nature our very existence and I guess I continued in my nursing career, ended up at Fairhavens in Southend and led their palliative care team. Then had a bit of an epiphany when I got to 50 and thought do you know what? I'm going to go back into acute trust, which was crazy. Applied for a job at Bart's Health, never thought I'd get it. I'd get it but did and so traveled, started traveling into London again and then went back to a community trust and helped them set up an integrated care system for end of life with some amazing people at Whips Cross brilliant, lovely people, all very like-minded. Wanted to create a service whereby people could get what they needed when they needed and wrapped itself around the person.
Speaker 1:So give me an example of that. What would that look like for somebody who's got end of life? What does integrated mean? What is that?
Speaker 2:It means that you'd have to make one phone call and you'd get all the help you need, rather than phoning one service and then telling you to phone another service, telling you to phone somebody else which actually, if you're caring for somebody at end of life and, um, there's a problem, you're anxious, the person's anxious. All of that anxiety exacerbates their pain and exacerbates their feelings of of distress. So if you can alleviate some of that by giving one point of access, which actually single point is at St Helena now, that tends to work very much like that.
Speaker 1:It's a brilliant thing that single point and we'll have there is an interview on the Buzzsprout thing with Katie Billimore and I'll get her back on to talk about single point and other issues. But, yeah, having one folks, that's a brilliant thing to to um create and have been part of creating. Because, just that, taking the stress out of everything, rather than what's the gp's number, what's the district nurse's number, what's the clinical nurse specialist's number, are they in, are they there? You know that having just one phone number, that is just such a brilliantly awesome idea. So it comes from a compassionate soul, I think it was just wonderful.
Speaker 2:And aside from that, we had a service that um would actually go in and spend time with the person, because I think as a district nurse or a macmillan nurse you don't have that time. You try to give that time but invariably your caseload's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You're sitting talking to somebody and you know that you've got probably five, six, seven, sometimes eight people after that person that you've got to go and see. And that pressure, with all the will in the world, when you try not to let that influence you, how are you going to have those really important conversations around advanced care planning, advanced what's important to that person? And so after that I became a professional lead for end-of-life care and community nursing at the Royal College of Nursing. So and that had a UK-wide responsibility and that was brilliant because I met people from all over the UK, went on the picket line with the nurses in Belfast, which was part of my bucket list. I always wanted to be on a picket line. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was really cool and how do the people?
Speaker 2:that's it right then, through covid, I got a bit fed up with arguing around um the visiting rules, I guess, because for me it was why can't we teach families to put on ppe? You know we're stretched. Let families come in and look after their loved ones within the environment that we're, and I guess you know. Of course there's health and safety issues. Of course there's infection control issues, but when people are dying you have to balance what is the lesser risk and for me, we're going to have so many people in the future that suffer really, really, um difficult grieving because they weren't alongside their loved ones when they were dying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if that is something that's something that's coming down the line, isn't it? Because I think we've learned. If there's another pandemic like that, I think a lot of people will say no, hang Okay. So there are the rules and they are important to adhere to, but over and above that, we can make room for a lot of dispensations, if you like. The COVID, I think, took everybody by surprise and we all said well, we really must, you know, do the right thing, and everyone's trying to do the right thing, but I think it kind of went way over the top for a lot of people. And uh and I think you're right, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to struggle with grief, um, further on down the line, but and that we have got somebody coming on to talk about grief, and uh, and all that sort of reactions, if you like different types of reactions to not just end of life care but end of anything really.
Speaker 2:Anyway, sorry I interrupted you. Crack on that's. That's perfectly okay, that's cool, um. So I really missed being alongside people and I did a little bit of teaching with um during covid, with nurses that hadn't gone into end ofof-life care but invariably had been moved across to look after people at end-of-life and, quite interestingly, I'd had a very young mental health nurse that was really traumatised by her experience of looking after somebody that was dying during COVID, who really stuck to the rules, done everything she was told to do, but was overwhelmed with the situation that she was in, and her voice stays with me forever. Really, I sort of think we need to look at what we're doing to one another during those sort of situations. But I digress.
Speaker 2:So I retrained as a funeral celebrant and a sole midwife, which is similar to an end-of-life care doula, but it's slightly different in that the background of so many sole midwives probably comes more from a therapeutic background, whereas I think probably end-of-life care dealers probably come more from a caring, nursing background. So a lot of soul midwives can do reiki, can do complementary therapy, massage. They're very in, they're very driven by providing that holistic whole person, yeah, um, centric care, and they're very, very hands-on so they um may do slight hand massage just to help somebody relax some breath work when people are frightened and they can't, you know, struggling to breathe. For a number of reasons, and for me it was very intuitive. And it was intuitive in the way that even as a district nurse, when I had got called into a very distressed family very early in the morning actually it was at half past seven I'd gone into work very early and the phone kept ringing and ringing and we didn't start till half past eight.
Speaker 2:But I actually just thought, oh, I'm going to answer the phone, somebody must need something, don't keep ringing and ringing. And there was a really distraught daughter on the phone and there was three daughters and they were caring for mum. And in the end I said do you know what? I'm just going to come round. So I went round to the house and it was chaotic. It was the daughters were pacing, mum was struggling to breathe in the bed, very much probably dying. Yeah, yeah, very young district nurse in the conservatory trying to arrange medication and god love her. That's that, you know.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we feel that we need to be doing something yeah and I could see this lady was dying and I just went and sat beside the lady and just stroked her arm and said to her this is okay, this is fine, and spoke to the girls and said you know, mum's dying, why don't you just come and sit with her? And we all just sat there, you know, and it was just really peaceful. I said just talk to Mum, tell her it's okay, calm the whole thing down. Yeah, and the whole thing just calmed down and became quite beautiful and in the background I could hear the little district, the young district nurse trying to arrange medication and, interestingly enough, just as she came out of the conservatory door and said, I've got it all sorted, we've got to go and collect it, the lady gently passed away. She gently died and it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:But for me I guess at Helena, because that was the place my journey started and I'm obviously I'm getting older, I've retired, although I've been busier now than ever doing various different things St Helena is it's like coming home for me and it's very, very close to my heart and I walk in that building and know it may not have single rooms for everybody, it may not have everything that modern hospice movement feel that we need to have, but you can feel the love and actually the most important thing for people when they're dying isn't that they're in a single room, because sometimes for some people that can be quite isolating. Yeah, thing for people when they're dying isn't that they're in a single room, because sometimes for some people that can be quite isolating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it is that they feel loved and cared about yeah you know, and being a trustee enables me to influence that, yeah, and I'm sure people think, oh, shut up, you're hopping on about that again, but actually that's you know, and I'm a. It's so important to harp on about, though, isn't?
Speaker 1:it, I mean it's you know, we spend I mean, as you, as you use the word midwife we spend, uh, you know, so much money on bringing people into the world and naffle spending money when they're going out of the world, you know. So it's, it's really badly weighted.
Speaker 2:I cannot think you know and a soul midwife is exactly that. It's about supporting the soul as it transitions out, you know, to another world or wherever that person believes that they're going to. And it's non, it's quite secular, it's non-denominational. We care for everybody as human beings. But when you were saying that about when we were saying about being close to nature, sometimes you just need to take your socks off and put your feet on the ground, because that really rams you Do.
Speaker 1:You know what I had a I trained in hypnosis psychotherapy many, many years ago and one of the ladies there. I was having quite a bit of a stressy day. The patients on my ward had themselves had a difficult day and there was a couple of restraints and sort of things going on. Long time ago this was, and she just sat me down and she said right, jason, take your shoes and socks off. And I just looked at her and went what are you on about? And she just put my feet in a bowl of warm water and it just changed my state completely and I just my shoulders went down, I breathed and it was like, all right, okay, now I'm back.
Speaker 2:All right, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:It's such a strange thing to do, though, and you're right, it's not it's not.
Speaker 2:Is it quite normal? Because when you look all through history, when you look at all the religious texts there is, there is always something about feet and I love feet and quite often I just stand at the end of the bed if I'm talking to people and just rub people's feet, although that has got me into trouble on a few occasions when people don't like it yeah, my daughters get off your feet.
Speaker 1:My daughters, they freak about their own feet and I don't know why they call them grippers. I don't like to look at my own grippers and about anybody else's. You know, I think that's a weird thing, isn't it? I just feet, a feet.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. You know, I can remember. I can remember my granddad having his feet in a bowl of water.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that seems so. There is absolutely something about how that, you know, and it is a real act of love to wash somebody's feet, isn't it?
Speaker 1:So, you look through religions and there's all that in there when St Helena had the virtual ward, which is not there now, but uh, it's. Uh, there's a different service called bluebird, which is just as important and, uh, just as effective. Uh and um, that was one of the things that we used to regularly do when we went into people's homes. Uh, is to put people's feet in a bowl of water. And when I first about five years ago, when somebody first said, uh, and she'll get me a washing up bowl and put your feet in that, and I just looked at them and went that seems like a weird thing to do, and then I've been doing it ever since to people, it is a bowl, should we just soak your feet there? Do you want to have that done? And they and the kind of ah on there when they put their feet into warm water.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a lovely thing to see yeah, but equally, jason, they can't run away, yeah got you now, yeah, yeah, gotcha gotcha, but it is, it is beautiful, it's lovely yeah, and I guess, for me it's that connection so being a a.
Speaker 1:So you're not a, you're a midwife, you're a soul midwife. I love that. So tell me a bit more about you. Know, you said it's that holistic, uh approach, which is different from from going in and um, uh, I'm gonna say just being there, just being helpful. I mean, what is it that you, what is the role that you do?
Speaker 2:the right and it's an interesting one because the majority different soul midwives will work in very different ways and we all train at the soul midwifery school. It's international, the soul midwives all over the world, which is lovely because we get a? Um a picture, if you like, of how things are going, uh, in canada, what's happening in canada, and it's been extremely useful with the assisted dying bill that's going through parliament at the moment, because there are soul mid wives that work with that. But but for me and we don't refer to patients as patients or people we we refer to them as friends because you are actually being a compassionate friend. So you, you are doing pretty much what that person needs to do, would need you to do, and for some that might be that you help them with their advanced care planning, you might help them write letters to their children, but equally so, you might just be that person that they can share those deep, deep things that are in their soul that they haven't shared with people before it's a very compassionate thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's so compassionate and sometimes you know, I've been with people and you might just be doing gentle hand massage or gentle foot massage, just very, very light touch interventions, and people open up and I've had ladies tell me about children that they had had in the 40s and 50s that may have died or they may have had to give up. And you know, when you speak to people's families, these are things that that people have not spoke about for a very, very long time. So you almost help them unlock that door to um to release those, or to release that grieving, that grief, that bereavement, whatever's happened in their life. And sometimes people have done things that they really wish they hadn't have done.
Speaker 2:You know there may be people that had bullied other people at school, been quite nasty to people, and I always think, oh, you know, there may be people that had bullied other people at school, been quite nasty to people, and I always think, oh, you know the stuff that you did at school. Maybe you forget, but for some people they don't and they really need to make their peace. And it's just beautiful and it's interesting because people go. Oh, you know, it's all very spiritual and very religious. Actually, it's not religious, it's about the human connection and I love it. I just am so privileged to be able to do that with people almost facilitating epiphanies, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I think to some degree, and I I think I've got to bring up the the grumpy side, because it's you know, you've painted a beautiful picture, very serene, but sometimes you can go to somebody's place and they're just grumpy. I'm going to die and I hate the world. You're all horrible and I think one of the most compassionate things you can do is just to make them laugh, to make them smile.
Speaker 1:You know, I had one guy we were going into him and he didn't talk to many people and he didn't want to get into his bed, he just sat on the edge of his bed but he always watched Cowboys films. The telly was on 24-7, Cowboy films, all the old Cowboy films, and he'd just go. I've had a wash, All right, leave me alone, I don't want any pills, Go away. And one day I walked in and I brought him these two toy guns, Colt .45 things, and I said happy Christmas, and I gave them to him and he looked at me and a big smile went across his face because he knew that I got what he was all about just the cowboys there and he got his relatives to tape these guns to the
Speaker 1:television. So I mean, he died about a couple of weeks later. But that put a big smile on his face and that was, I think, his slight turning point from when, you know, he started to allow people in and to have a wash and to take his pills and things. So it's not always such a straightforward journey, is it? And I'm sure you've come across that, that kind of thing where you've got to find a way in sometimes.
Speaker 2:You have and actually you are right the ability to be able to smile and laugh, and I think sometimes we lose that because we're so busy we don't smile at people and that that transfers. When you smile, invariably people smile back. Very few people don't smile back, but in my experience those people that are grumpy and challenging are usually the most needy. You know, they're usually really, really lonely.
Speaker 2:And as a very young district nurse in camden, we had a gentleman that nobody really wanted to go into. He was contrary. He used to moan about everything, chuck everything around, but actually he had nobody. And one day the penny dropped that every time I was trying to get out the front door he'd be kicking off about something else, because he really didn't want you to go. The only way he could keep you there was by behaving like that. And actually when you got to know him, when you sat down and you spoke to him, he had been a business person, he'd had a family which he was estranged from, so there'd been some trauma there, but he'd had such an interesting life, jason, but who did he have to share that with?
Speaker 2:yeah loneliness is dreadful.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be the biggest killer in our in our society today well, look at that, and I guess that's what that whole thing, esther Anson, started off. What is she doing? She's just created a kind of whole organisation where Feel the line. That's it, yeah, yeah. So you know, your loneliness is just horrible, I think, and it's something we ought to actually address. You know, with the GP surgery.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes we all want to be technicians, we all want to be academics, we all want to be up there, but actually for lots and lots of people it's the gentle stuff, it's just the being, being the good neighbour, being the person. And I'm a nosy neighbour, as my neighbours know. In fact, I used to have those curtains that go up in the middle. My husband used to say that, so I don't have to do that to look out the curtains.
Speaker 1:So I am a bit of a curtain twitcher, but my neighbours, they know that and they know that if there's a milk bottle on the doorstep, or I've not seen them for a couple of days, I'll be the person shouting through the letterbox you're all right, or climbing the fence, yeah, yeah now okay that brings me nicely on to uh compassionate communities, which is something that uh has started to develop from, I think, sean Leak, the mental health runner, and Greg Cooper up at St Helena Hospice, and it's something that's beginning to create a network of people who are all singing from the same song sheet, and I think you're a part of that. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:I am a part of that and, as you know, I'm a district councillor in Tendering and in Colchester. The compassionate communities has taken off prolifically. In Tendering we have got lots and lots of really wonderful compassionate people that are all doing fabulous bits of work and it's how we start to connect them.
Speaker 2:And it is quite funny, jason, because I I am a little bit off a little bit wacky, I think and I said to to greg I'm gonna go and sit in the charity shop. There's a little charity shop near us. It's a pound charity shop. Everybody loves, loves it, people travel. I'm going to go and sit in there and talk to people. So there I do. I pull up an armchair and an old television unit and put my leaflets on it oh yeah, nice and sit between a row of ladies' dresses and a row of men's dresses and people come in and I go hello and they're like whoa.
Speaker 2:Don't attack me and people come in and I go hello, I know, but it's brilliant, you know, people come and talk to you and they tell you about their bereavements and they tell you what, and so many people want to be part of that community, you know, part of just giving and receiving. Yeah, sharing, yeah, you know, and it's, it's lovely, it's wonderful and and yeah, I do, um, do a bit of that with greg and sean and I love it, but I just see it as an extension of what I already do. Yeah, you know, greg, greg pretty much says yes to because I'll go. Oh, can I go and stand on christmas? Can I go and do something? Yeah, go do that, carrie.
Speaker 1:Make an effect. He knows you're a person who will have an effect on other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but people run away from me yeah well, only at first maybe. Yeah, only at first. But he's lovely and I love it. And you know Clacton gets a really bad press, but I like Clacton and people always, always talk to you and I just think that's how life should be, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually they are very chatty down in Clacton. I used to in my other work which, as you know, I distribute cooking oil for a living. It's not the most exciting thing in the world, but it means I get to drive around the countryside oh it's.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I love the job? Because I'm I'm driving around, um, looking at red kites floating around in the sky, go through the countryside the suffolk essex borders are just amazing and you know all the animals in the fields and it's just beautiful. Um, and I get to steal recipes from chefs, which is brilliant. But you go down to Clacton and there's always, as you're walking down the street, there's always somebody who'll turn around and say right, mate, what?
Speaker 1:And they are just you know, I don't know there's something about that place that they are just friendly and chatty, you know. So it's quite nice.
Speaker 2:It does get a bad press and I'm really proud of being a counsellor there because it means that I can promote compassion, I can promote that we need to care for each other all through our life trajectory. I mean, yesterday I was talking to a bus company about trying to change a bus route and even that we'd sort of put a spot on Been on it around health, because actually if people, if we take away the bus service, then people become even more isolated. They shop online because they can't get to the shop. They don't go out to see anybody because they can't get there. You know we've got a really elderly demographic and by default they're going to have more things wrong with them. They'll become more isolated. They won't be able to drive. We need those buses, even if it's just to get them all having a singer sing along.
Speaker 1:That's going to be my next venture oh no, I want to be on that bus, that's for sure the happy bus the happy bus don't go.
Speaker 1:They make me sing songs. I don't want to be happy. What is wonderful is, uh, is, and sean will say this is this, this compassionate community. It started off with about two or three people and now, you know, the last meeting I went to was about 20, 25 people from different organizations. Uh, and you know, they're promoting this idea of unity, of sharing and caring, and it's an amazing thing that one little action can spark a ripple of goodwill. I think, and I think that's where the compassionate communities really comes into its own. And what's really lovely is they do nominations. You can be nominated to be a compassionate champion and a lot, a lot of people had. I nominated, um, uh, richard and nikki bodage from the tom bodage foundation and they they got an award, which was lovely, but it went to the town council and it's a recognition of the charity work that they do for teenagers and young people who have got cancer or other life limiting illnesses.
Speaker 1:And I saw Richard the other day and I hadn't seen him for a while and he said I was standing in the co-op with the kids and he said, oh, hello, jason. And I turned around, there was. I said, oh, richard, how are you? I haven't seen your face. You said, yeah, I've got an MBE, you know. And I went, what he said and he turned around and on the front page of the Gazette was him and Nicky receiving an MBE for their work in charity and I thought that was absolutely beautiful. It's such a strange moment. I thought I'm sure that's probably not because of the interview I did, but I'd like to think it was contributory to it, you know oh, it's lovely it is, and uh, you know them being compassionate champions.
Speaker 1:I think it's a great what example if you like, to others, uh, that you can do so much for other people with uh, with not, you know, with just a little goodwill. If you like a little goodwill to go far, it goes a long way.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, listen, I've probably got to cut it short because I've got one of those days where I've stacked far too much into it.
Speaker 2:But it's been amazing. I'm going to get everybody to sleep. I'm really good at putting books. Oh no, you're the best party in no time not at all.
Speaker 1:You're the best tonic, for sure. Um so I'm going to say thank you so much, but before I go, how can people get in contact with you for your uh soul midwife work?
Speaker 2:they can contact me through my website, which is dying2carecom.
Speaker 1:Dying2carecom.
Speaker 2:Dying2carecom I like that.
Speaker 1:Did you make that up?
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant Dying2care. So, yeah, all right. Well, that's fabulous and thank you so much for taking the time to tell me all about your work and the hospice and the trustees and stuff. It's been absolutely fabulous. And I will no doubt see you at the next meeting. All right, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2:See you later, bye-bye, bye-bye.
