Writing the stories of your life

“Tell me your life story in three sentences.”

If you want to learn the art of storytelling from Darnell Lamont Walker, you will find yourself faced with this daunting task.

But it’s not as hard as you think, he promises. If you’re willing to give it a try, the process can be illuminating—revealing not only where you’ve come from and where you are not, but perhaps even helping you to rewrite the future.

“I give people 15 minutes to do it. They’re like, What? Oh God!” he says. “Then I tell them to look at those three sentences and decide if they want to change what the future might look like. You can look at what you wrote and say, This is where I've been. This is the theme of my life. This is where it looks like I'm going. If it feels like a place you don't want to go, ask yourself how you can change it.” 

Walker possesses a curious mix of talents and wisdom that make him uniquely well-suited to the task of helping people tell the stories that shape their lives, from the beginning to the very end. As a children’s TV writer, documentary filmmaker and death doula, he’s become a master at telling stories that need to be told, and helping other people to do the same. People who are dying. People who are grieving. People who are young and still figuring out who they are. 

At seven years old, he wrote his first story: a semi-autobiographical tale of a little boy who ran away from home because his mom wouldn’t stop smoking cigarettes. In the early days of his career, he used the medium of film to tell stories for people who couldn’t tell their own, with documentaries on asylum-seeking, Black mental health, and rape culture to his name. 

But he was always drawn to writing for kids, helping them grow up to be the kind of people who didn’t need as much healing and repair as many of the adults he saw around him. Six years ago, he got his big break when he applied on a whim to the Sesame Street Workshop in New York City and landed a prestigious writer’s fellowship, which led to stints writing for Blue’s Clues and other popular children’s shows. 

Meanwhile, he was also helping people in his life navigate death and grief—something he’d been doing long before he’d ever heard the term “death doula.” At nine years old, he was supporting his family through the loss of a beloved great-aunt. He was having conversations with his mother and grandmother about how they wanted to die. He was talking to other kids about grief after a fellow student died and the school wouldn’t say anything about it. And at 13, he started volunteering at a local hospice after school, sitting with patients, making them cinnamon toast, and listening to their stories. 

He now offers the same kind of emotional support and counsel for dying people and their families within his own community in Georgia and around the world. 

“I get calls from everywhere: Johannesburg, London, Amsterdam, LA, middle America, New York, Tokyo,” he says. “People are asking for advice for their loved ones who are dying.”

So what does being a children’s TV have to do with being a death doula? He’s quick to answer: “everything.” 

“All the things I do have transitioning and finding happiness and living a better life in common,” he says. “In some ways, they have everything to do with each other. Because getting closer to death brings us closer to life.” 

We caught up with Darnell from his home in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest to talk about the power of storytelling, the importance of having hard conversations with our loved ones before it’s too late, and how our natural-born creativity and playfulness can emerge at the end of life.  

You’ve spent many years helping dying people and their families navigate the end-of-life transition. What does that guidance and support look like?  

A lot of it is just listening. I think we don't put enough value on effective listening. I go in and the family might say they want to do this or that, and I’ll say, Okay, but have you listened to what this person wants? It’s about finding a way for people to die the way they want to die. 

I’m also helping people tell their stories. As a writer, that's big for me. Sitting with them, talking to them, interviewing. I teach the family how to interview the person and ask those questions. This is their chance to get the answers they really want. 

When you listen, people will talk and talk and talk. You realize there are things they've been wanting to say but no one's asked the questions. 

And it’s also about showing them that they’re still breathing. There's still room and time left to live. You're not dead yet, so what do you need to do now to live? You want to write a letter—all right. My grandfather wanted to eat all the foods he remembered from when he was a kid. He asked me, Do they still make pinwheels? I said, I don't know. Let me find them. 

How does your experience as a children's TV writer inform your work as a death doula? 

I bring in a lot of play to the work I do, whether it's writing, death, whatever. Play is so big. I show adults how to do it again—things they haven't done in 50, 60 years. It's been transformative. You watch the floodgates open and people say, I want to create something to leave behind… I still have a week. What can I do? Who can I talk to? 

It sounds like their natural-born creativity really emerges. 

Absolutely. Every time. Even if it’s just a journal. They may not have much time, but they can get a few pages out. I’ll get them a journal and see them writing out things that they want to leave behind, or collecting photos, whatever it is. 

When people start digging into their stories, do they tend to be surprised by what emerges?

Absolutely. They’ll say, Oh my God, I haven't thought about that in 40 years, or This moment just came back to me. I can't believe that came up. That happens all the time. People are surprised, because we've done such a great job of burying things deep, deep, deep. 

What are some of the common themes that emerge in this end-of-life storytelling process? 

It's usually love—in so many different ways. Some people write about how they didn't feel they were loved, but looking back, they saw that they were. It just wasn't the way they expected.

Sometimes it's a very outward love: I really love that person. I miss that person. Or a longing for something. But love is always the big one. Grief, too. Sometimes there’s grief for someone they lost or something in their childhood or early adulthood they didn't get to experience. 

Is it challenging to get people to open up, or do you find that they really want to talk? 

Most of the time people are ready to open up. They know it's the end. It's now or never. 

There are things you don't even ask that they’ll tell you. I had one friend recently whose mom was in hospice, and she told me that she had so many questions, but she didn’t know if she could ask them. I told her, Listen, this is it. Her mom could say no, but she didn’t. My friend got all the answers she wanted. 

We've all experienced—at least in my family—someone dying and having questions that we can no longer ask. I say ask all the questions and see what happens. 

How can this process be healing both for the person who is sharing their stories and also for their family members? 

There are families who are dealing with extra grief because there are so many secrets. It’s almost like we can't get through the grief if we don't know what we're getting through. What is it that we have to walk through to get to the other side? Then finally, it comes out. 

I remember before my grandmother died, I would go through her stuff and look at her photo albums. I found her parents’ wedding certificate. I remember telling her that I was going to do some research on the family one day and really dig into it. I wanted to find out more. 

She said to me: “Don't look into anything until I die.”  So then of course I started asking. I went to older cousins and asked them what they knew. I found out that some of the stories I thought I knew were actually very different—and of course no one wanted to talk about it.

But we have to talk about it. The secrets have to stop. At some generation, they have to stop. Otherwise it's gonna just keep going. My cousins and I made a pact that we weren’t going to carry on any of these secrets. We talk to our kids about the truth of things.  

What happens after people speak these stories and truths that they’ve kept inside? Are they more ready for death? 

Yes, ready—and lighter. I remember when my granddad was dying. He was a colorful guy and lived a very crazy life. He was a married man, but we all knew his background. He was cheating on my grandma back when he was traveling in the military. 

In the end, I sat with him as his doula. We're talking and he tells me he’s got some other kids out there. We knew about one, but he said, No, not the one you know about… There are a couple other ones. I just needed to tell you that. 

He asked me not to tell anyone until he died. He just wanted to get it off his chest. So he starts talking and telling these stories, and he says he feels lighter. 

You’ve said that telling our own life stories can help us to not only process the past and recognize where we’re at in the present, but also to shape the future. If I'm realizing that there’s something I want to change about my life, how can I start rewriting the script? 

I really encourage journaling every morning and night if you can, or throughout the day, whenever you have time to sit down and write out some words. It gives us a chance to look back and see what we've done and how we've done it—because if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get the same results. 

You start to see what you need to change. Then you have to be intentional about making the change. 

I have a piece of cardboard that I wrote some intentions on back in 2015—a list of things I needed to do to make my life better. I wrote those things out and when I saw it, I was reminded that I could go in that direction instead of the one it looked like I was going in. 

I believe in manifesting, mainly because I've seen it in my life. Everything I've written that I wanted, I got.

Storytelling is important in that way. It's the blueprint, the outline. As a television writer, I create an outline that shows me where a script has to go. And I can do that for my life, too. If it didn’t go the way I wanted, let me rewrite the outline and get back on track. 

Can sharing our stories help us to find a sense of connection and belonging that might be missing in our lives?

I did a documentary years ago about mental health and I remember wondering how I was going to get people to open up and want to talk to me. I went to Facebook and posted, “If anyone here has ever sought mental health assistance: What made you go?” 

It was silent for a couple hours and then someone wrote, Well, I guess I'll be the first one. I went because… And then the floodgates opened. People were like, I thought it was just me. Oh my God, you went through that, too.

It created this sense of community. Once they started sharing, there was this sense of, I’m not alone. People have gone through this before and they will again. If I share my story, there are people who won't feel as alone as I did.

Have you thought about how you want to die? 

I think about it all the time. That's always my question to friends: How do you want to die? I want a deathbed. I want my nice clothes. I want to be able to tell everyone goodbye, and sorry about that. I want to write my letters and say everything I need to say.

I want to be able to finish those things I need to finish. We all don't get that, so I live my life daily like I could die at any moment. 

Can you tell me a bit more about how you integrate an awareness of your own mortality into your decisions, goals and priorities? 

I pick happiness above everything else. I've been pretty aware that death could happen any moment for me since I was 22 years old and ended up in the hospital. 

I thought I was out of shape because I couldn't breathe after walking just a block. I went to the hospital and they found that I had 16 blood clots from my ankle into my lungs. They told me I should have died a month ago, and they said this could kill me at any moment in my life from now on. 

I live with the knowledge that a blood clot could go to my lung or my brain, and that'd be the end. So I say yes to life. I follow happiness a lot more. I can say, This makes me happy. This is what I want to do. I'm going to do it. 

A lot of us think we'll live forever. If you ask people what they would do if they were going to die tomorrow, they tell you all these grand things. But why can't you do that now? You could die tomorrow. For me, I live life as if that could happen. I do the things I’d do if someone told me today was my last day. 

What’s one piece of wisdom or advice you’d like to be remembered by? 

Learning how to tell our own stories is important—it’s one of the most important things. We don't want to be forgotten and part of that is sharing our stories. We die with so many stories inside us, but we don't have to. 

Ok, last question. You’ve gotta tell us—what’s your three-sentence life story? 

The odd duck who somehow found incredible support for a life even he was surprised unfolded, but a life he loved tremendously. Followed happiness, joy, and food around the world, and quickly realized the curse those adventures also brought on. So many more empty spaces left to occupy and introduce others to in hopes they bring their laughter, too. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

If you want to dive deeper into this conversation, join us on Sunday, March 31, at 11 AM ET for our salon series “Death Over Coffee,” for an hour of casual yet intimate discussion and contemplation. You must be an Interintellect member to sign up, and you can learn more here. Get a 15% discount on your Interintellect membership here.

• Watching: Murder At The End Of The World

• Listening:  Trevor Noah & Bryan Johnson

• Contemplating: Richard Simmons’ words on appreciating life

• Reading: Die Empty