The Millennial Death Perspective with D.C. Copeland

[00:00:24] Beyond Goodbye is a podcast that explores dying, death, and grief, and may contain sensitive or distressing material that could be triggering for some individuals, and is not suitable for all audiences. Therefore, listener discretion is advised. We would like to acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional land of the Dakota people in honor with gratitude the land itself

[00:00:50] and the ancestors who have stewarded it throughout the generations, including the Anishinaabe and other indigenous nations. Well, friends, welcome back to Beyond Goodbye 2025. I am your host, Angela Sturm.

[00:01:16] As I mentioned in our 2025 update, today's episode features a thought-provoking conversation with a millennial who brings fresh insight into how their generation views death, dying, and grief. Millennials are often unfairly labeled, entitled, lacking work, ethic, lazy, but in reality, they're reshaping cultural conversations around work, well-being, and even grief. My guest, D.C.

[00:01:44] Copeland, is the perfect example of that. So get ready for a discussion that challenges our thought paradigms and just might get you to look at loss through a different lens. Who is D.C. Copeland? D.C. Copeland. She is an author and a disruptor, an intellectual, and a cultural critic. In her book, Societal Dropout, A Culture Manifesto for the New Millennium, she discusses her journey of self-discovery,

[00:02:10] grieving, and the concept of societal dropout. She emphasizes the importance of finding one's unique voice, the role of language in shaping reality, and the necessity of stepping away from societal norms to find inner peace. Her book explores personal trauma, the power of words, the significance of choice in navigating life's challenges, and the potency of undergoing the grieving process.

[00:02:35] Copeland shares her experiences with mental health, illness, and the transformative power of self-acceptance and compassion. She is an advocate of sitting with one's feelings, the transformative nature of tears, and the role of spirituality in personal evolution, while also delving into the nature of God, belief systems, and the balance between prayer and meditation. Ultimately, she emphasizes the importance of curiosity and the courage to ask life's big questions. D.C., welcome.

[00:03:06] Hi, thank you. So after reading your book, I was like, I highlight and I write in mine, and I kept, I was looking at it thinking, oh my gosh, you're putting words to how I'm thinking, or how I'm feeling currently, or living, and some of it really gave me goosebumps. A couple of those passages I'll read today on the episode,

[00:03:32] but before we start, I did want to read a passage that I really like. I like it all, guys. So I'm going to just go ahead and read that passage. How miraculous it is to have been given the grace to embrace a moment in time and bask in the glory that comes with understanding and appreciating the fact of my death instead of running from that experience that all humans have. If anything is certain, it is that both you and

[00:03:59] I will die. It is the only given fact of our lives, and thus the only certain phenomenon that would make us all brothers and sisters in the kingdom on earth if we honor to not suppress this truth. Trees die too, you know. Human nature is akin to all nature. The less we care to have death in our lives, the more monstrous we become and the less natural we are. So I'm going to discuss part of

[00:04:25] that later. But before we dig any deeper into that, I do want to start out with you telling our listeners a little bit about your own grief journey. On the podcast, we call it our lost story. Our lost story. Well, I have a very interesting relate. I have present grieving that I'm doing, and I also have past grieving that is generational. And I think it's so I think it's interesting to talk

[00:04:54] about generational grief and how it's passed on. And I'll also talk about present grieving. And there's different, you know, you're grieving over death, the death of a loved one. And then there's grieving over the life, over life of a life that maybe didn't actually pan out. There's that kind

[00:05:17] of grieving too. Phoebe was my daughter who never was born, but was alive. She was my baby that I was carrying for 10 weeks. And she died on September 28th of this year. I had a ruptured appendix that

[00:05:44] became septic. And I went to the hospital and her heart stopped beating. And I just missed the life that never was able to be realized in real life. I also was in the hospital for about 30 days in the fall and in the

[00:06:05] winter. The ruptured appendix, the sepsis, the miscarriage. And, you know, there's this quote that I love, you know, that if you let grief in, you'll never be the same again. You know, it changes you. And I'm still like going through exactly what that looks like. And what that is like. And a lot of the

[00:06:30] plans that I had for myself at this point, like I was like, oh, I'm going to have the baby. We're going to move to Portland. I live in New York City. We're going to move to Portland. This book is going to come out. I'll promote it, but I'll also go back to school and become a therapist and all this, all this stuff that's just been like taken from me. And my body isn't even like ready to even try again.

[00:06:56] Um, this, but here's what I connect to. And I, and this is part of my process and it's something that is taboo and in present culture, but I believe in it. I feel it. Uh, I won't say I know it because knowing is like the absolute, but there is a belief in an afterlife. When I want, I grew up in the shadow

[00:07:24] of my grandfather's death. My grandfather was Conrad Mandel. He was told at a young age because of his kidneys, his kids, his kidneys fail. And he was told at a very young age that he would not live to be an old man. But instead of like having a small life, he went big. He like married the woman of his dreams. My

[00:07:48] grandmother, he, um, led a strike on mayor Fiorello as a police officer. He was kind of in the mafia a little bit. And he also boxed and stuff. And he like organized things on the lower East side, like wonderful man, big shot, like big, big, big, like big man wrote a literary journal, you know,

[00:08:09] like read Ulysses for fun, like just a big personality guy, big, like Italian kind of like, you know, Jewish Italian guy, you know? And, um, he died like at 47, I think. And he was very like abrupt. It was like, all of a sudden he went to the hospital and he died. And like, it kind of threw

[00:08:37] the whole family off balance. Um, and I grew up with stories because he lived such a full life. There were all these stories about him. So I had never met him, but my grandmother was an amazing woman. I mean, she was amazing. She was like fire. And I mean, she, she went to the Phil Donahue show once. I don't know, but I didn't, I don't know what Phil Donahue is. I just have the tape of him, but it's a little predated for me. But anyway, she, this is a talk show. Phil Donahue was a talk

[00:09:05] show and he'd go around in the audience with his microphone. And, um, my grandma, it was something about like, should kids be allowed to like, look at playboy. And my grandmother like raised her hand. She was like, kids should be kids. You should let them do whatever they need to do. Run around. And she was just like fire. And anyway, so she had a second husband, he died. Um, and she said she had

[00:09:34] a dream that Conrad had come to her right after his death. And it said, we'll be together again, but not for a very long time. And we've got to take care of our kids. Uh, so I'm moving along my life. And then, and my grandmother was like, doesn't want to, she's getting older. She's in her eighties. She doesn't want to go to hospitals. She has something wrong with her heart, but she's like, I don't want to spend my time in hospitals. This is, we are very similar. Okay. I don't want to spend my time in hospitals. I don't want to be spending time with doctors. I don't want to be going to

[00:10:02] trauma therapists or heart doctors or whatever. It's fine. I just want to live my life. You know, anyway, I had a dream in this dream. I was with my entire family and was really happy. And we were all together at grandma's house. And then we were at my house and Conrad came. My grandfather was in my dream. I had never met this man before. He was just in my dream. And I was like, what are you doing here? And he was like, I came to pick up a young girl,

[00:10:32] pick up a young girl, woke up, wrote it down. Cause I write my dreams down. Me too. Going about my day around two in the afternoon. I get a phone call. The grandma dot passed in the night. And of course I was like, just, you know, just tears. Right. But at the same time, at this dream. Yeah. I had had this dream and I was like, and my grandmother, like they were so,

[00:11:02] they were soulmates, you know, they were in love and, um, they are always with me. Like they're very much with me. Like I get my, my mother saw a psychic once. And like the psychic was like, your father is like looking out for somebody in New York city. And, um, I just like, like, like someone will say Conrad or like throughout my, like there's so many instances anyway. So like

[00:11:32] when I think about Phoebe tying this back to my present grief, I see her in my mind's eye with my grandma, my grandpa, like playing, you know, cause she was alive. Yeah. She was alive. She was, you know, breathing and like her heart was beating, you know? And, um, and I, and, and so like,

[00:11:58] like, you know, Hamlet says to Horatio, there are more things on heaven and earth ratio than our dreamt of in our philosophy. I love that quote because there are more things. There is a spiritual dimension that we can't in our third dimension really comprehend, but it's, I believe it's there. So, you know, my lost story, the lost story. And of course you can grieve relationships and you can

[00:12:25] grieve jobs and you can, but in terms of like the literal definition of death and dying, um, there's that. And there's also, you know, two times in the past five months I was fighting for my life, right? When my appendix ruptured, like that can kill you. And they didn't catch it. They were like, yeah, you're in a lot of pain. Maybe it's, you, you're, I'm, I'm a fairly thin person. And I'm,

[00:12:51] in a cat scan, everything's bundled up together. So they were like, we can send you home with pain meds or we can, we can maybe do an MRI. Would you want to like stick around? Cause it's what we're really packed. The emergency room was like, we're really packed. You want to like stay for an MRI or we send you home with pain meds. What do you want to do? And I was like, I'm here. I might as well get the MRI. And then they did the MRI and they were like, your appendix ruptured. We're sorry. Shit. Yeah. Oh my God. Right. They're like, we're sorry. We're going to start around the clock antibiotics.

[00:13:22] This is after I had been fighting for my life with a really bad case of sepsis. And if your readers don't know, sepsis is a blood infection that can kill you. It's a really bad, it's an infection where your, your organs shut down. So my urinary tract had shut down. My uterus was shutting down. If that's what Phoebe does, all this stuff. Um, and they said that I'm not, that I had appendicitis, but they were treating the sepsis and they let the appendicitis go. And I was

[00:13:46] released. And then a month later, the appendix ruptured and I, they couldn't take it out because there was an abscess, which is a ball of infection. And they couldn't drain that because there was near the bowels. So I was like, I was, I had a really tough time, but like the idea that like, I survived this tough time. I mean, I wrote, I had to do several living wills, which is where they like ask you, you know, do you want life support and stuff like that? And I made an actual will too,

[00:14:16] because I wasn't that it, it, I, there's the limit to modern medicine. You know, there's a limit. I would say that that's like a background of how I comprehend breathing. And like in my writing, I often, people ask me like, how is it you write, um, like with such an, a kind of a unique original,

[00:14:40] like way of speaking, you know? And I, I say like that, like, I haven't like an intuition and that intuition tells me there's more things that we can see it feel. And that like, I get to connect when I write, I feel like I'm connecting to another dimension kind of where all this information is. Yeah. I'm the same way when I, when I write,

[00:15:05] if I'm not, if I'm not interrupted, it changes. So as I start writing, I have this intention and I'm writing about it and thinking about it. And then all of a sudden it takes on a world of its own. And I can't, I can't write fast enough. It doesn't matter if I'm typing it or right. I like to write by hand, but you know, typing it, if it comes out fast and I feel like I need to type. And, um, and then you, you go back and you read it and you're like, wow, I wrote that. I mean,

[00:15:31] and that's really insightful or, oh gosh. And I love it. I love writing. I think it's actually a great way to even manage grief. I'm so sorry about your, um, losing Phoebe in the, in the, you know, this world. Um, and I agree. I, I, when I lost my kids, I even have a tough time still talking about it. Like it gets stuck in my throat sometimes. I hear it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I went through this

[00:16:02] huge existential crisis. I mean, everything, I was like, there is no afterlife when you're dead, you're die. You know, you're not going to see anybody afterwards, but then you have, then you talk about your dreams. And my youngest son came to me in the dream and was talking to me. And I knew in my dream that I wasn't dreaming. I knew that we were actually having a conversation about what had happened. And he was begging me to not push it to just, you know, it happened,

[00:16:26] just let it go. And, and he came back every night until I agreed to just let it go. They were murdered. Um, and so I had wanted to know why, like I was pursuing this, like, why, like, what was, what was the intent? Like, what was the motivation? Why would he do that? Um, and we never know. We never knew. We don't know. Um, and Matthew kept telling me, mom, you don't want to know. It

[00:16:51] doesn't matter. It just happened. So when I finally agreed to not continue pursuing that, um, I haven't seen him. And, um, same thing with when my grandfather passed away, I was very, very close to my grandpa and I had a dream where he showed up. He took my hand and we went into this field and he was talking to me about life and that he had to go. Um, and he gave me some very

[00:17:17] sage advice dealing with like my dad and family. And I was young as a teenager. And when I woke up, it was like, you know, he was gone. And, and I knew he was gone because they had called us and said that he had died like the night before, but still, you know, you're kind of in shock and you're like, he's not gone. And then he showed up in my dream and, and I wrote about it. Um, so when I think

[00:17:42] about those things and I go back, I think, well, I can't really say nobody can really say that there isn't any sort of an afterlife and after something, or maybe it's just our energies that, you know, fold back into the universe. I don't know. We don't know. Um, it's why we have religion and all the different things, because it's something that as a human being, we want to add, you know, attribute some logic to everything, but I have come back now from, oh yeah, there's nothing

[00:18:09] afterwards to, okay, there's something I just can't explain, you know? Yeah. Um, and I know that like, generationally we all grieve differently, especially, you know, because you have like what society has says that you should or should not do, or how you should process something in public or by yourself. Do you think that, um, as a millennial, that that has changed because it's evolved over

[00:18:35] time or because, you know, we're, we're learning more? Are they one in the same? Like, I don't know that it's, I don't know that it's, um, well, I don't know. You tell, you tell me, I'll keep my thoughts on that for a moment. Well, I would say, okay. I think millennials are much more open

[00:18:58] to exploring what is, and we're not doing this. Like we're, we are not the dumb, let me be very clear. The baby boomer population is living there. It's very, they're living a very long time, which is not just, that's not bad. I hope my parents live until 120. Okay. But the culture

[00:19:25] that they were raised in is the dominant culture still it's, it suppresses generation X and millennials and Gen Z definitely. Gen X is starting to come up a little bit, but like, um, the predominant baby boomer culture was one of suppression. Okay. Like they were, they were raised in the shadow of world war two and communism and the cold war. And really it was like fall in line. It was a fall in line.

[00:19:53] Yeah. Yes. It was very, it was very like, you're like in the, in the square or you're out of the square. Try to be in the square. Like, even if you're out of the square, you should really, you're stigmatized. Like eventually, like eventually hippies become in the square too. Like a big grow up, you know what I mean? Like, like even the rebellions, like even my parent,

[00:20:18] you know, even Woodstock, it's still the, the, even the, I, even if you're a rebel in the baby boomer world, you are still conditioned to like be that there's like a, that there is much that needs to be suppressed. Death definitely needs to be suppressed. Okay. Beer needs to be suppressed. Like the fact that all these leaders, these major leaders in the sixties dying, JFK, Martin Luther

[00:20:43] King, Malcolm, all these assassinations and the fact that a government could do these assassinations and these conspiracies and all that stuff, suppress, suppress, suppress. We're not going there. We're not going there. And like the impact of the idea that world war three was just around the corner. And we're going to like all hide. They would have, like, my mom would talk about how like they would have bomb threats and like, they, they, they would tell the kids to go under their desk as if that

[00:21:12] would like somehow save you. If a nuclear bomb like blew up, blew your school up, like, right. Like they grew up with so much fear and so much, like, this is how you need to behave because we need to, and, and to be fair, you need, after a world war where so many people died in the world, in the world, like genocide and, and, and, you know, congruently with everything that was happening with Russia too,

[00:21:40] like the Stalinistic purges. I mean, there was so much violence going on in the world at that time to recover from that. It needed a period of strict stability and suppression, right. To do that. But that time is over. It doesn't work. And people of my generation, millennials, especially, and I'll like move it into generation X too, but like, oh, I'm just speaking on my behalf. Like,

[00:22:09] we are very much like, what, what, what, really? Like, you're going to say you're, what are you talking about? Just say, no, you're telling me to be on Adderall. You're telling me that I have bipolar disorder and you're going to put me on Thorazine. You're telling me that I like, you're telling me I have all these diseases and you're giving me all these drugs. And you're also telling me just say, no, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? So when it

[00:22:36] comes to like grieving, right, like the grief process, my friends are dying of overdoses. That's the reality. My friends are killing themselves. Like the suicide rate in my generation, millennial generation is really high. The overdose rate is really high. We all, everybody I know, knows somebody in their inner circle that has died. Like from, from like, like, like not natural

[00:23:05] causes, but like suicide or drug overdoses. And so we are dealing and that's always been the case, but we're not dealing with it in a culture of where we're like, there's no reason to suppress this. You know, we're trying to find, we're trying to find grapple with death in a way that like, is our, is unique, is a way that brings it in, brings it up. Like we talk, we're talking about

[00:23:32] these things. How do we honor that person's life? Like, what do we do? We're not brushing it under the, under the rug. Like my friend Nick recently died and like all of us got together and like honored him and like said, you know, we, and we're still checking in with each other about it because it's just like, that didn't just happen. And now case closed. That's what did his life represent,

[00:23:58] you know? And why was he moved to take his own life? Like, and let's understand that. And let's not judge him either. Like, let's not judge him. Oh gosh. It happens so much. It's, it's, I'm sorry, but suicide should be thought of as a viable option. And I'm, and, and that sounds really taboo when I say that out loud in, in, in the, but, but everybody should wrestle with the idea of whether

[00:24:24] they want to keep going on this journey or not. Because when you, when I wrestle with the idea of, do I want to keep being here or not? Then I find a reason to be here and it invigorates the whole experience. But like, I, when I talk about like meditation and prayer, I believe in a higher moral authority than just like third dimension morals of like prayer works. How I was like many

[00:24:52] people in the, in the Milan generation that I've been speaking with as well as generations, the meditate regularly. Like it's part, like it's important and it's like, it's, it's really important. Um, and like, yeah, people like, like we all are, we're told to go see therapists. We've all been

[00:25:15] millennials were like raised on Adderall and like therapy, but I'm kind of like, I talk about it in the book. I'm like, so I have to go to this doctor to get these drugs that I became addicted to when I was a teenager. Oh, well, you know, oh, well, I guess that's what I'm doing. But like, let's just see through, like, it's a kind of a grift, right? It's about like seeing through it. It's not like,

[00:25:41] let's not take it on. Like, let's not take on the stigma. Let's not like, let the older generations make us feel bad about ourselves because they're sending us all these mixed messages. And it's the same thing with grieving. It's like the, like baby boomers maybe have like 20 more years to live, but I don't see anybody in that, in the baby boomer generation, really, really talking about

[00:26:10] what does death mean? It's just like, let's prolong it. Let's like, let's live as long as possible. And it's like, yeah. Okay. I hope you do live as long as possible. Life is good. Life is an interesting experiment, but like death is also something that should be talked about. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book. My dad doesn't like to talk. So my mom died two months before the

[00:26:36] kids were murdered. And it wasn't expected. So, and they'd been together for married for 54 years at that time, but had been together since like eighth grade, you know, and he really struggles talking about it. And, and I try to get him to talk about it. I'm like, this should be a normal conversation that we should be having. There's, there's nothing wrong with talking about death and where may work might where she be. And, you know, where are you and how are you feeling about that? And he won't because

[00:27:05] then he'll start to cry. He's like, no, I'm crying. I'm not going to talk about it anymore. Okay. And that's of course what I grew up with. And, um, and I find myself, I, I want to talk about it, but like what you're saying with baby boomers and, um, I'm gen X, I believe. Um, yeah. When

[00:27:28] people of my generation now, even, even people that were, I've been friends with for years and years after the kids died, it was like, they all kind of went away when I wanted to talk about it. And it was like, Oh, you know, you'll, you'll get over it. Well, I'm not going to get over it. They're still dead. There's no way over something like that. I'm sorry. No, no, it's just learning to live with

[00:27:54] it. Death can be, death is also a birth in, in my perspective. It's, it's not, there's not, it's all, it's just ending in a beginning for, for me, for wherever my kids and my mom are right now, whatever they're doing their next journey. And as when you start to kind of look at it that way, it helps me navigate a little bit better when I have those down moments or something's really

[00:28:19] triggering. Now I advocate for therapy and I found myself, I just never gave myself the time that I needed. So I went to a therapist, but I interviewed them. I think there were some really shitty therapists out there, um, with agendas. And so I interview people and the woman, my first thing is always like, I'm not going on a med. So if that's what you're going to propose, we can just cut our losses now. I'm also, I don't, I'm not religious. I'm not Christian. I don't subscribe

[00:28:48] to any kind of religion. Um, and so I don't want somebody who's this Christian who is coming in and saying, well, God, you know, has a plan. Okay. Whatever. I fuck that plan. I don't like the plan. And that's not why I'm here. So, um, the woman that I found, I, I really like her, but you also have to be careful not to make it a codependent sort of relationship either because, you know, she's

[00:29:15] did, has really replaced what my mom and my daughter were to me. Um, and I don't have somebody that I can, I really needed somebody that I could go and talk to about what I was thinking that I thought was so wrong. That isn't going to judge that isn't family or friends are going to start crying and talking about how they're missing them. Cause that's not what I needed. I just need an outside person, but I'm sciency. And so was she, this woman that I found. So it wasn't the, Oh, read this self-help

[00:29:43] book or read this book. It was, you know, there's a study on brain and grief and here's the, you know, here's the, the journal of that. And I've already vetted who paid for this study. Cause that was my first question. Like, well, who paid for the study, you know? And, and I read that and it really helps me. Like, that's what helps me. And I think it's important to find that, but also important to know, she's not telling me anything I don't know already, or she's not giving me any new tools that

[00:30:10] I don't already have and know what to do with them. It's just kind of helping me clear out the clutter a little bit. And then, but you know, do I need it for years and years? No, I don't. I think there's a, I think there is a benefit of holding space, holding space. Yes. Uh, and you have to find the right person who can hold space. And I also don't, I, I have gone to therapy at

[00:30:34] various points in my life and I reach a limit where I'm like, usually I'm like, clutter has been cleared. Thank you very much. We'll check in again if it, if it becomes messy, you know, but you do need like body work from time to time. Right. Or you need like mind work from time to time, or you need, um, recovery work from time to time. You know, I was in the hospital with like lots and lots and lots of,

[00:31:03] of opioids and medications and they were putting me on all this stuff. So, you know, I've been sober for a number of years. Sometimes I lean into the 12 step recovery. Sometimes I don't that, you know, like you said, it could become codependent, right? Like you can become codependent on anything. And it's just my big thing is, is that it's, you gotta be able to like look inside here and get right with

[00:31:30] the inner, inner self, the soul, the soul. Like everybody has my practice, um, given to me, my, my teacher, Dharma Mitra, who, uh, is that in his eighties, he's been practicing yoga for like 60, 70 years or something is amazing. And like, when, if you close your eyes in his presence, you see an aura, like if you don't believe in auras, you gotta go meet this man and close your

[00:31:56] eyes. And you're like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Those things actually exist. Okay. Yeah. But he said in every single person, there is a little spark of God dwelling in the center of your chest, right side of your heart, smaller than an atom, but that's where you got to connect right in there. And it's like, it's not out there, right? It's in here. You're like, I'm a huge fan of meditation. I'm a

[00:32:20] huge fan of writing, journaling, like getting in touch with this spark. Now, sometimes he also says everybody's a 100 watt light bulb, but sometimes it gets a little bit dusty and you have to clean it. So therapy can be used as a tool to like taking a paper towel right on, like cleaning the light bulb a little bit, right? Go to yoga class, clean the light bulb a little bit, right? Going to a meditation, doing meditation, clean the light bulb, taking some inventory, like 12 step inventory,

[00:32:48] cleaning light bulb, right? But none of these things we should like in the hospital, I was not able, and I still am not able to do my yoga practice. Okay. Can't use that. You know, like you can't, you don't want, or like, or for example, uh, I was working with, um, a therapist and then something happened in our conversation. And they said something that was just so out of whack. And

[00:33:15] I was like, Whoa. And I was like, Oh, okay. Well, I don't know if I want to continue working with this person anymore. And okay, well let's take it. Maybe, maybe I'm okay. Maybe we've done enough work where I'm okay. No. And, and like, and this might be the limit. Okay. You know, it's, I think it's just important to realize that these are all tools in your toolkit, but they're not the be all

[00:33:40] end all necessarily. You can't use those to avoid doing the deep work. You can't use those to avoid going through that loss and how it feels. You should be feeling it. You should be acknowledging it. You should be honoring it. And I think that oftentimes with, yes, I advocate for therapy,

[00:34:02] but I agree with you too, that, um, they, you can't use that, have that therapist tell you how you should be feeling, tell you who you are because they don't know. And you have to, unfortunately, you have to go through the hard stuff. If you really want to know one, who you are and to get through the grieving, to get, to get beyond the part where you just can't see,

[00:34:30] you know, your nose in front of you to, Oh, I see that now. And okay. That really sucked, you know, feeling that, but okay. Now I have, now I have a new purpose and honoring, you know, those that you've lost or, or anything that you've lost. And I think, and that's the tough part, right? Is acknowledging, recognizing, doing it without having somebody else tell you how it

[00:34:57] should be. There is no, how it's so different for each person. So the surgeon after the epidectomy, it was like, yeah, go back to living your life. But the surgeon was not like, Oh, like talking, like I was at an infection for five months and I wasn't, I had sepsis, you know, my body is not like returning back to normal. And I was for, for a little while after the surgery, I was like asking other doctors, I was like, what's going on? Why am I dizzy? Why am I tired? Why am I? And I was

[00:35:27] just making myself even more tired by like reaching out. And I was like, okay. So like, I just had surgery. I just had an infection for five months. Um, I have this miscarriage grief to deal with. Like, I, um, just need to stop. I just need to stop and rest and cry. I spent like

[00:35:50] a whole week crying, like tears, like probably haven't shed since I was a newborn child. Just like, you know, um, massive, massive purge of emotion. Um, and I'll probably still continue to do that as my body heals, the grief becomes more palpable. And it's not only grieving. It's also just like, it's also the idea that like, I'm still here after all that. And there's

[00:36:19] like a big kind of psychosomatic shock, you know, that comes in. And I just rebelled. I was like, I literally was like, I had set in motion all these doctor's appointments to make sure that I was going to stay out of the hospital. And then I still needed to go back to the hospital 10 days ago, because I had an infection that flared up and I'm like, you know, stop. Like, I was just like, I got to just

[00:36:47] trying to get outer validation about what I'm supposed to be doing. That's it. Exactly right there. Yes. Um, there was, I, cause I know we're running low on time, but, um, there was something that you had said or that you had written that I really liked it, like hit home for me. I don't know why I I've actually been meditating on it. Like, why did this, um, why was this so profound for me?

[00:37:13] But I wanted you to maybe, um, talk a little more about it. And the statement was, uh, the sentence, the less we care to have death in our lives, the more monstrous we become and the less natural we are. I love that. Um, can you talk more about that? Yeah. So I, I think just thinking of my, my father, when his father died in the Jewish religion, you're supposed to sit shiver for eight

[00:37:39] days. It's like a really beautiful way of incorporating and acknowledging death. And you're supposed to mourn for like a year and you go to services like once a week and you say the person's name, you know, and it really acknowledges that my dad, like just didn't want to grieve his father. And he, I don't think he's still, I don't think he's grieved it. Death is somehow stigmatized as something wrong. It's wrong that this happens. That's a big problem for us to carry

[00:38:08] around the shame of something that is natural. And that happens all the time. It distorts us. It makes us inhuman. It makes us manic. It makes us like the culture, the America. And I'm talking about when I talk about the book, I'm in that book, I'm talking about the American culture or Western civilization, but I'm an American. So I'm going to talk about American culture and I've been to

[00:38:34] Europe. It's, it's a little bit better, but you know, ultimately my experience in China and in, and then visiting there is just a different culture, an American culture. The fact that we cannot talk about death without like, well, we just can't talk about it. Really. We can't really have an honest conversation about the fact that this exists. We're all going to go through this. We're all going

[00:39:02] through it. It's, it's like, we talk about puberty, right? Oh, we prepare our kids for puberty. You're going to be going through some changes, right? We talk about having babies. Oh, you're going to be going through some changes. We talk, we're even getting more credence to menopause and like talking about that transition for women, you know, and we're talking about, we have a midlife crisis thing, which we like, you know, we say, okay, you're having your midlife crisis, right? But what about

[00:39:29] your end of life crisis? Or what about your end of life journey? Your end of life journey seems to be, it just seems to sneak up on everybody. And the dying person is confused and the people around the dying person is confused. And it's not even a confusion is the most, is the, is one of the best emotions you can experience. Another one is like, just dread. I see some, I see people being like, well, this is

[00:39:57] what, this is what has to happen. And it's like this smile that is like a joker smile. It's not a real smile. Inside there is a terror that's happening and we're masking the terror as opposed to being like, wait, wait. Cause we also live in a Christian society, right? And in, in, in the Christian society, you know, I'm not a religious person either. I mean, I come from a Jewish background, but

[00:40:23] and, and some Christian, but, but I wasn't, I don't like go to, go to, go to the institutionalized religions, but it's, it doesn't matter because it seeps into the culture, right? It's in the culture of like, it's a resurrection culture. You know, we're not talking about the death of the son of God. We're talking about the immortality of the son of God, right? We're not talking about that. We don't have a God, like in, in older cultures, there was a God of death and you prayed to God

[00:40:52] of death and the God of death, like told you rituals. I mean, the Egyptian culture, I have a wonderful book all about the book. It's called the book of the dead. And it's half that book. It's a fantastic book and it was read every day. The book of the dead was incorporated into life. And it was like, how does your spirit go about the earth? It was like, death was the reality. It's so backwards in that culture. Death was the reality. And what we did every day in life

[00:41:21] was like the delusion, like the dream. I mean, what, what, what, because it is the dream. I mean, we spend most of our lives not being most of the time, I guess, in terms of the human history, we're not being here. We're here for like a, a moment of blink, not, you know, not even that much. So the fact that like, when I say monstrous, it's the shame and the guilt and the negativity and the

[00:41:50] darkness and the confusion and the fear that we don't address. And we don't even talk about because you shouldn't be, this is true, but the way we say it matters, like you shouldn't be afraid of death because everybody's going to die. And it's just a natural process. And I'm just going through it and, you know, and I'm just grieving my mother. I'm grieving my father. Okay. Okay. I don't believe you. I don't believe you're just like going through the process. I don't,

[00:42:19] sorry. I mean, I think, I think you're telling yourself to go through the process. Yep. And I think you're distracting yourself with a bunch of other shit. Yep. Excuse my language. A bunch of other activities, right? Constructive activities. And I, but like, there's cultures that exist here and now, and they don't exist here now that someone would die and

[00:42:46] they, for a whole year, the immediate family would not be expected to do any of their household work in the tribe or in the mini civilization. That's how, like, that's how, like, like, like grief was like understood, you know, in the culture. Yeah. So I guess when I, you know, I think it's the,

[00:43:12] the feeling of this can't be something that we address. This cannot, we cannot because then it makes it real. It's real. It is real. And people die, like your experience, people die in horrible ways, in violent ways. You don't get to pick how, you don't get to pick when, it just happens when it happens.

[00:43:42] When my mom was real sick and I was trying to like make sense of it all. And I was out walking. I like to be in nature. And she used to make fun of me because she'd always say to me, are you going to go hug your favorite tree today? You know, are you going to go talk to your tree today? I like talk to nature. And the answer is always yes. Well, as I was walking, I had this

[00:44:06] burning desire to go to this. It was telling me myself, capital S was saying, go touch this tree. I'm like, what? People are going to look at me and it's busy over here. So I went and touched the tree and it was very, very warm. Um, you could feel like I could feel the life coming up and down and strong. And so then I got back on the path. I'm like, okay, what's your point? Nothing. I kept walking. I was like, now feel this tree. What? Okay. So I go and feel this tree.

[00:44:35] It's not as warm. Like, okay. Yeah. It's in the shade. So what, you know, I'm not, not thinking it through because I'm upset. So you know what my mom and as I get to the very end of the path, it says touch this other tree again myself. So I touch it. It's cold. Um, it's actually dying. The tree was dying. And then it just came like, this is the cycle of life. You are born, you live,

[00:44:59] and then you die. And then something else more, you know, as beautiful or more beautiful happens. And, um, when I got back to my car, I was like, oh, and I don't know why that would be profound because I know that, but for whatever reason I needed to be reminded of it. And, um, the experience, the experience, experiential activity of touching the tree. I love that.

[00:45:24] Yeah. And, um, you know, did it make it any easier losing my mom or know if she was dying or watching herself or no, but it gave me a little better understanding. And I felt like I could be more supportive and a part of that and maybe what she needed at the time. Well, we have run out of time. I'm getting way over. Um, but I did, I, I do want to close with another passage, um, from your,

[00:45:52] from your book. That's okay. And, um, we'll read it. It's, it's great. You guys, I I'll, um, circle back when this is out and let everybody know where you can get it and we'll put it in show notes again then too. But, um, here's the passage. We are alienated from mother earth. We are killing everything, all signposts, burning each branch of evidence that says I begin, I grow, I change,

[00:46:19] I die. Therefore it is not shocking that we are killing our planet. We war with one another about differences that at the end of the day do not really compensate for the fact that we are all so very much the same. If we looked in the mirror of a soul, we might find that instead of suffering, well, we may in fact like each other, and we might be able to like who we see in the mirror as we engage in the act of an honest curiosity about what it means to be here.

[00:46:49] We may find out we love ourselves and not because we read it in a self-help book is a good thing to say to a lost cause, which is at present, how most of us treat ourselves and our life. Life is meant to play in me. I must pick up my instrument and let the music come. DC, thank you so much for being our guest today. Uh, we hope that you find found this discussion

[00:47:12] refreshing in a way, um, and that you too pick up your instrument and let the music come. For any listeners interested in knowing more about DC, you can check out her website at dccopeland.com. Link will be in the show notes. I will also post an update. Like I said, um, as soon as the book societal dropout, a culture manifesto for the new millennium becomes available. If you enjoy our show, please hit like and follow us on your favorite podcast hosting site. That's it. Bye all.

[00:47:42] You may have noticed that our music for beyond goodbye has changed as well. And I would like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to George Morteo for his incredible work in creating the music for our podcast. Um, thank you for being a part of this and for being a part of our journey. And I truly look forward to continuing this partnership with you in the future. For those interested in knowing more about George,

[00:48:12] I will have details in show notes. Thanks all.