Learn how the death of her son inspired Dianne Gray’s current work as a death doula and patient advocate.
My guest Dianne Gray is a death doula, grief specialist and the Chief Innovation and Patient Advocacy Officer at Acclivity Health. After her son’s death from a rare neurodegenerative disorder she has dedicated her life to improving care for all adults and children facing serious illness. She shares her long journey with grief and how it has shaped and informed her work and her life.
This episode includes:
- How Dianne survived the end-of-life journey and death of her son
- The best and worst experiences of the dying process
- How Dianne’s encounters with death and grief led her to the mission of helping others facing loss
- Why death and grief are part of the wellness movement and must be included in life in order to be whole
- What Dianne learned about life from the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- Simple tools to ease grief and improve resilience
- Therapy works for some people and not for others – keep searching for a good fit with a therapist
- Learning that grief is a long journey to become someone new
- Why viewing life as a fascinating adventure is helpful (and we never know what might happen next)
- How social media can help or harm our grieving process
- How Dianne works virtually as a patient advocate to get patients admitted to hospice and palliative care
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Get text-based grief support at Grief Coach
- Register for Q&A with Becky Aud-Jennison
- EKR Foundation
- Acclivity Health
- Leave me a message by email: karen@karenwyattmd.com, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
- Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
- Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
- Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
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