Seeing Death Clearly
Seeing Death Clearly is a show that challenges you to think about your beliefs about death, dying, grief, and living life. I am your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. As a death doula, I found through first-hand experience that the more I came to terms with my thoughts and feelings about death and dying, the more present I became in my everyday life and I hope to share that with you too, how you can live a better life by having a healthier relationship with death and dying. Each episode features a guest who shares their beliefs and stories about death and dying. These are honest conversations about a topic most of us avoided talking about our entire lives. I am on a mission to change that, one conversation at a time.
Episodes
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 hospice eventually brought her to the ...
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 exercises she uses with her students, in...
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 stories and experiences that woul...
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 celebrant Jill McClennen for a convers...
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, Jan and Trish have seen how often ...
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 appointme...
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 heart problems. During his ...
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 forward.
Mia shares what it was like growing up in communist Ro...
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, founder of Restfully, about why naviga...
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 communities, and help people make more...
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 training with INELDA in 2...
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.
Brandon describes mo...
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, serious illness, or unexpect...
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—where grieving participants ...
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 discuss the challenges many families ...
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-long “permission to grieve,&r...
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 better way to preserve stories, memories, p...
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, learn more about his life, and ...
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, often stay overnight in reclini...
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 her path from animal rights work...
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