Liz Orgill
Navigate End-of-Life Conversations with Liz Orgill
Liz is a marketing consultant with extensive experience helping organisations tell their stories. Now also training to become an End of Life Doula with Living Well Dying Well, Liz is passionate about supporting others in navigating life’s transitions, particularly the end-of-life journey, through empathy and open, meaningful conversations. Follow Liz on LinkedIn.
Talking about death is never easy, but avoiding it only makes things harder when the time comes. That’s why I invited my friend and marketing consultant Liz Orgill to share insights from her training as an end-of-life doula.
Whether you're caring for aging parents, supporting a loved one through their final months, or simply want to be more prepared, this conversation offers both practical steps and emotional guidance to help you navigate this inevitable part of life with more clarity and confidence.
Liz shares the key areas to consider—physical, emotional, financial, and relational—and how small but intentional actions can ease both your loved one’s experience and your own. She also highlights why understanding your own relationship with death can change how you show up for others and yourself.
Practical Takeaways from This Episode:
✔ The essential conversations to have with loved ones before it’s too late
✔ How to advocate for your parent’s end-of-life wishes (especially if they want to stay at home)
✔ The emotional and sensory experiences of dying—and how to create comfort
✔ Why checking in with yourself daily is crucial if you're caring for someone else
✔ How prioritizing rest and reflection helps you handle life’s hardest moments
This is an episode filled with warmth, wisdom, and practical insights to help you feel more prepared for the inevitable transitions we all face.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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Introduction to Liz Orgill and End of Life Doula
Lucia Knight: When I heard that Liz Orgill, an amazing marketing consultant and friend, was training as an end of life doula in her spare time, I was on the phone like a shot. As I record this, I'm 52 years old, and over the last few years, it seems like every friend, colleague, neighbor, and client seems to have experienced the loss of a loved one, The threat of loss of a loved one, or a personal health scare that could be life ending.
In the UK, we don't talk about dying very often, or very deeply. So when it comes calling at our doors, We're just not prepared, emotionally, physically, or practically. I encourage Liz to pop in and share some insights from her training to make your next experience with death a little easier. And let's face it, we're all going to have at least one of those experiences.
Let's dive in.
The Importance of Conversations About Death
Lucia Knight: Liz, what kinds of conversations are really valuable to have when someone we love is dying?
Liz Orgill: That's a really important question to ask ourselves and our loved ones, isn't it? Because we might think as well that we know what those conversations are, but they might have different views on what those conversations are too. And there was a really important detail that came out of my training that I did, which was a line that said, It's about what matters to you, not what is the matter with you. And that was really powerful. And I think the important part for us as professionals and people who are busy in our lives, who want to do the best for our family members, our loved ones. We think it's important to get busy and do all the practical things.
And sometimes I think maybe just take a breath and think to yourself, this person. You love them and you know what you need to do to make them feel loved. So there's lots of things that you can straight away start to think about, maybe even just make a big list of all of those things that you know makes your loved one feel loved or even what you how you want to be loved.
This is important conversation for all of us to ask ourselves, even if it's not someone we're caring for. This is something we need to know for ourselves too.
Practical Considerations for End of Life Care
Liz Orgill: There's some clear areas that we could think about when we're considering that question. So physical care would be something that I think a lot of people find more obvious.
And financial, what situation the finance is in, what's the practical elements of looking after somebody when they're dying. There's also people to think about, who should be there, who shouldn't be there. Does the person that you love want quiet time on their own?
Or are they somebody who needs somebody with them who will feel alone? What are those realities for that person? And when we're saying who are the people who shouldn't be there, there may be people who. Who they've had problems with in their lives or who drain them, for example.
So let's think about those things.
Location. So does that person when they die? Do they see themselves being at home? Do they see themselves preferring to be in a hospice where there's access to medical people like on hand and people around them or hospital?
Most people would prefer to die at home, but most people don't. So something that you might want to take forwards looking after somebody in that situation is to really advocate for that person to be at home. And sometimes you may need to shout a little bit louder to make that happen, but it's possible. It's very practical.
It's doable. You just got to make sure that you get heard.
Lucia Knight: Oh God, there's so much to think about, isn't there? And it's really nice having those sort of buckets. So that we can think about what the practical things, what are the conversation? What about the emotional ties? Do they want those people around? Do they not want those people around? Brilliant. Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to listen to this back and then think about those things separately.
Emotional and Sensory Aspects of Dying
Liz Orgill: This is about what matters to them. Smells can be enhanced as somebody goes through the dyeing process. So be aware of that. But there may be specific things. If that might be something to be aware of, actually, is sometimes there may be smells within the room that they're in, that they are overpowering. But maybe it means just opening a window, things like that. What are the views that they enjoy? And sometimes that you don't have to actually have to take them to that place where they enjoy those views. If they're not able practically to do that, you might want to just ask them to close their eyes and just talk them through that lovely place that you've enjoyed together.
There's some magical things that can be done
Lucia Knight: Oh my goodness.
Liz Orgill: To help somebody through that process.
Lucia Knight: Brilliant. Let me come at this from a slightly different angle then.
Supporting Aging Parents in Their Final Months
Lucia Knight: Is there anything that we, that I, that we as midlife professionals can actually do to understand how best to support our parents? If we still have them, if we're fortunate enough to have them, but to support our parents in the last months of their lives, beyond what we've talked about already.
Liz Orgill: Again something that has come from the training that I've done, and this was really right up front at the beginning but its an important thing to do as we get closer and closer to the death of our loved one, is to really check in with yourself. Initially, I think it's a really good exercise, and it's something that we all did within the group that I shared the space with.
We all had to consider what our experience was with death, what our experiences were, where our views were coming from on death. So thinking about how it was handled when we were young the experiences that we've had since the formative moments that have changed our position on death that might be, spiritually, whatever it might be.
And then to remember that my person has had all those experiences, too, and they'll be very different.
When we really think about everybody's own experiences, everyone's view on death was completely different. It would be so difficult to have exactly the same makeup of v Views on death, because we've all had such different life experiences.
Lucia Knight: So understanding our understanding of death and our story of death , how does that help us help them?
Liz Orgill: It would be good to have lots of conversations with your loved one about what their stories are, what their experiences are. As you're getting closer just think about how your story might be influencing how you're feeling.
Just look after yourself as well, because gosh, you're not doing that, are you? A lot of people aren't doing that. They're looking after everybody else in the situation. And they're not looking after themselves.
Self-Care for Caregivers
Liz Orgill: And if, one thing, one little tip, if you like, would be to, every morning, just really sit and think about how you feel.
Lucia Knight: Yeah.
Liz Orgill: Because I think that's something that people lose when they're going through that experience is how do I feel and you are okay, but you may just be having a moment where today something has happened this morning and it's impacted you or something you're thinking about from yesterday. You are okay. It's hard to recognize that, but at least if you can recognize how you feel today, you have checked in with yourself.
Lucia Knight: Lovely, because you're giving a lot of energy, emotional, physical, time, et cetera, to someone else to just give yourself that moment. Lovely. And that, that leads to my final question. As we age. Midlifers understand that we're going to be dealing with death more often while still coping with the juggling and the busy life and the busy work and the career and the family, if we're lucky enough to have them like it's so busy.
Do you have any pointers to help us focus on what's important at the right time?
Liz Orgill: So I've been on a retreat this weekend and I've had a moment to myself. And that's something that a lot of people don't do. Yeah. So to be able to focus on what's the right thing, you've got to stop,
Lucia Knight: Oh, yeah,
Liz Orgill: Because everything that we're dealing with is filling up a bucket and that bucket has to be emptied or otherwise it will overflow. So we have to stop and We have to sleep. I think sleep is really important at this stage. I know that's easier said than done for some people, but however that happens, if you're tired, sleep. isn't it funny that it's so similar to birth and having a newborn, you're not finding those moments to sleep but they all tell you, don't they, to sleep when you can.
And I think that's the same in this instance. It's not going to be practical all the time and you're going to be tired and there's and you will try to sleep and you won't be able to, but if you can sleep, then sleep. And if you can't sleep, stop.
Final Thoughts and Life Satisfaction Assessment
Lucia Knight: If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
