Deadly Serious Conversations

Motor neurone disease or MND as it is also known, is a devastating illness. It attacks the nerve cells that control our muscles, while the mind and personality can remain completely unaffected. As the disease progresses, muscles gradually waste away, eventually affecting a person’s ability to move, swallow and speak. For someone living with MND, as the disease progresses it usually becomes much more about quality of life and dignity. In Victoria, voluntary assisted dying or VAD, is avai...

The life changing gift of organ donation This episode is very personal to me and I would like to dedicate it to my beautiful friend Carol. Without Carol, this podcast , Deadly Serious Conversations, would not exist. It was Carol who first suggested that I create it and with her encouragement she set everything up for me. In fact, she is also the reason I am a celebrant as she told me 17 years ago, that she had found the perfect job for me. In the week between recordi...

Later this month, we will mark DonateLife Week, a time that encourages all of us to have one of the most important conversations we can have with the people we love. Organ donation is something many of us support, yet so few of us have actually spoken about our wishes with our family. And when the time comes, those conversations can make an incredibly difficult decision just a little bit easier. On today's episode of Deadly Serious Conversations, we explore organ donation and what it means, h...

At some point in our lives, every single one of us will experience grief. None of us are immune to it. Grief is the price we pay for love. If we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. And yet, even though death is something every one of us will encounter, we rarely talk about it openly. That silence creates stigma and it can leave people feeling incredibly alone at a time they need the most support. This is especially true in the workplace, a place where many of us...

Disasters happen……. tsunamis, terrorist attacks, bushfires, pandemics. No amount of wishing they didn’t happen makes them go away. But it’s comforting to know there are people preparing for these situations. People like Lucy Easthope. Lucy has played a vital role in the response to some of the world’s most significant disasters such as 9/11, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 7/7 London bombings, the Manchester Arena attack and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic to name but a few....