Facing Life’s Toughest Moments: Can Social Support Make the Difference?

Are you feeling disconnected in our modern world? You're not alone. In this eye-opening episode, we dive deep into the heart of social health with Joe Sehee, Executive Director of Social Health Australia. Joe shares his Joeurney from green burial advocate to champion of human connection, revealing how we can combat loneliness and transform end-of-life care.

Joe takes us on a fascinating exploration of 'community companioning', a revolutionary approach to supporting those facing life's toughest challenges. From terminal illness to bereavement, learn how this simple yet profound practice is changing lives and reshaping our understanding of grief and loss.

But that's not all - Joe's insights into co-housing, the funeral industry, and conservation burial grounds will challenge your perceptions of community living and death care. Discover why the way we approach death might be the key to living more connected, meaningful lives.

Key Takeaways:

●      The power of 'community companioning' in supporting those facing illness, grief, and loneliness

●      How co-housing models can combat social isolation and foster genuine community

●      The untold history of the American funeral industry and its impact on our relationship with death

●      The potential of conservation burial grounds to revolutionise both ecology and end-of-life care

●      Why being present is more important than finding the 'right words' when supporting someone through grief

●      The surprising health benefits of social connection and its potential to reduce hospital readmissions

Remember; You may not be ready to die, but at least you can be prepared.

Take care,

Catherine

Contact Joe:
 
Website: https://socialhealthaustralia.org/ 

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Podcast Editor: https://www.livvimusic.com/

Music composer: Ania Reynolds - https://www.aniareynolds.com/

Transcript

highlight & EP: 0:02

There are these life events that occur, death, divorce, losing one's job, being bullied at school, moving to a different city, all sorts of things that happen. And if you don't have a social support network to guide you through there, those things can be really much more debilitating than they need to be. It's part of our common humanity to go through these things. It's not indicative of us being weak or disordered. It's what happens.

intro: 0:30

Welcome to Don't Be Caught Dead, a podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I'm your host, Catherine Ashton, founder of Critical Info, and I'm helping to bring your stories of death back to life. Because while you may not be ready to die, at least you can be prepared. Don't Be Caught Dead acknowledges the lands of the Kulin Nations and recognises their connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nation peoples around the globe.

highlight & EP: 1:12

Today we have Jo Seahe, Executive Director of Social Health Australia. Joe has provided subclinical, social-emotional, existential support in a wide range of settings, including hospitals, emergencies and end-of-life contexts. A Peabody Award-winning journalist, Joe is founder of the Green Burial Council in the United States and he's co-editor-in-chief of the newly formed International Journal of Disability Policy and Advocacy. Jo was recently awarded a National Industry PhD Program Scholarship to research new models of social and disability housing that foster social connectivity. Thank you so much for being with us, Joe. Thank you for having me. Now, that was a lot of big words that we just actually used in that introduction. I'm sure that you will make it a little bit more understandable for us as we go through. So what is your current role at Social Health Australia and what does it actually involve? So I am currently the executive director and executive officer. And while I'm finding out how much bandwidth I have while starting this PhD. But right now what I'm doing is making sure that we continue to bring projects forward, figure out new ways of supporting people who are impacted by social isolation and loneliness, in particular people dealing with illness and transition and grief and loss. So we primarily have been doing that through a concept of what we call community companioning, and we get referrals from a variety of sources, large health providers, funeral service operators, health department, and we support people who have deficient social support networks and who want someone who can just walk alongside them, not to fix them or pull them out of any hole, but to step into that hole with them for a little bit and let them find some common humanity in their suffering. And so we're currently moving into a bit of an incubator model where we're inviting people in the community with ideas to bring them forward. And then we're providing supports and assistance and helping get the projects funded and managed. And we've got three such programs right now in place, including one that's going to be involving end-of-life companioning. Can you talk us through that program? Is that at the stage where you can give us some examples? It's an extension of some of the work we've done before. So what we're trying to do is to get people to reclaim some of their deep, evolved ways of being there for one another. And if you look through the world, and especially within indigenous communities, you see the use of listening and touch and breath work to sort of co-regulate. What we're trying to do is we recruit people from all walks of life. People typically who want to be involved with someone and help bring about a more meaningful relationship in their life and be able to just walk alongside them and make sure that, again, they find some common humanity in what they're dealing with. So we're supporting people who are in end-of-life situations where they're terminally ill, some who are opting for voluntary assisted dying, especially under rather complicated circumstances where family members may not quite be on board. We're working with people who have suffered a loss recently and continue to support their bereavement. We're envisioning also going into some aged care facilities. We've tried one model where several of our companions who are volunteers support community members who are referred to us. And many of the community members, or several in the last round of our program, became companions, including a man who's in an aged care facility. So we're thinking about doing more end-of-life companioning in aged care by recruiting and training some people who can provide that for their fellow residents. That's the latest iteration. But it's really, I think it's got a lot of potential and could go out wider, but we're still kind of working out the wrinkles and trying to prove success with the concept. So these volunteers, they partnered with someone in the community that needs some support that have been identified by services to your organization. And when you say that there's aspects of reconnecting with age-old practices. So that's more of a holistic approach to their health in a social context. Is that the sort of thing? Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of suffering that we're experiencing today that is often made debilitating because we're forced to experience it individually rather than communally. And we don't often find meaning in those instances. Take death, for example. Many of us have to encounter it as a failed medical experience and then a commercial transaction rather than this human universal, right? And I've seen this with people that we've supported who've been impacted by complicated grief. There's a friend of mine, a 93-year-old man who was a member of my ice hockey club. And he was dealing with complicated grief and was under the care of a psychiatrist and a psychologist. And he was really having a difficult time. He felt like his inability to move through his grief was a sign of weakness or, you know, of him being disordered. And through connecting him with some companions, he kind of came to realize that this is something we all do. But historically, it's something we've done together, you know, and we understand. And I think we've lost our ability to show up for grief in the same way because it's been taken away from us, you know? And I think the medical profession has done a really good job inviting people in. In recent years, the funeral industry quite hasn't gotten there yet, but that's what we're hoping to do to allow people to participate more fully in their end-of-life rituals and to be involved in activities afterwards that allow them to have a continuing bond and allow them to move through the grieving process in a healthy way. So when you're talking, Jo, things that come to my mind, you know, my best friend is an emergency doctor, and she's been a guest on the podcast previously. She was our first guest. And yeah, that sort of training that they go through as doctors that death is a failure of treatment, but it is actually just a natural process of life. And then the other thing that comes to mind is also you know we were briefly talking before we started recording about design and architecture and and our homes were designed with you know the parlour in the front room which was specifically for being a funeral parlour when you would lay out the dead and you would take care of the dead you would wash after they died and and then present them and people would come in to the house and and you know grieve with the family So I can see that, you know, we have lost that immediate connection with those things. That's really, that's interesting. You know, you mentioned your friend who's an emergency room physician. Many people show up to emergency departments now out of loneliness, and they're calling ambulances, believe it or not, for the same reason. And funeral directors have reported in recent years, several that I've spoken to, they've had calls from families who they've connected with who want to talk about what's going on for them. And it's because they have no place else to go. I think 20% of GP visits are estimated to be used by people who just really want to have a chat. You know yeah i think our program like many out there just it's an example of catching people where they're at and finding people you know who could use just a little bit of compassion and common humanity and you know it's a form of surrogacy i really believe that we probably. Didn't deal with this the same way when we live in a more communal fashion and because you know it's been siloed. It's really hard for us. We typically don't go through the loss of a loved one that often throughout our lives. And it's a difficult challenge, but we don't really have, people who help us see that there's a path forward, you know, and that's what we're doing. It's funny, not funny, but quite beautiful. Last year, one of the members of our co-housing community, intentional community here, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he brought our community together for a circle, talking circle, and he said, I just want to be clear, you know, this isn't a living funeral. I know I'm a good guy. I just wanted to talk about this death thing. We're all going to go through it. I'm just a little heavy. But he wanted to make it a teachable moment and said, I thought you might have some questions about what I might be going through. Those things probably happen more naturally when we were living in a more interdependent, connected way. And so I think we need to be figuring out more creative strategies to get that information across. And I think that there's also been that shift in families with the ease of travel and working, et cetera, and there's many other reasons as well. But we've lost that having multiple generations in the same household living or living down the street. It's not a regular thing that occurs any longer. So that, yeah, that disconnect as well. But you mentioned that just your co-housing where you live. So, you know, the things that you're talking about, Jo, these are something that you live and breathe every day. This isn't just your job, is it? So can you tell us a little bit about the co-housing where you do live, if you don't mind? So we're in Brunswick, Victoria, and it's the first co-housing project in Australia that's sort of dedicated to this Danish model, which is essentially set up to where everyone has their own home, or in our case, apartment. And then we share spaces. So we have a communal dining room and kitchen where we eat together twice a week. There's a laundry facility where we see people on the seventh floor. There's a music room and workshop in the basement. There's going to be an onsen. There's a couple of guest apartments. There's a multi-purpose room where we show movies and people do yoga and such. And those spaces are really important because they allow us to gather and connect. And unfortunately, you know, a typical apartment building wouldn't have those things. But the idea is that everyone knows that they have some responsibilities to contribute to the community, whether that's preparing meals or cleaning dishes or serving on committees to figure things out. And we sort of naturally just have learned to be there for one another. We have, I'd say, probably 70% neurodiversity. We have a couple people with significant developmental intellectual disabilities. We have a number of people aging in place trying to. Stave off having to go into an aged care facility and a couple of young families and it's been really great i mean compared to where we had been living where i was experiencing loneliness. Nine years in two neighborhoods where we never had any contact with our neighbors and had no real ability to connect with them and i i went back to the states to take my son back he was having some difficulty as well i think fitting in and i was having conversations with old friends meals and coffees and drinks. And I started to feel like, you know, I was coming to life through their eyes. And I started to realize when you don't have people reflecting back who you are, you know, you start to lose your identity. And that's what was going on. And I told my wife, we got to do something here. And I had heard about this community being developed and we were able to grab the last apartment. And I'm so grateful that we were because it's been a real game changer in all of our lives. That's amazing. And I recently had Michelle Lim, the CEO of Ending Loneliness, and she was talking about just the fact that there is an increase in the amount of people who do feel lonely. And it's not something that is isolated to an aging population. It affects people at all ages feeling that disconnect and that loneliness. So, you know, The work that you're doing is so important there. And speaking of loneliness, there's an awareness that it's known, we all understand it as a subjective feeling that we don't have enough people in our lives to be healthy and happy. But there's a form of loneliness there. That's related to our conversation today, which is referred to as existential loneliness, which is brought on by meaninglessness. And so, you know, there are these life events that occur, death, divorce, losing one's job, being bullied at school, moving to a different city, all sorts of things that happen. And if you don't have a social support network to guide you through there, that those things can be really much more debilitating than they need to be. But when we have people that, you know, have been around us and who have probably been through the experience, we realize it's part of our common humanity to go through these things. It's not indicative of us being weak or disordered. It's what happens. But that's the problem. And so having one person show up in your life to extend some kindness, human decency, can bring enough meaning into those instances to, I think, overcome the meaninglessness that can contribute to this existential loneliness. And that's really what we've been trying to do with social health. And tell me this isn't the only time you've been in a position where you've been supporting you know working for the greater good you started off as a Jesuit lay minister back in the United States I did I was doing peace and social justice programming at the University of San Francisco I was a Jesuit volunteer and then I stayed around for three more years doing pastoral care and that kind of advocacy work and it was a great experience and in fact through that experience i learned about this concept of spiritual direction or spiritual companioning which comes out of this christian mystic tradition of just creating space for another person to. Reflect and discern whatever they want to, and if they want to, maybe think about a role for the divine. But I was actually, I had a really profound experience with that work, and I trained to do that. And it sort of drew me into wanting to get involved with pastoral care here in Australia a few years ago, which was really difficult, I discovered, to do without a religious affiliation. And I no longer identify as religious, so I was trying to do it in a more non- or trans-theistic way. And it turned out that was a little threatening to certain elements within Australia's spiritual care industrial complex. So we decided to kind of rebrand and be a bit more subversive and develop new nomenclature and really just focus on the community level rather than the institutional level where I was trying to work in. And it's the same thing. It's really just providing someone who can allow another human being to know that they're not alone in those instances. And it does miracles. I've seen it. It sounds so simple and I have a hard time articulating it sometimes. It doesn't sound like much of anything, but it can have a really profound impact on people's lives. And Joe, do you mind sharing with us what that profound experience was that you had in that early stage? Sure. I grew up in a family with two parents who grew up as depression babies, and they probably relied a little too much on my sister and me to kind of elevate what they perceived as a depressed social status. So I was very much encouraged to achieve and succeed. And I was able to break away from that. In fact, it was in part through some support with the Jesuits in my early 20s. But when I was about 40, I was interested in really trying to understand this concept of unconditional love. And I thought, you know, I grew up in a family where maybe it was doled out a little too conditionally in my mind. And I thought it was affecting my ability to be in relationship. And so I went to a psychologist for the first time in my life to say I wanted to learn about unconditional love. And this woman said, well, actually, I don't believe in the concepts. I don't think you're going to learn it here. But I reconnected with an old Jesuit spiritual director from years ago, and he helped me kind of reflect on some ideas, including looking at my life. And it was just coincidentally, I was sort of caretaking for an older gentleman. And it was that reflecting on that relationship in particular that made me realize that I was more than capable of loving deeply. And within a couple of weeks after having that epiphany, I met this incredible woman from Melbourne, Juliet, and we got married very shortly after that. And I wanted to figure out how I was just so impacted by that experience. I wanted to learn how to kind of do that for others. So I did a training in, at the time there were only two places in the U.S. That had training programs for spiritual directors or companions. And I went through that and Juliet and I were, I mean, most like us, most of our friends didn't identify as religious. And I didn't know how I would do that work outside a ministerial context. So we decided to buy some land out in the middle of the Mojave Desert. And we thought that we would open up an eco-retreat where people could, you know, find solace in that fierce landscape. And I would work doing spiritual direction and Juliet was going to run a rustic spa. And through that experience, we had this intense encounter with nature. And we started that there were these early Christian monastics who used to go out to the desert to befriend death. And we're starting to think about that idea and think about programming for the retreat and thought about end-of-life rituals. Could we let people have a ceremony, maybe scatter ashes? And they thought, wow, could people be buried here? And could the proceeds perhaps be invested to do ecological restoration or landscape-level conservation? Because we lived on the edge of thousands of empty acres, and most of them were privately held. And I learned that there was a man who had been thinking along the same lines, Dr. Billy Campbell, and had started the first natural burial ground in the States. And so out of that conversation came this vision. And to really put it in motion, we realized we needed to have verifiable standards. We needed to have a way of engaging this somewhat threatened industry with environmental partners. And we needed to create a kind of a social environmental consumer movement. And that's how the Green Burial Council came about. And can you talk me through the principles that you developed around that? First of all, we knew that we had a very entrenched, threatened industry that we wanted to be involved with the cause. So rather than using green burial as a cudgel, you know, to beat up on the funeral industry, we tried to find leaders within the field who would embrace the idea. And it was enlightened self-interest to do it because the funeral industry in the U.S., unlike here... Is extremely regulated, and it's somewhat protectionist. So they could have put the idea out of, you know, out of business, we could have been legislated out of existence. So we really had to be careful. But I also thought, you know, I didn't want to use the concept to really just poke holes in what was wrong with funeral service. There's a lot. But we used it as a way to kind of incentivize funeral directors, for example, to let people know that they could have funerals that didn't have to embalm embalming or didn't have to involve a casket. People could participate more fully in their end-of-life rituals. And cemeteries didn't have to require in the U.S. I think U.S. and Canada really are the only countries for the most part that require concrete boxes called vaults. They're very rarely used in Australia, but most cemeteries were unwilling until that time to forego the use of vaults. That was a big deal. And we got product manufacturers to start to think about worker safety and toxic chemicals often will be biodegradable in the ground, but they're doing awful things to workers. So we created an incentive to use adhesives and stains that were non-toxic and weren't going to cause any health issues for workers in those plants. And we basically then went out with this story to the public we had our standards in place and we had buy-in from the industry and had intrigue on the part of land trusts and conservation entities and things really unfolded kind of naturally and green burial grounds started to pop up new manufacturers came into the four funeral homes became very open to having eco-friendly funeral service and it allowed us. To manage some of the greenwashing too that was inevitable you know in the u.s unlike australia you know i think australians think if there's a social problem the government should handle it and that's not the case in the u.s because we have such weak levels of government there's a need to involve you know community organizations and non-profit the non-profits are the sector is much more robust compared to Australia and allows for more community organizing. But we basically put together stopgap governance that didn't exist and probably never would have come about in state legislatures. And so I'm really proud. In fact, I got a note the other day, the council is asking for input into revising their standards and they're trying to figure that out. And they're still, you know, still tweaking, but the work that we did has served as a foundation for that movement to continue to unfold. It wouldn't make as much sense in Australia, given the regulatory landscape, but it really did some great things in the States. And what period are we talking about, that this sort of first happened? So we moved, I think, to the desert in 2002 and got involved with the idea, 2003, I was starting to get involved with this idea and thinking I could be involved with a company that might bring this about and realize that was tricky. So the council was formed in 2005, officially. And compared to Australia, you know, really embalming was born in America during the Civil War. So it is really embedded in the process over there, isn't it? It is. It's hard for Australians to understand. I mean, Americans just assumed for many years that if you wanted to have a funeral, you had to embalm a body. It's not legally required, but the industry had been really good about making people feel that, and they needed to have a casket. A lot of people don't really know that the funeral industry was created out of whole cloth. As you mentioned, after the Civil War, some people discovered that there was a market for disinterring the bodies of Union Army officers who could afford to pay for the service. And they would embalm the body because prior to that, you know, soldiers were left to lie in the battlefield and those battlefields became cemeteries. But with the Abraham Lincoln's funeral in particular, you know, embalming and cascading became, you know, in the public conscience. And really the funeral industry, the modern mortician was created. The National Funeral Directors Association was created when the casket and chemical companies came together. It's interesting to me at the same time this was going on, you know, doctors were glorified barbers at the time. They kind of got their act together and the funeral industry, the morticians never got the psychosocial training to allow them to do more than be frontline marketers for the casket and chemical companies. And there was a movement to do that in the US up until the 1930s, but the chemical casket companies really prevented that from happening. So we tried to come in you know it was really interesting you talk about misinformation and disinformation what we had to work against were really it was generations of misinformation to funeral directors by their supply companies that there were health concerns and that they shouldn't do funerals unless that body was properly embalmed. And by the way, the mortuary, first mortuary schools in Seville today are still owned by chemical companies, you know? So that was the centerpiece of mortuary education. And it took a lot to get funeral directors to realize, you know, there's not going to be any health risks. In fact, you may have more health risks being associated with the embalming chemicals, which are actually, you know, are more problematic when they're in vaporous form than they are when they're in the ground. But it was really hard to get funeral directors in particular to realize that there's a new way of looking at how they did their service and that what we were saying was you know conflicting with what they had been told for many years that was probably the most challenging part of the work getting them to think differently and what really in the end what really made the big difference was the rising cremation rates. Because Americans saw the only way around funeral service that they increasingly didn't want, and this started to take place in the 60s, was to opt out for cremation and direct cremation. Cremation without a funeral. And so I think a lot of funeral directors thought, oh, this green burial idea might be something that we can be involved with. And of course, we wanted them to see that, but with new rules and a more openness. So we were very successful in getting our certified providers, for example, to put in their price list that a funeral could take place without embalming. Consumer advocates were trying to do that for years unsuccessfully. And we made great strides on that front. Yeah, that's amazing. And tell me, what made you leave the desert? You know, the desert? Yeah, what made you leave and come to Australia? Obviously, Juliet was here originally. She's from here. You know, a couple things. My parents had both passed away. Juliet's father had dementia, didn't have a long time to live. We had a model project in Santa Fe teed up. We'd been working on it for seven years where half of the proceeds from the interment, right, The cemetery sale would go into a pot of money to take down land on a large ranch. And we had a deal in place. And the partner, the conservation and the developer, couldn't make good on their word. Mainly, I think, when the real estate market turned. And we weren't going to be able to bring that about. We had a situation take place where someone had been promised the burial. And there was a cancellation the day before the funeral, which was one of the most awful experiences I'd ever been involved with. And we just realized, I think our work here is done. I started to probably be experiencing a bit of burnout. The funeral industry itself is really fragmented, but there were other people who I think resented the. The leadership position that the council had and felt their mantle had been usurped. That was challenging to deal with. And also, even though we were set up as a non-profit, many of the providers were for-profit operators. And so it took a lot of work to make sure that the trust provider, the council stayed strong and didn't get co-opted as a trade association. So there was internal tension that was very much always present and it got a little overwhelming I think toward the end of my work so I did that for 2005 and we moved here in 2012 and quite frankly I was looking to kind of get out of the field I keep getting dragged back into it but I thought it was time to explore doing something else and my son at the time was eight and we had our health and it just seemed like the time to make the move. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And so you came to Australia and then what? Well, I didn't realize it at the time, but what was going on for me was I had this inability to access social capital that I had always had in the States. So I think this is a function of how big cities in the US work. If you move to a place like New York, San Francisco, LA, like I did. People move from all over the world. And so they're really good about opening up their professional and social networks. It's pretty easy to get things done. When you move to a city like Melbourne, I discovered where many people who live here have lived here for a long time. There's less interest, I think, on the part of those folks to open up their networks. So I was having a hard time accessing that social capital, as it's called, which is where we find meaningful relationships. It's where we find work. We hear about employment opportunities. And for the first time in my life, really, I was having a difficult time meeting good friends and finding employment. And after about five years, I thought I did a little bit of consultancy work and I thought about going back into pastoral care and discovered it was rather hard to do without, again, having sort of either theological qualifications or faith community endorsement. And so I had an idea to bring forward a model that the UK humanists had developed to support mostly in hospitals, people who didn't identify as religious, with the same sort of subclinical, social, emotional, existential care, right? And as I said, that was threatening to some entities here. And I realized that was not my Everest to fight. And I thought I could just take on that challenge directly, or we could focus on doing the work. And I felt really called to do the work. And there was this tremendous opportunity at the community level, because many healthcare professionals were starting to think about bringing forward a concept that had taken off in the UK called social prescribing, where mostly GPs would refer patients to the community for support for non-medical issues like social isolation and loneliness. And I realized, wow, you really need to know who is on the front line and people need to be vetted and upskilled and supported properly to do that work, especially if they're going to get referrals from healthcare providers. So we put together Social Health Australia in a similar way to the council to engage this other sector and to be a trust provider of sorts to show that, you know, we could recruit volunteers from all walks of life who are capable of doing this work and doing it safely. But we didn't need another credentialing framework. We didn't need another cert for we wanted this to be the work of the people. You know, we've been very adamant about that. And our patriot Hugh McKay has helped us really stick to that. You know, especially I think in Australia, there's this tendency to identify a problem and then there's a portfolio administer and there's sort of a top down approach. But if we're going to get out of this loneliness epidemic and mental health crisis, we need a bottom up social movement, we need more people doing this work and taking it on and not doing it because we think it's another practitioner class that needs to come to the fore. You know, we just think this is what we evolved to do for one another. And we've been outsourcing it to clinical psychs and religious professionals and others. And really. It's about finding a way to reclaim those instincts and learn again how to show up during moments of great difficulty. What I see is it's quite challenging for organizations that try and do the work and also do the advocacy and the fundraising at the same time. Is that a challenge that you've come across? I always say I think we have an excellent service model and a lousy business model because there's a tremendous disadvantage that smaller charities like ours were a volunteer-led charity. So that allows us to be really nimble and we don't get into a situation where some organizations, because they have a lot of overhead, they're paying salaries, they start thinking about what they need to do to keep the doors open and that becomes paramount. Whereas with our work, we sort of build up our capacity on the fly. So when we apply for a grant from the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation, we build in project management and training and support and supervision fees into that. But funders particularly philanthropics don't like giving large grants to small organizations that don't have capacity professional capacity in place i think there's a bias against thinking that because people are working in a pro bono or volunteer basis they may not have the skills or commitment to do the work so it is really challenging but we're trying to work with other community-based organizations that are in the same boat and share and leverage resources, you know, so that we don't all have to be burdened by the issues around governance and fundraising. There's a lot that goes on. I remember a couple of years ago, the Australian government put out a paper talking about the problem of how many thousands of small charities there are in Australia, you know, from their standpoint, you know, an oversight through that lens, It's really troubling, but I'm thinking, God, it's. Wouldn't it be great if more people wanted to start little entities to do good in the world, right? But we need to not burden people as much and we need to figure out ways of making this work easier to be done. So it is really difficult to exist as a startup, small charity in Australia. But I'm really glad that we've been able to figure out a way to keep the lights on. So we're doing that right now. Our latest thinking is that we're becoming sort of a community-based incubator, and we've had three projects come to us lately where people had an idea. They didn't want to go through what would be required. Well, getting DGR status, for example, deductible gift recipient status, can take years to get. There's no guarantee you're going to get it. So for an entity that has that and public benevolent institution status, we can bring in entities and let people try ideas. It's the other reason, you know, there's a big problem, I think, in this social sector. There's not a lot of innovation because it's hard to play around in the sandbox. You know, you need to be able to make some mistakes and run some experiments. And the way things are set up right now, that really can't happen. So we're hoping to get projects off the ground and provide supports and provide, you know, serve as sort of a fiscal intermediary sponsor so people can get grants. And then you know it also connect with other people in the field and experience some collegiality because the work's difficult enough but it's much more difficult when you feel like you're doing it you know alone so that's going to be a big push for us trying to weave with other enemies working in this space. Yeah, yeah. And especially when it comes to just the resources and the, you know, those sorts of things is just really hard, as you were saying, you know, on an ongoing basis. Yeah. So tell me some of the other challenges that you've sort of faced in relation to advocating for socially responsible end of life. What are some of the hurdles that you've had to try and straddle there, Joe? Well, I discovered that in Australia, I find Australians to be very compliant. And I think many I've been told by Zenith Farago many years ago, she said Australians tend to think that they're all in some sort of funeral precinct that they have to, you know, and if there's a Tobin Brothers nearby, that's where they have to go. I think that one of the things that I found challenging, but I really enjoy working in this area, it's getting people to understand that they have all sorts of rights and options. And I always say, I think every good funeral director should say, what would you like to do and what would you like to have us do? And here are your options. And when you really do that, you encourage, you empower people, you allow them to experience some agency that I think is really healthy for the grieving process. us. When you take the body away and force people to play catch up and make them feel disempowered, I think grief is much more painful. So I think one of the challenges has been, and this is just mostly in our personal life, getting people to open up to possibilities and considering dressing a body or being more involved with the service than they had been, or knowing that There's a number of ways that they can, you know. Honor a loved one and be involved that they might not have considered. The industry operates the same way. My feeling is there's a lack of collegiality because at the end of the day, funeral service operators are competing with one another. So they've had difficulty coming together for a bigger purpose. But I think, and I haven't really been all that involved with this other than with some of the bereavement companioning work that we've done, but I think that would be also quite challenging as it was in the States. And I don't know if that'll change. I think the other issue, quite frankly, that has been really difficult to deal with is that cemeteries in most states cannot be privately owned, which is not such a bad thing. But in a place like Victoria, you have to have a cemetery trust that's the owner and operator of record. And they're kind of constrained. You know, it's difficult for them. They have to cater to the needs of all the communities. So when you go to a typical cemetery trust, a large cemetery trust, you see a section that's catering for the Greek Orthodox community and over here Chinese Buddhists and maybe there's a little section for eco-conscious folks and you get those little siloed areas. It's one of the reasons there's not a standalone conservation burial ground, for example, that we see in the States. And I hope that's going to change, but it's a tricky proposition because of the regulatory landscape. But hopefully, you know, we'll be seeing some change in that area. And when you say standalone conservation burial ground, what does that mean? Yeah, so conservation burial is a term I coined years ago, and we developed standards for this in the States. And it meant in the US, there's something called a conservation easement, similar to a conservation covenant in Australia. And there's actually tax benefits that accrue to a person who has land who extinguishes development rights. So if you have land, 40 acres, and you decide, you tell the government you're not going to do any development on that land and you're going to keep it as protected habitat, the government will allow you to deduct that devaluation over a number of years. It's been a really effective conservation tool. And it requires that a land trust do annual monitoring and reporting to make sure that whatever your promise has been made is upheld. So we decided, since that was already in place, to use that vehicle to oversee conservation burial grounds that would agree to, for example. Never allow for burial on any part of the land where it might degrade the local ecosystem and where possible use burial in areas that might facilitate ecological restoration. So it might impact the zones where land would be buried or bodies would be buried. It might impact what kind of trees could be planted. It would basically be a guide roadmap for how the stewardship of that natural area would go. And it has allowed for land trusts to then get involved with cemetery operators to come together and to basically create these little nature preserves that have bodies, usually with very discrete markers. But at the end of the day when they're all filled up you're going to have a natural area that's protected in perpetuity and a fund you know through the funding of this conservation easement that can do ongoing monitoring and reporting forever so that's a really neat idea that really hasn't taken hold here i think there's a natural burial ground i'm told in new south wales it's about to open but it's tricky i've always felt like the opportunity lied where someone that has the land would like a conservation entity would be interested in allowing for internment rights, limited internment rights and exchange. They got money to do, you know, long-term stewardship. That was the concept that we're building on in the States. But as I said, it hasn't really taken off as of yet in Australia, but I I'm sure there will be a standalone facility. That will eventually do that. Many is what I would predict, but we're just not there yet. It's interesting because when I was in the UK last year, it was something that they do very, very well. And I saw an organic farm that was actually using a natural burial ground as a way in which to revegetate between two natural woodlands that were remnant woodlands that were there and I just thought. Wow, you know, my background's in conservation and land management and I'm just like, I love this, you know, this is fantastic. You know, if it was up to me, I think, you know, bio corridors and natural burial grounds should naturally go just, you know, together with the beehive in amongst it, you know. Yeah, you know, I think we should see more of it. But yeah, they seem to do it very well over there and I am surprised that it hasn't taken off here because it's just such a great concept. Yeah, I think if private ownership was allowed, that certainly, and I think that is the case in New South Wales, that would certainly make it a bit easier. But there's other issues and complications because you have to be able to finance these facilities. And what is the market for eco-friendly internment? It's a relatively new concept, so it's difficult for people to finance that's been the case in the states and it's always been the case for cemeteries no one's able to go and get a bank loan on a cemetery because you can't foreclose on a cemetery and make it a car dealership so banks have always stayed away from those projects as lenders so people have to find some creative funding source i mean to me the real opportunity is to find you know and i had conversations early on with bush heritage and entities like that, some entity like that that could say, all right, we've got probably members and donors who would really like this idea. Let's test it out. They have to find an operator that has a compatible ethic and know that they're in it long term. That's the other thing. When you start a cemetery, it's not like you can do it for a few years and get out if you want. You have to make a lifelong commitment to that. And that scares off a lot of people, especially conservation groups. Yeah, it's very challenging, isn't it? And especially given the fact that. It's something that we all experience at the end of the day, you know, and I'm just surprised that, I don't know, we just haven't worked out better systems or it really does still boggle my mind a little bit, Joe. Yeah, it's, you know, when I first got involved with the idea, I got really excited about it as a restoration and conservation tool. And quite frankly, there's some of that going on on a small scale. But psychologically, spiritually for people, you know, being able to find solace in a landscape like that, you know, is really powerful. I think it reduces death anxiety. You know, you hear this by people that cease, you know, services in these woodland natural conservation burial grounds. They're also visited much more than conventional cemeteries. Many people don't understand that. Except for some ethnic communities, visitation rarely takes place after the first year. And think about all the watering and the mowing and the CO2 that goes in the atmosphere. I mean, I think we should be rewilding all of our conventional cemeteries. What are we doing? You know, that's another idea that should catch on. Yeah and the southern metropolitan cemeteries trust has recently earlier this year opened or unveiled their rewilding of the native species in melbourne cemetery and yeah that was amazing because that's exactly what they've done in some of the old part is planted you know native species and just let them flower and seed and it's such a better way in which to do it they've been doing it with golf courses for a number of years, at least in the US, I know. It's a funny thing. I think there should be sensitivity about not impacting families who were sold one thing aesthetically. But really, I think climate change should be a more overriding aim here, our concern. And I think we really need to really look at how we keep up these facilities. And they're way too energy intensive. It just doesn't make sense to me. I hope rewilding happens too. So some combination of that, I think that might open the door. If you did rewilding properly, you'd be making restoration burial grounds, conservation burial grounds. I mean, that's what would happen naturally. There's also the potential for working with indigenous communities and doing burial on country. There's a lot of cool things that could come about for sure. That's so true. And tell me, with your role and what you've seen in your various experiences, you seem to have always been in the end-of-life space, regardless of what role you've had. What has... Advice or suggestions can you give to people to support someone who's going through the grieving process or the end-of-life process? I don't know if it's because we've seen too many bad movies or TV shows or have been made to feel that being there, showing up for grief is above our pay grade. I think a lot of people genuinely are afraid to show up because they feel like they may say the wrong thing. What people need to understand is that they don't have to say anything. They just have to be present. And that's with grief and loss support. There's a man, a hero of mine in the States by the name of Parker Palmer, who tells this story about he became a Quaker late in life. And he felt like a bit of a fraud. Professionally, he was sort of making a name for himself in the well-being space, but he was also dealing with depression. And he tells a story about a guy from his church that would come over once a week for a couple of months when he was really in a bad way and basically just hold his foot. Didn't say a word, but he gave him hope that when he came around the other side, he would be there. And that guy didn't have to say anything. And that's what we really train people to do. They don't have to really worry because if you're not going in there to fix or cheer up or if you're going in there to extend kindness you just have to be there you know less really is more and that's what i would encourage people to do there are some great tools we're lucky we have some wonderful people working in this space probably know carrie noonan at the death literacy institute she did a wonderful workshop for our companions showing up for grief, and I still sometimes show her slides to people, helping people. You know, you don't need to understand all the theoretical frameworks. You just need to know that if people can experience connection during those times, and they know that what they're going through, they're not going through alone, that can make all the difference in the world. So we have to get away from thinking that it's going to require a cert for any level of expertise. It's just really, it's just common humanity that I think is what's going to allow people to do what they need to do in those times. And I think a mutual friend of ours once explained to me that she practices shut uppiness. And I love that term. And I think it's such a beautiful thing to practice is to not to feel like you were saying that we have to go in there and fix everything. Because I think that that's something that we feel compelled to do. Just being there and whether it's holding someone's foot or practicing shut-up-edness. It's quite profound what that can do because the person has a chance to feel witnessed and they don't have to feel like some people do talking to a psychiatrist or psychologist that they're weak and disordered. And I think of a man I supported who really was reluctant to be vulnerable and open with his clinicians. But with me, he learned to do that and he was comfortable. It really doesn't take all that much. In fact, when we started social health, we were thinking of having this credentialing framework and certification program. And it was actually Hugh McKay that really taught us to just sort of dumb it down a bit and not make too big of a deal of what we're really trying to do. Yes, we have to vet people and we have to support people. and there's secondary traumatic stress that, you know, those impacts are real and have to be mitigated. You have to give people an opportunity to debrief. But it really doesn't require a big competency. It's really more of a commitment that a person has to make to just showing up in a person's life and not being afraid. And I think when we learn to do it in one area, it's easier to do it, you know, when we see someone suffering in some other area, and it's easier to receive that same support, you know, from someone else. What do you think you would say would be the strengths of us adopting or expanding, you know, a social model of well-being in the community? What do you see as the qualities that you see through the activities that you're running through Social Health Australia? Like what improvements, what are the benefits that society gets out of the sort of work that you're doing, Joe? Right. Well, as I said, we're not going to get out of the loneliness and epidemic and mental health crisis by just hiring more clinical psychs and the medical profession has figured that out. The benefits are that it's enormously cost effective, first of all, because, you know, many people, as I said, are turning to clinicians because that's all they have. They don't have neighbors, they may not have faith communities, they don't have families that they can turn to, so they. They go or they think they're going to be able to get in. If we could take on this work for ourselves and return, you know, in some way to a world where we knew we could rely on each other and we would be there for each other, you know, there's a great deal of evidence that loneliness is associated with all sorts of ailments, suicidal ideation, inflammation, stroke, heart disease, And conversely, access to meaningful relations, social capital, it correlates with lower disability rates, enhanced employment opportunities, more meaningful relationships. Better mental health. You know, there's some real benefits. It's one of the things that I would love to show. In fact, our companioning program really grew out of an idea. A large health provider was trying to do on their own, but they couldn't because there were too many bureaucratic hurdles. But this is a group of people that were trying to reduce the hospital readmission rates. You know, when people leave hospitals, people return to hospitals who are in, you know, who have deficient social support networks in the same way that they return to prisons. You know, you hear about how people get comfortable being institutionalized, but that's a big problem. And if we had enough time, you need study over several years, I think you could show that you could probably reduce hospital readmission rates as well. So there's all sorts of public health benefits that could be brought about if we could get people to do more of this ourselves. And really, we're trending in the right direction. The healthcare community has been great about encouraging people to use the community for sports. They've been really open to working with entities like social health, you know, to give us referrals. Funding is a different story, but I think that's what we need to probably do. We need to figure out a way of empowering a lot of community groups to get involved. I don't think there needs to be, you know, one entity in peak body. I think we need a lot of hands on deck, you know, and we need to catch people where we catch them. And you hear this about suicide, for example, this came up, I did a talk the other day at the Lions Club, and this man was saying, gosh, I wonder how many people you've saved from suicide. And we've had a couple people that eventually revealed that to us. They had been considering that. And sometimes it takes one person showing up in their lives. It doesn't take a community. One person who, you know, extends human decency at a critical time that can make all the difference in the world. So what my hope is that we find all sorts of community organizations and civic groups and all sorts of entities working at the community level, getting involved with this work and taking it on. We would love to play a role in helping, you know, be involved with that. Maybe it's so much work to recruit and train and support volunteers and. You know, we all have to pick our spots. We're working with a couple groups. We're working right now with Humanist Australia to be able to sort of let them do their own companioning initiative that we're sort of standing behind. And I'd like to do more of that out there and encourage more people to sort of get in the game. That's where it has to go. And we've certainly seen a rise in community programs such as, you know, the chatty cafes that are now actually operating. I know that there's few on the peninsula now where I live. You know, we have the death cafes if people are actually interested in end of life and having those conversations. So you're saying that you really see the, you know, those grassroots community groups as being instrumental. And we also have things like podcasts, you know, create a safe space for people to be open and vulnerable. I was talking to Annie Whitlock about that yesterday. We said, gosh, maybe we should do one. It's such a great way. I think it's especially difficult for older men to sort of emote and to get comfortable. And you know yes there's men's groups and men's sheds and some outlets here and there but that's what we need to do is create more safe areas for people to acknowledge you know to be vulnerable acknowledge what they're going through and know that they may need some support and that's really really really tricky but that's where i think sporting clubs you know you mentioned michelle limb it's interesting in her research she found out that participation in sporting clubs does not correlate with reduced feelings of loneliness which is really interesting and, And I learned from my hockey member, mate, who I supported, you know, he said it was devastating to him when he came back to the rink after a year, a year after his wife died. And these guys, they had known for 40 years, he said, they turned around and walked away like they saw a ghost. And they just didn't know, they didn't want to say the wrong thing. They were uncomfortable. They were, you know, they didn't know what to do. So, Al and I have talked about, oh, gosh, could we train people? Have one designated captain that you know, you know, that you could go to, you know, but that's what we really need. We need more, given that we're not going to do anything about the fact that we are stuck living in our detached homes and our civic and religious institutions are, you know, are on the decline. We have to find more innovative forms of, of, of surrogacy, I guess, to just allow people to connect and be able to connect at critical times. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of work. But as I said, I think we're trending in the right direction. What do you do, Joe, on a daily basis to, you know, make that connection or, you know, because it seems to be that you're a person that lives this, you know, and has consistently lived this day in, day out for a very long time. It's not just something that you put a hat on when you go to work and this is what you do. So what do you find that you do on a daily basis? I always try to have a couple people in my life that I check in on and then I connect with. So I've gotten better about having regular calls with people back in the homeland and even here. And I know a couple people who are dealing with loneliness, like I've been dealing with it. And it doesn't really take much to just check in and have a cup of coffee or, you know, and it makes my life richer too. So I've tried to, you know, I try to do that. I probably don't do as much as I could on the self-care front in general, but I do try to take care of myself and I've been, I had a long bout of long COVID that I'm just sort of recovering from, which has really made it difficult to do much of, but I'm sort of getting over that and it's sensitized me to a lot of what happens with people living with disabilities. And I maybe realized how we're all at some point, especially at the end of life, you You know, unless you sort of die suddenly, you're going to be dealing with disability then and we otherwise it. And I think I try to have a manageable amount of suffering in my life. I feel like I need it to be feeling like I'm living in community, you know, and if I don't have it, I feel like I'm disconnected. And I it's funny. I was talking about this with our mutual friend, Annie. You know i think a lot of people are afraid to be around people who are in pain and think it and there is secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma and there is a way to learn to be more boundaried but you know the jesuit liberation theologians used to say that you know when we really live in community when one person suffers we all suffer you know and i think that we need to learn how to show up for that and not be afraid of being around people who are in pain because it will be us at some point. And we want to know that there'll be people that we can turn to. So that's my big tip. And I'm trying to do that in a manageable way and a way that allows me to stay healthy and whole and not feel overwhelmed. I think that's a really good advice, Joe. And I think that's a great way to actually end our interview. Sounds good. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, Catherine. Oh, it's been a pleasure having you, Joe. Thank you very much.

outro: 1:06:24

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