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Emma Rossi, Co-Manager of the Sacred Heart Biography Service, was recently a guest on the Passing Thoughts podcast. During the 20 minute interview with host Jane Mundy, Emma gets into the knitty-gritty of running the service and why it’s important.

The Sacred Heart Biography Service matches highly trained volunteers with palliative care clients in order to produce a legacy document about their life. Typically a volunteer will visit for an hour or so once a week, gathering information for these biographies. They are then edited and printed and along with digital copies are presented back to the client and/or their loved ones.

During the interview Emma speaks to how many clients don’t feel they have anything interesting to offer until they begin the process and are often surprised by what comes up once they have had time to build up trust with their volunteer. Biography volunteers have a unique role as a non-judgemental listener, the listening is very important. That and the skill to draw out stories.

“It’s both a therapeutic and biographic process,” Emma says, “The opportunity to reflect is particularly important in the later stages of life. There is a real skill in working with a client to create a document that is both of value to them as a life reflection activity and of value to their loved ones as a legacy document.”

The Passing Thoughts podcast from 2RPH tackles everything in life’s final chapter. Hosted by Rob Kaldor, the series explores the raw edges of grief, the ethics of voluntary assisted dying, the intricacies of palliative care, aged care, wills, and the deep mysteries surrounding the afterlife and near-death experiences. Passing Thoughts aims to shift the idea that talking about death is taboo and strives to improve death literacy through honest, engaging, and sometimes surprising conversations.

The first episode “A time to live and a time to die: Embracing the End” features former NSW Senior Australian of the Year and plenary speaker at the 2023 Palliative Care Volunteer Conference Teresa Plane. You can listen to Emma and Teresa’s interviews, along with all the others on the 2RPH website here.

Listen to Passing Thoughts live on 2RPH every Thursday at 3:30 pm. Find them on 1224AM, 100.5FM and DAB+ in Greater Sydney, 100.5FM in Newcastle and the Lower Hunter, 93.3FM in Wollongong and the Illawarra, or via the 2RPH website.