Suzanne O'Brien I recently read an article that both shook me and soothed me. It was an interview with Suzanne O’Brien, a death doula who has sat beside over a thousand people as they took their final breaths. She’s been present in bedrooms, hospital rooms, and hospice centers from the U.S. to Zimbabwe, offering not just care but compassion, presence, and the rare kind of wisdom that only comes when time is running out.
As I read her reflections on the top three regrets of the dying, I felt a lump in my throat. Not because the insights were shocking, but because they were so painfully familiar. They echoed what I've felt and what I’ve been witnessing in some of the people I work with; and more personally, what I've witnessed in a friend I care deeply about who, at 65, is still stuck after many years of struggling. Still letting childhood trauma run the show. Still caught in a mental loop that keeps replaying old pain instead of writing a new story.
This blog post is for my friend, and for anyone else who needs a loving nudge to be inspired by messages from the dying and stop waiting until the end, only to be left with regret.
Regret #1: I didn’t live my purpose.
According to O’Brien, this is the most common regret she hears. Not jumping at a dream. Not taking the risk. Not exploring the pull toward something more.
We often think living our purpose has to mean quitting our jobs, launching a nonprofit, or becoming some kind of spiritual teacher. But living your purpose could be as simple and as profound as stepping out of complacency, creating beauty, expressing truth, nurturing others, or speaking out when it would be easier to stay silent. And yet, how many of us hold back?
We tell ourselves we’re too old, too tired, too uncertain, too late, too afraid. We listen to the voice of fear—the ego, as O’Brien calls it—and we stay safely in the known, never dipping a toe into the waters of the unknown where our soul might actually come alive.
What would your life be like if you stopped waiting?
What if you trusted that the ache inside you was guidance, not a nuisance?
What if you acted on the whisper before it became a scream?
It doesn’t have to be a leap. One tiny action a day is enough to build momentum. As O’Brien says, “If you did one thing every day toward an aligned goal, in a month, you’d have 30 things done.”
Regret #2: I didn’t allow myself to be loved as fully, and I didn’t love others unconditionally.
This one hit me hard. The friend I mentioned—the one I’m so deeply connected to—has a heart of gold, a brilliant mind, and a soul that shines when they let it. But too often, they hide behind sarcasm, rationalizing, justifying, and crippling fear.
Yes, they have been hurt. Deeply. And I get it. Trauma runs deep and does not release easily. But watching them live in defense mode, watching them maintain strict boundaries in the very places that most yearn for connection and expression and believing they have to be invulnerable to be safe, breaks my heart. Because in pushing love away, they are missing the thing they most long for most.
O’Brien says that unresolved emotional wounds are what keep people stuck. I see that every day in my work. I see it in myself. Forgiveness, she reminds us, is not a gift for the other person. It’s a liberation for ourselves.
Loving fully and receiving love require courage. They require the dismantling of old stories that say, I’m not worthy, or It’s too late for me. But the freedom on the other side? It is everything.
Part of my mission in legacy coaching is helping people release these old narratives that keep them from living on purpose and pinch them off from living and loving unconditionally. To create a safe space to tell the truth about what they’ve survived, but not let it define them forever. To make space for grace. To allow softness, connection, and intimacy back into their lives before they are lying on their death bed with regret.
Regret #3: I didn’t appreciate the now.
It sounds simple, right? Be present. Be grateful. But in a culture that rewards busyness and glorifies productivity and profitability, presence is a rebellion.
O’Brien shares how the dying often discover awe in the smallest things, like a breeze through the window, birdsong at dawn, the comfort of someone holding their hand. They finally see and feel what has been there all along.
I wonder why do many of us wait until our days are numbered to notice the beauty in them?
I’ve made it a practice in my own life—especially since selling my retreat center and shifting into the legacy phase of my life and my work—to savor the now. Morning tea before the world wakes up. The way my cat curls up beside me and purrs while I write. The joy of a good belly laugh with a friend who totally gets me. Time spent with my 89 year old Dad playing a few holes of golf.
These are the moments that are, in fact, life. They are part of legacy, too. Because how we live now determines the story we leave behind and the impact we have on our loved ones and on the world.
The Time Is Now
If you’ve read this far, I hope you’re starting to feel the tug, not of urgency, but of possibility. Whether you’re 45, 65, or 85, there is still time to change the ending of your story. You do not have to carry regret to your final breath. You do not have to keep letting fear make your decisions. You do not have to die with your music still inside you, your dreams unspoken or your heart armored.
The work I’m doing now through my HUMBLE Pathway to Legacy and my upcoming virtual event, From Career to Calling is about creating a space for these conversations. It’s for people who are done performing, done pretending, done living someone else's definition of success and ready to finally live according to what matters most to them. It’s for people like you. And yes, it’s for people like my friend, who I love deeply, who is still living in stuckness at 65, who I love deeply, and who I believe, deep down, desperately wants to be free.
Maybe this post will find my friend. Maybe it has found you. Perhaps you'll share it with another who might benefit from Suzanne's work. Either way, here’s what I'd like you to remember:
You were born for more than survival.
You deserve to love and to be loved fully.
You are already enough.
And it is never, ever too late to live a life you won’t regret.
As I read her reflections on the top three regrets of the dying, I felt a lump in my throat. Not because the insights were shocking, but because they were so painfully familiar. They echoed what I've felt and what I’ve been witnessing in some of the people I work with; and more personally, what I've witnessed in a friend I care deeply about who, at 65, is still stuck after many years of struggling. Still letting childhood trauma run the show. Still caught in a mental loop that keeps replaying old pain instead of writing a new story.
This blog post is for my friend, and for anyone else who needs a loving nudge to be inspired by messages from the dying and stop waiting until the end, only to be left with regret.
Regret #1: I didn’t live my purpose.
According to O’Brien, this is the most common regret she hears. Not jumping at a dream. Not taking the risk. Not exploring the pull toward something more.
We often think living our purpose has to mean quitting our jobs, launching a nonprofit, or becoming some kind of spiritual teacher. But living your purpose could be as simple and as profound as stepping out of complacency, creating beauty, expressing truth, nurturing others, or speaking out when it would be easier to stay silent. And yet, how many of us hold back?
We tell ourselves we’re too old, too tired, too uncertain, too late, too afraid. We listen to the voice of fear—the ego, as O’Brien calls it—and we stay safely in the known, never dipping a toe into the waters of the unknown where our soul might actually come alive.
What would your life be like if you stopped waiting?
What if you trusted that the ache inside you was guidance, not a nuisance?
What if you acted on the whisper before it became a scream?
It doesn’t have to be a leap. One tiny action a day is enough to build momentum. As O’Brien says, “If you did one thing every day toward an aligned goal, in a month, you’d have 30 things done.”
Regret #2: I didn’t allow myself to be loved as fully, and I didn’t love others unconditionally.
This one hit me hard. The friend I mentioned—the one I’m so deeply connected to—has a heart of gold, a brilliant mind, and a soul that shines when they let it. But too often, they hide behind sarcasm, rationalizing, justifying, and crippling fear.
Yes, they have been hurt. Deeply. And I get it. Trauma runs deep and does not release easily. But watching them live in defense mode, watching them maintain strict boundaries in the very places that most yearn for connection and expression and believing they have to be invulnerable to be safe, breaks my heart. Because in pushing love away, they are missing the thing they most long for most.
O’Brien says that unresolved emotional wounds are what keep people stuck. I see that every day in my work. I see it in myself. Forgiveness, she reminds us, is not a gift for the other person. It’s a liberation for ourselves.
Loving fully and receiving love require courage. They require the dismantling of old stories that say, I’m not worthy, or It’s too late for me. But the freedom on the other side? It is everything.
Part of my mission in legacy coaching is helping people release these old narratives that keep them from living on purpose and pinch them off from living and loving unconditionally. To create a safe space to tell the truth about what they’ve survived, but not let it define them forever. To make space for grace. To allow softness, connection, and intimacy back into their lives before they are lying on their death bed with regret.
Regret #3: I didn’t appreciate the now.
It sounds simple, right? Be present. Be grateful. But in a culture that rewards busyness and glorifies productivity and profitability, presence is a rebellion.
O’Brien shares how the dying often discover awe in the smallest things, like a breeze through the window, birdsong at dawn, the comfort of someone holding their hand. They finally see and feel what has been there all along.
I wonder why do many of us wait until our days are numbered to notice the beauty in them?
I’ve made it a practice in my own life—especially since selling my retreat center and shifting into the legacy phase of my life and my work—to savor the now. Morning tea before the world wakes up. The way my cat curls up beside me and purrs while I write. The joy of a good belly laugh with a friend who totally gets me. Time spent with my 89 year old Dad playing a few holes of golf.
These are the moments that are, in fact, life. They are part of legacy, too. Because how we live now determines the story we leave behind and the impact we have on our loved ones and on the world.
The Time Is Now
If you’ve read this far, I hope you’re starting to feel the tug, not of urgency, but of possibility. Whether you’re 45, 65, or 85, there is still time to change the ending of your story. You do not have to carry regret to your final breath. You do not have to keep letting fear make your decisions. You do not have to die with your music still inside you, your dreams unspoken or your heart armored.
The work I’m doing now through my HUMBLE Pathway to Legacy and my upcoming virtual event, From Career to Calling is about creating a space for these conversations. It’s for people who are done performing, done pretending, done living someone else's definition of success and ready to finally live according to what matters most to them. It’s for people like you. And yes, it’s for people like my friend, who I love deeply, who is still living in stuckness at 65, who I love deeply, and who I believe, deep down, desperately wants to be free.
Maybe this post will find my friend. Maybe it has found you. Perhaps you'll share it with another who might benefit from Suzanne's work. Either way, here’s what I'd like you to remember:
You were born for more than survival.
You deserve to love and to be loved fully.
You are already enough.
And it is never, ever too late to live a life you won’t regret.
RSS Feed
