We're Doing Death Wrong: What Facing Death Taught Me About Living with Dre & Em

In this episode Dre shares the ongoing integration of her recent death doula training — an experience that began with a surprising invitation: before learning how to support others at the end of life, she first had to face her own mortality.

What started as curiosity quickly opened into something deeper. Dre and Em circle around grief, awe, ritual, and the ways our culture avoids talking about death — often making loss even harder when it inevitably arrives.

Dre reflects on her father's passing, the unexpected healing that can happen in the dying process, and the truth she discovered through the training: the body knows how to die, just as it knows how to be born.

They explore why we are such a death-phobic culture, what it means to "die well," and how learning to witness — rather than fix or control — may be one of the most sacred roles we can play for one another.

This conversation moves through grief, laughter, fear, love, and even Dre's imagined memorial service. Because for Dre, death is not simply an ending — it's part of the same mystery that makes life so precious.

If facing death can bring us more fully into the present moment, maybe learning how to die is actually one of the greatest invitations to live.

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Stay connected with the Circle This team:

@andreabendewald @circlethispodcast

@emkratter @goodmessmedia @talkwithtrace For sponsorship inquiries, email: circlethispod@gmail.com