Trudy James: Ahead of Her Time

Foreign. Welcome to the Art of Risk, a podcast exploring gutsy choices by colorful characters. I'm Deborah Jarvis. And I'm Naseema Sefi.

Today we're interviewing Trudy James. Trudy is an interfaith chaplain and has served in many different ways over her 78 years. She's taken some pretty big risks, emotional ones, spiritual ones, and we'll get to those. But she's taken some pretty big professional risks too.

Starting an AIDS care team program in the 1980s in Arkansas. It was so successful she was honored at the White House by President Clinton. She took another risk by leaving that successful care team program to move to Washington state and help build up another program here in Seattle. She worked with care teams until 2007 when she retired.

But then she took another risk and created a small business called Heart Work and began a series of community based end of life planning sessions called A gift for yourself and your loved ones. These sessions were so inspiring to people that Trudy decided to make a documentary about them. Her 30 minute film, speaking of Dying captures the voices and stories of people becoming comfortable speaking of dying. Trudy, welcome to the Art of Risk.

I'm thrilled to be here. Trudy, we're so happy to have you. You're an expert at living deeply and dying well and have studied the spiritual issues around that journey as an interfaith chaplain. Where did it all start?

How did you become so comfortable with risky conversations? Where did it all start? Sometimes I say it started with my AIDS work because it was so risky to talk about AIDS in the 80s and such a fearful subject to everyone. And my job was to do AIDS education in the churches in Arkansas which were hysterical about AIDS and fearful.

And also then to recruit and train volunteers to be on teams to take care of people with aids. And in doing that, they had to listen to young people talk about their own death. And my job was to help them get comfortable with that. So really that's where the seeds come from for the work I do now.

Long before that, I was doing risky things in relation to religion and spirituality because that's just what I've always done. So this is what I like about being in my 70s. And when you're in your 70s, you can look back at your whole life and you can see that a lot of things that didn't make sense and seem really like failures or frustrations at the best were really leading to what you do now. That's a wonderful thing to get to review your life like that.

What are some of the first risks that you can remember taking as an individual the spiritual ones you alluded to, perhaps. Well, I was raised in a small town in the middle of Kansas by very devoted Missouri sended Lutheran parents. That may not mean anything to most people, but it's a denomination that is particularly sure that it's the only way. There's no other way.

Martin Luther gave them the way. And so it meant everything to my family. And I went to church every Sunday, tiny little church. I wasn't allowed to go to any other churches or interfaith gathering.

And when I went to college, I was the president of the Missouri Synod Lutheran students. My first year, I was at a big university at the University of Kansas, and I was in the gifted student program. So I was learning all these many philosophical and sociological ideas. And one day I was looking out from the campuses on a beautiful hill and I was looking out and thinking, oh my gosh, that religion I believed in so thoroughly can't explain life, doesn't explain what it's all about.

I can't do this anymore. And so then I thought I was an atheist for a year. That's what college sophomores think. Then I thought I was an agnostic for a year.

And then I went to the Episcopal Church to a little service in the Danforth Chapel. And it felt like coming home to me. Here was something, here was a religion that I could espouse because it was for thinking people and it was about music and art and things that I loved. So I took a class from the Episcopal chaplain and decided I would join the Episcopal Church.

This was a huge risk in terms of my faith family because it was so devastating to them. And my mother said she was disowning me. And they said I couldn't come home for Thanksgiving. And then little by little, they softened, but they never would speak of it.

My mother never told her family members. It was really very hard for my mother at the time. I was probably not thinking so much about her, but thinking, this is what I have to do to be true to myself. And then that decision led to the rest of my life in a way, because they had us write a paper in the little class to join the Episcopal Church.

And I don't remember what I wrote, but whatever I wrote affected the college chaplain so much, he took it to the bishop of the Diocese of Kansas, and the bishop invited him to bring me to meet him. And when I went, they gave me a full scholarship to Union Seminary in New York City. So. Wow.

Yeah. Which was a big risk. My parents, I'd Never been east of Kansas, maybe. I did some other risky things in college.

I. I admired these older girls when I was a freshman. They were Episcopalian, and they invited me to go to San Francisco, San Francisco, for the summer instead of going home to work in my hometown. And I said yes and went with them and lived in San Francisco for the summer.

And that was also very scary for my family. And then came back, and the next summer, I couldn't find anyone to go to San Francisco with me. So I went by myself and spent the summer there. Wow.

And did any of that feel risky to you personally? Not really. Yeah. It was all about the family.

It sort of felt like what I had to do to. I don't know. I was an adventurous person. Yeah.

It doesn't sound like you regret any of those risks that you've mentioned. I don't regret them. I regret hurting my family, but I had to do it to be who I was, so. Exactly.

Are there any risks that you do regret? Well, that's a hard question, really, because of how old I am and what I can see. Looking back, I took a big risk in marrying my first husband. We were very different.

And I wanted to marry an Episcopal priest. And he was very smart, and I was very intimidated and wanted to know everything he knew, which I probably knew a lot, but I didn't think I did because I carried those seeds from my earlier religion that didn't think women knew much. And it took me a long, long time to get over that. And so that marriage was difficult and challenging, but I have three wonderful children.

You don't really regret that risk? I can't regret that risk. I regret staying for 22 years, but I couldn't think of any way out. I was very unsure of myself.

Women didn't get divorced that easily those days. And I'm speaking as a woman who has had an easy divorce. Huge stigma. Yeah.

So my mother, who didn't ever approve of me being an Episcopalian, but it was better because I was married to a man who was a priest, and she was not supportive. No one in my family was supportive of me getting a divorce. No. And all of my social life and spiritual life revolved around the congregation that we were a part of.

And he had a large church. And when I left, I had really no support system at all. Did that feel risky, making that decision, or did it feel survival felt scary and risky? Yes, it felt very risky.

But I had to do it. You know, that's a way with risk. It often you do it because it Feels like something that you just have to do, even if it's risky, you know, I didn't know where it would lead. Where did you find your strength and courage from?

Given that you're painting yourself as this somewhat insecure person as a young person, and yet we know you today to be so courageous and fearless. Where did you. Where do you mobilize your inner strength? Yes, I always have felt that I was called to do something and that I had to keep moving toward whatever it was I was here on this planet to do.

And that's really where my strength always came from. For each of those decisions I've described. You can call it destiny, or you can call it fader, you can call it God, or you can call it the greater good. But I've always felt there was something that I was supposed to do.

And you were sure of that calling. You had clarity around that calling. I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I had that when I wasn't doing it, I had to move toward it.

So all of these decisions I felt were moving me somewhere toward something. And is it something you felt in your body, in your gut instinct, in your emotional state? I guess I would say it's all of those. It was a whole person sense, intuition, you might call it, or strong sense that there was something that I was moving toward, even though I had no idea what it was.

And really what I thought it was was ordination. Because that's all I knew that you could do to serve God. From my frame of reference, that was the only way you could be called would be to be called to be ordained. And since the Episcopal Church wasn't ordaining women at that time, I couldn't figure out what it was I was called to.

After my divorce, I went to work for the Episcopal Church as a Christian educator. That wasn't it. But I felt I was supposed to work for the church because as I said, I didn't know any other way to serve. A calling.

And it didn't work out for me. I got into a deacons. Women could be deacons, they couldn't be priests. And I got into deacons formation program, went through a whole year of training.

At the end of that year, they had a meeting of all of us candidates with a commission on the ministry. That's how they do it in the Episcopal Church. So I had this long interview and at the end they said all the others got called back and told they were going to be deacons. No, they called me back and said, we don't see a vocation to the diaconate.

We see that you might be called to be a priest, but we're not ordaining women priests, so you'll have to leave this diocese. Wow. Well, really now, with the wisdom of age, I think they wanted to get rid of this troublemaker woman who had divorced a priest at the time. I was crushed.

And a younger priest in the diocese said, why don't you go to clinical pastoral education, chaplaincy training and see if you can discern your real vocation since you don't seem to know what it is. That was a big risk also because there were no programs open. It was so late in the year. The only program open was in the state of Washington.

So I was living in Kansas and I came out to the Tri Cities and did my first unit of CPE there. Wow. And I had a small job for the diocese doing youth work. I had created this big youth program in the diocese which they had liked, I thought.

And in the middle of my summer training program, they decided not to have that program anymore. So I had no job and no really home and no place to go back to. And my CPE supervisor said, well, you seem to be liking this chaplaincy work, so why don't you do an internship? Why don't you do a one year internship?

So we looked to see where they were open and there was one in Hawaii, one in Spokane, Washington and one in Little Rock, Arkansas. And I wanted to go the closest one to my children. All my children were in college by then. They were all in college in Kansas.

So I chose Little Rock, Arkansas, where I had never been and never thought of going, and went there and did a year chaplaincy in the medical center there. It was huge for me. I loved being a chaplain anyway. That was a calling to me and I still consider myself a chaplain.

Chaplains get to do wonderful things. They get to listen to people while people discover things about themselves. So it's a great job. But I got all the AIDS patients in that one year.

And it was early in AIDS and the AIDS patients were at the end of the hall and were dying all alone and were being treated terribly and everybody was afraid of them. I thought I would go back to Kansas and be a chaplain where my children were. And I was still thinking that the Episcopal Church would ordained me. That's just being stubborn because to happen.

But. But I. It could happen now, right? Well, many, many times since those days they've asked me and now I don't want it anymore.

You know, irony, right? Seem a lot about that. I'm very happy with being my own authority. So, anyway, I went to my supervisor, came to me.

I didn't have a job in Kansas being a chaplain. And he said, there's going to be a new position in Arkansas doing AIDS work in the churches. Why don't you apply for that? And I said, that's going to be a terrible job.

Not one church person has visited anyone with AIDS in this hospital. The churches don't want anything to do with aids. He said, well, take it home and think about it. And I look at home, and while it was laying there on my table and I wasn't thinking about it, I got a letter from my mother in my hometown saying one of my closest high school friends had died of aids and they wouldn't have a funeral in my hometown.

And his mother hadn't come out of the house, and she heard it about his death. And I laid down and took a nap and dreamed about him and decided, I have to fill out that application because there are people in churches who would not want this sort of thing to happen. Wow. And that's how it happens that I applied for that job.

It was. Now, this was a very big risk because the job was halftime and paid $11,000 a year, and I had no money, and I was in Arkansas, and I filled it out and I got the job. And it was a risky job. I was sure that it was supposed to happen, and I was always convinced that it would work.

And it did work. So I started these care teams with my little. With the church I was attending at that time, my home church. And they had coffee hour after church on Sunday mornings.

And I remember this man saying to me, what's a nice girl like you doing taking a job like that? Wow. As if you're working at a CD bar or something. Yeah.

And then they had a meeting, and two people voted. I mean, they voted whether we could even have the program there. And two people left the church over it because they said, we don't want those faggots in this church. Wow.

So that's the way it was then. And I feel like that work we did with AIDS laid the groundwork for the good things that have come later. You took a lot of risks as a young person, and I'm just wondering, was there anybody in your life that was a role model for you as far as being a risk taker, or did you just come by that by following your own star? I'll say this.

I think if there is such a thing genetically I came by it from my mother, who was a really strong person. She didn't approve of the risks I took, and she was no role model for me, except that she was devoted to her faith tradition. And in my own way, I've been devoted to what I see as my spiritual tradition. So she was devoted to her path.

And you're devoted to your. So she was strong in that. And she was so strong, she was willing to disown her daughter over it. I'm very strong about the path I've followed.

There was another woman I babysat for when I was quite young who was very out of place in my very conventional, small hometown. And when I go to babysit her two little boys, they would be running around destroying the house, and she would be in the playpen reading this. Portals of prayer. Oh, my God.

She was. She was very interested in spiritual things, and I was very young, and she would talk to me about them. In our family, you just. Just did what was right.

You did not talk about it. And she talked about things. And so, in a way, she was a mentor for me. What feels risky to you now?

I was just talking to a younger woman this morning. Most of my friends are 10 years younger than me, and some of them think that aging is a really scary thing. It doesn't feel risky to me because of the work I've done. So I'm trying to think what feels risky to me.

I'm relatively fearless. I would have to say that. And did you come to that, Trudy? Was there a time in your life when you had many fears?

So I'll say this. My father was very fearful my whole life about money. And so I've always been. I inherited that, I think, and I.

I've always been fearful. And I've still done work that paid nothing. So I've always had to be fearful because there was very little money. But it has.

My fear didn't stop me. I would say even five years ago, I was fearful aging as a bag lady, not having any money and being on the street. But I. I don't.

I don't worry about that. I had both my knees replaced in the last year, and I got so much support from my children and my friends that I figure whatever happens to me, if I get slowly debilitated or if I get a disease, either one, I will have the support I need. So that's not fearful to me. I'm wondering if it felt fearful to you at the time to broach the subject of death and dying, whether in the AIDS Patients or later on when you're doing this kind of end of life planning with, with people who are actually afraid of.

That's a good question because it always feels risky. I just had a good friend, lost his partner this weekend and I visited them last week. And to bring up the subject of death to people because of the way our culture feels about it, always feels intrusive, always feels risky. And on the other hand, if you don't bring it up, people don't know that it's safe to talk to you about it.

So I've done maybe 60 of these end of life planning groups. Now in the beginning it always feels slightly risky. These are all people that are vulnerable and all fearful of talking about death. And so to begin it, it feels risky.

I've done it often enough that I know that they're going to be very thankful that they did it and it's all. They're going to share wonderful stories. It's all going to be good. It still feels risky because the culture is so death averse and so fearful.

Do you open them up by sharing and self disclosing about your own attitude toward death? I. By telling my own stories, yeah. And then asking them immediately to begin telling theirs, which they are glad to do because they've not had a chance to share them other places.

And once they find out it's a safe place, they love it. Are your children comfortable having a conversation with you about your. I think they're tired of it. They say, do we have to talk about that again?

I'm afraid I've worn them out on planning for my death. They know very clearly what I want to know. What can they talk about planning for their own death? No, no, they're, they're normal people.

Normal people in our culture don't want to talk about it unless you really get them in a setting or they're facing it. But I like to get people upstream before they're facing a terminal illness and get them comfortable then talking about it and planning and hopefully talking to their family members. But they often come back and my kids don't want to talk or my parents don't want to talk. And that's one reason I made the film speaking of dying was that then they can watch this film together which then they can talk about the people in the film and it slowly makes it possible.

It's sort of ridiculous how we've gotten in this place in our culture just where it's not a comfortable subject for anybody really. I have to self disclose and share that Before I was ready to have a child, I had to write a book about the death of a child and go through that emotional journey, at least empathically and imaginatively, and doing research with those who have. Good for you. That's what I want to say.

My very first child died at four days old. And so I wasn't prepared at all. And I dealt with it the way our culture deals with it. I just.

I just pulled myself up and didn't cry and went on with my role as the minister's wife. And it took me years then to. To really fully get over that. When do you think you finally dealt with that?

What was it when I became a hospital chaplain and my supervisor said, you're not visiting the patients who've lost a baby? That's how it was lying within me. Grief. If you don't deal with it, we'll just stay with you.

It will. It fester, is like a bad wound and it weighs you down. Yeah. Or.

Or not. In my case, I wasn't even aware that I had it. I didn't feel weighed down by it, but unconsciously, it kept me from visiting those young women who lost babies. So it can be very unconscious, and it's.

It's there. Yeah. I know you've worked with so many people over the years, Trudy, and we love finding out from people. What do you think it is that stops people from taking risks, even though that step could be incredibly wonderful and it would bring to fruition and a vision for themselves or for the world?

What stops people? Fear stops people. I'm sure you know that. Yeah, but.

So you had some fear, too, around your wrist, and then something compelled you to do it? I don't know. I've been compelled. That's all I can say.

And I'm not very fearful about the sort of things most people are fearful about, but I. I see people hold themselves back from doing things that they really want to do sometimes even. And that feels sort of risky to them because they're just afraid. Afraid of what other people will think, Afraid of.

I don't know. Underline it all. I think maybe they're afraid of dying and that it's going to really be totally devastating. I think that's where the fear of aging comes in.

Right. For sure. That's why people are afraid of aging. That leads to death or disability, too.

That's my fear. I have a fear of being disabled. I don't have a fear of dying, actually. Yeah.

Many people have said that to me, too. I'm not Afraid of dying. But I don't want to be in a nursing home. I don't want to be in pain.

I don't want this. Because in our culture now, we have all these images of all these scary things. Not very many images out there of good deaths. That's another reason I made the film, because I wanted people to see that they can.

If you can envision a good death for yourself or a good ending and not being disabled, or if you're going to envision being disabled and envision doing it with lots of support and grace and courage and joy. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm blessed.

I know a lot of older people in their 80s and 90s who are very joyful. So, in fact, joy in general increases with age. Absolutely. One of the things that gets better with age.

Absolutely. I actually think many things get better with age. Well, you know that you're totally a role model for me, especially as far as following your own spiritual path and following your star and listening to your heart. So I'm just wondering if there's anything that you would have done differently.

We can second guess ourselves and I can think of things I would have done differently. But every single thing I can see now, looking back, was necessary for me to be able to be who I am and do what I'm doing. I had a second marriage. After my first marriage.

I married a gypsy, an ethnic gypsy jazz musician. Wow. I didn't know that part of the. Not only that, but he was an addict, alcoholic, and it was tempestuous and troubled and absolutely wonderful for me because it got me to think outside.

He was totally outside the box. And so I. In a way, he helped me get further outside the box and to not care so much what anybody thought. A lot of people thought it was crazy to marry him, but I wanted to marry him, and I did.

And I was with him 10 years, and a lot of it was trouble, but. But I'm so glad I did it. And then you weren't in Kansas anymore? No, he was from California and he was very much not a Kansas.

Well, there you go. Yeah. You are so evolved and spiritually wise and fearless. I wonder if at this age you have any growing edges.

I can tell you one. I really, really would like to write a book about my life and what I've done and not. Not from the point of view of what I've accomplished, but what I've learned along the way. Writing a book is really hard for me and.

Why? Why? Because there's. Because it's so hard for Me to figure out how to prioritize out of all the things that I want to write about and that have happened and that I think it'd be good for people to know about death and dying and about marrying a gypsy, about aging, about anything.

And so when I sit down to write, I just become totally overwhelmed. Deborah and I, as writers and very busy people, very much relate to what you just said. And the point of this podcast is not to give advice or therapy. However, I would recommend taking a writing course, and that would keep you accountable.

Or just writing and hiring an editor to help you think through it. I think, or in light of this podcast, the fact that we are asking you questions around the issue of Risk. So if you wanted to write a book, let's just say risk, I've taken in my life. And then you have a theme and you have a focus.

It helps you narrow things down. Yeah, I get it. That's really good. Because it's hard, you know, it's creating order out of chaos.

That's the way I think of it. Is there anything else you wish we would have asked you or anything else you want to say around your relationship to Risk? No, I. I want to thank you because I love looking back at my life and thinking about it, and because I was raised in a very judgmental religious tradition, it's always been easy for me to judge myself and judge the things I've done.

And my family of origin certainly hasn't always approved of the things I've done. So those voices are in me. So I've carried some of that even to the present, I think, where I'm likely to say, well, you should have gotten a Ph.D. or you should have done this or you should have done that.

So it was helpful to think back over my life, all the risks I have taken, and that I'm happy with who I am now. So that's good. Nothing good. That's good.

Great. Trudy James, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. Thank you. So inspiring as always talking with you.

Thank you so much for inviting me. Wow, Naseem, that was pretty amazing. Just what was that like for you? I want to be like her when I grow up, you know, fearless, busy, beautiful, wise and comfortable facing her death and comfortable with her level of interdependence on her loved ones.

How about you, Deborah? Trudy's a good friend of yours. Did you learn anything new from this interview? What's going to stick with you?

You know what's gonna stick with me is that she really is a role model for me about following your own star. I mean, for us, it's not quite as hard, I think, as it was for her. Right. But the way she described.

I knew I was called to something. I didn't know what it would be like following the yellow brick road. I'm going to Oz, but I don't know what Oz is. I don't know what that is.

But she just followed this path that she trusted her heart and her intuition. I loved how she put it. She felt it with her whole self. Yes.

That was beautiful. Yes. And you know, that pull of conservative Christian religion is very strong. It's in your bone marrow.

And I. I don't think it's just Christian, right? No, no. I would just say fundamentalist religion.

And my mother was a strong person and did not get approval from your mother like that. That is really hard. It is. What she said about breaking from the Lutheran religion reminded me a little bit about your break from Christianity or a certain form of Christianity.

Did you relate to that? I related to it in that I had a slightly different path than her, where I was raised Christian, but not fanatically at all, and then left Christianity, you know, while in college and just didn't think too much about it. And then had a conversion experience out of college and became a conservative Christian in my 20s. And that lasted until my very early 30s when I had the same identical experience to Treaty where I looked around and went, what I believe doesn't fit this experience.

And to be true to myself, I had to let it go. And it was incredibly painful where I was meeting people in the hospital as a chaplain with dynamic spiritual lives, and yet I knew they were going to burn. I knew they were going to go to hell because of my beliefs and went into my supervisor in tears and said, I just don't know what to do. They're lovely people, but.

But they're going to burn. And he just sat back and said, why don't you try letting your experience inform your theology instead of your theology informing your experience. And that moment, my life changed. That's a breakthrough moment.

Yeah, for sure. I wonder what you fear now. Now. You know, knowing Trudy, I used to fear aging.

Yeah. When you said, I want to be like when I grow up, I think I want to be like Trudy when I grow old. Because age doesn't stop her too much. I mean, she's had two knee replacements and that stopped her temporarily, but she continues to learn.

And like she said, I just took a landscape painting class. Holy smokes. And I want to be like that, always learning. And.

And she said, too, well, if you're going to, you know, be disabled, can you do it with some grace and, you know, courage? So. So you don't fear anything? Not as much, actually.

You know, when I look at her, I think, well, I want to be like Trudy. And I also now claim the support of my friends and my community, and that's a wonderful thing. So, I don't know. What about you?

What. What do you fear? Well, I relate to fearlessness in a sense. Yeah.

I fear extreme things like torture and human cruelty, but there isn't a lot else that I fear. Or let me put it this way. I have a small fear of vulnerability and falling in love and interdependence. But I know that's a shortcoming and a flaw of mine, and I will therefore work on it.

So I'm working on changing that. How did you feel hearing her talk about just following her intuition? Because you, Nassim, seem to me to be someone who's done pretty much that exact same thing. You've not taken on the traditional role of doctor in a practice or doctor in a hospital.

So did that resonate with you? Definitely. I do feel it with my whole body. I like how she put that, that a decision is right or wrong.

And in fact, she said this, and I feel this way. I don't regret any decision I've made. It's not to say that all decisions have turned out well, but either something has resulted from it that I love and cherish, or it's been a very dear lesson. So it's been like a good failure.

To me, a failure is not a bad thing. In fact, if I wasn't failing, it means I'm not pushing myself far enough. It means I'm not taking enough risks. You're not trying.

Right? There's something to be said for a string of failures behind you. Life could be boring if we just slide it through it. Thanks for listening.

And what risks are you going to take?