Community, Kindness, and Care: Death & Grief with Emma Beattie

In this episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, I sit down with the inspiring Emma Beattie, founder of Before and After Life, to explore the often-avoided topics of death, dying, and grief. Emma is a trailblazer in reimagining how we prepare for and respond to the realities of caring for those at the end of life. With a background in creative strategy and storytelling, she brings a unique lens to the conversation, drawing from her own experiences of loss and her commitment to fostering compassionate communities.

Emma's journey into the world of deathcare began in her childhood in New Zealand, where death was part of everyday life. She shares how her mother’s community work shaped her understanding of death and the importance of being present for one another. As we delve into the nuances of caring, dying, and grieving, Emma highlights the need for a shift in how we approach these topics. She advocates for a more hands-on, participatory approach, encouraging us to engage with our communities and support each other through grief.

Throughout our conversation, we touch on the significance of rituals, the healing power of nature, and the importance of open communication about death. Emma’s insights challenge us to rethink our relationships and embrace the uncomfortable conversations that lead to deeper connection. Whether through community initiatives or personal rituals, Emma inspires us to imagine new ways of honouring life and death — reminding us we’re all in this together.

Key points from our discussion:

• Emma Beattie’s background and how it shaped her approach to death and dying
• The importance of community involvement in caring for the dying and grieving
• How rituals and nature can play a vital role in the grieving process
• The need for open conversations about death to foster deeper connections
• Emma’s insights on how to support one another through the challenges of loss

Resources Mentioned:
Before and After Life Website: https://beforeandafterlife.com.au/ 
Palliative Care New South Wales: Palliative Care NSW: https://palliativecarensw.org.au/
Compassionate Communities Australia: Compassionate Communities: https://compassionatecommunities.au/
Bay FM 99.9: Bay FM: https://www.bayfm.org/shows/re-gard/

Books:
Stephen Jenkinson – Die Wise: https://www.amazon.com/Die-Wise-M

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

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

Transcript

0:02

What happens if we show up to each other? What happens if we care for each other and tend each other all the way through that terrain, through caring, dying, and grieving? And what happens if we share those roles that it's not just on one or two people and they all just seem to feed into each other like they seemed inextricably linked to me. 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 recognizes 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. Today I'm speaking with Emma Beattie. Emma is the founder of Before and After Life and is part of the social justice movement dedicated to activating change. She's a pioneer in reimagining how people, communities, and workplaces can prepare, adapt, and respond to the impacts of caring, dying, and grieving. Her professional origins sit in creative strategy, storytelling, and social impact. Emma has worked, studied and volunteered in death since 2020. Emma brings an animistic, creative and poetic lens to the terrain, and her work intersects a long line of personal loss, prioritizing generous and sustainable care. She is trained, supported, and supervised. Emma is a member of Palliative Care New South Wales, NDAN the Natural Death Advocacy Network, the Ethics Center, and hosts regard with Emma on Bay FM 99.9, and is an advocate for passionate communities Australia. Thank you so much for being with me today, Emma. Oh, I'm looking forward to our conversation, Catherine. So we had the pleasure of meeting last year at Sydney Death and Dying Festival. I, we were sitting next to each other in the poetry session with Luke Fisher. I believe I saw that you just interviewed Luke recently. I did, I did. And it was absolutely fantastic to reconnect with him and get more insight to what was behind his poetry. So tell me, I'd love to learn more about you and what got you started. What got me started to really kind of, you know, to, to go back to the origins, I grew up in New Zealand and death. And dying in New Zealand was omnipresent for me. My mom was very involved in our community and death and dying had been kind of hidden for her. And so she decided that when she was raising children, she didn't want that to be the case. And so we were very hands-on and involved in our community. So I built a capacity for it, I guess, you know, and monkey see, monkey do, you know, it was modeled to me. And so yeah, there was, as I said, you know, a long, long line of loss and big initiations along the way. And then, you know, you go out in the world and you know, live your life and nothing really kind of happens. Not too much anyway. But then we had a dear friend of ours, Heather, who was dying, and I went back to New Zealand and spent some time with her and my mum and I went, wow, maybe I could do palliative care. You know, this feels. Like the right kind of space for me, but I let that thought go and that was in my, uh hmm kind of mid to late twenties. And then I returned to that thought when a girlfriend of mine, her mum was end of life. And the experience was not great, and I felt really helpless and I didn't feel like I had a language for, you know, supporting her. And so I started at the library and just ravenously went through all the books and it just kind of stuck. And then I started studying with Griffith Uni and I trained with Zenna Farrago, did a local last aid course, and then started volunteering with Amaya's Home Hospice service. And I was already caring, you know, for a number of, um, aging Australians in our community. And then I was introduced to an indigenous elder and started walking with him through his dying type. You know, these opportunities I think just came and one thing led to another. And then when I got to the point where I thought, I can't do any more volunteering, I'm a sole parent, and there's only so much time in the week. And so I yeah. Turned towards the community and said, what is needed? And that's where it started. Wow, there is so many things that you have just said there in, in your, your process and your journey that you've gone through that I have so many questions about. So firstly, take me back to when you say your mum was involved in the community and you were being involved in, in death and dying. At what stage? What did that look like? It would just be that if somebody was unwell, we were there. You know, we would take meals, mom would, you know, run the mow around the lawns or do some like housework or, you know, my grandparents were from a farming community and so everybody helped each other. And then we moved to a small, um, seaside village. And again, you know, it was just a very small community and mom was just very alive in that community. Always caring and tending, you know, whether they were sick or whether they were dying. And then when people died, we brought them home. You know, we were involved. I had a dear family friend of ours, he was like a brother to me, and he died when I was 14 in a car accident. And you know, it's like the community rallied around. I was cared for. I was taken by, you know, another family friend would take me out on the motorbike. You know, the guy's dad, Aiden's, his name was Aiden's dad, you know, came and spent time with me and his grief he came to. So there was just, I don't know, there was presence. There was, you know, even, even as a very, very young child, if there was a death, you know, of a pet. I remember burying my goldfish in a matchbox, you know, underneath the Holly Hawks, out the front of my stepfather's home Brew shed. There was an honoring. I guess, and nothing was hidden from us. You know, there was a terrible murder in our community and, you know, I was still invited to go and, you know, view the body and it just wasn't hidden. It was hands-on. It was participatory, you know, we were involved no matter the age. And I believe still, that's what has often healed me in good stead for loss, you know, cumulative loss over the years. And, and I model the same to my child. And tell me, when you went to the library and, and started to sort of think, okay, well I'll do a bit more research on this topic. What were some of those books that you first picked out and, and one of the ones that resonated with you? Can you recall any of the names? The very, very first one was Molly Carle's book. I. And it was a book of short stories of lots of different experiences. And I don't know, it just felt good. It's a very strange thing to say about death and dying, but it, it felt true and, and yeah. Gosh, I can't even remember now. Some of the books, you know, being Mortal A Toand, that was pretty early on. Steven Jenkinson's book Die Wise was absolutely pivotal to my work and my thinking and the, the kind of embodied experience. Um, you talk us through a little bit about why and what that meant to you and how that has actually become quite significant for you. His work. Yeah. Uh, he's a wordsmith, you know, he's a real, he uses etymology a lot, so it's like, you know, what does this really mean? So that line of curiosity, just like en raptures me, I love that. I love words and language and, and I guess what Steven does is he turns everything on its head and he questions everything. And that's what I found I was doing, you know, when, when I came to his work was, you know, there has to be a different way. There has to be a better way. And what I also noticed about his work was that it was very, very enmeshed with, and entangled with the natural world and with this reciprocity for place. And that he wasn't somebody who was just this kind of sage on stage spouting stuff, that he, he has his own hardships. He has his own, you know, multiplicity of loss and grief and, you know, he, he walks as talk. And you say that just then you said that there has to be a better way. What had you seen was a way that you, you weren't liking what you were seeing? What, what was it you were thinking there needs to be a better way as opposed to what you were experiencing? Oh, so much. You know, I mean, the medical system does a really, really good job, you know, and I'm grateful to them. But there's also a point where people, otherwise known as patients, lose their agency, lose their autonomy, and they kind of just go into a system and are seen as data, you know, a set of symptoms and, and data and. I believe that we can do a better job in considering the whole person and thinking about, you know, what is this system that people are spinning around? And, you know, an example of that, a, a girlfriend of mine has breast cancer at the moment. And you know, I said, were you given any information about, you know, aftercare? No, not, not one piece of information about how to tend her body after her operation. And I just, do you know how much information is out there? You know, it, it was like she wasn't even informed to do some lymphatic drainage. And I just went, you know, a little bit like IVF, you know, we, we know doing IVF, the acupuncture. This is science, the research shows, and this is why you have acupuncture clinics beside IVF clinics because they can, I. Go from one to the other. Now we know that, that after surgery and, and with breast cancer, that lymphatic drainage helps and she just wasn't told. And I just think, yeah, we, we can do a much better job. We, the systems that we have in thinking about the whole person and bringing in therapies that can support, or not even therapies, but people and tools and resources and supports that support the whole person. And you see this also in death. We go into a really traditional ceremony and how is that really honoring the ways that we know that person, you know, maybe there's, you know, a bottle of plank, you know, on the, on the coffin or, you know, maybe there's their favorite song, but we can do a better job at that. You know, and, and we can train more people to be funeral celebrants. We can do a better job at honoring the people that we love and we don't have to just rest in what we know. We can be more imaginative. And I'd love for you to, to talk us through, you always refer or you use a phrase, caring, death, grieving. And tell me about how you've changed that in that process. How you can lead people to do better things around caring, death and grieving. Well, when I read the statistics on caring and how seven out of 10 carers in Australia are women and you know the impacts of that, I found it. Shocking to begin with. Really shocking. And I thought, you know, where is the support for carers? As a single parent myself, you know, I've often found myself thinking, where is the support? And then as I was walking, you know, with people and families at the end of life, you really see how small people's lives become and people feel awkward, and they're, they're not there for each other. You know, this is the, the independent lives that we're all supposed to be aspiring to. But really we need to be interdependent. You know, we need each other, but it's not really celebrated or revered in, you know, the dominant kind of cultural narrative. You know, we live alone, you know, we make our own meals or we eat out, you know, lots of things are, are outsourced anyway. But to come back to caring, I just thought, you know, there's an invitation to turn towards each other. More than what we do and why isn't that happening? And, and it's important that we care for our carers. It's important that we show up and turn up for each other more than we do. And so then the, the death thing, or the dying and the death thing again, you know, people's worlds get so small. People don't have a language for, you know, how to be there. They feel awkward or like they might be, you know, not welcome because it's a quiet time. You know, people are busy in their lives. And I, again, I just thought we can do this better again if we are turning towards each other. And then as I was going to, you know, death cafes and attending people and families and volunteering, what I noticed was the grieving element, similar to what you and I were talking about earlier on, the grieving element is a huge part of how well we care and die. And how well we travel through the bereavement process or experience rather not process through the bereavement experience. And so what I noticed was like people didn't really want to talk about what happens when you die. People didn't really want talk about specific, you know, case examples of, you know, symptoms or symptom management or anything like that. People wanted to talk about the people that they had lost, the people that had been lost from them and that they had never mourned, you know, the perinatal loss for many, many women, you know, that had never been acknowledged, intended or shared. You know, the siblings, your sibling loss, you know, death by suicide, sudden death, you know, you know, dementia being the leading cause of death in Australia for women. Now, you know, the grieving process that happens as the person that we love. It's still here, but not there, you know, so grief was a, a huge part of it and I thought, we've forgotten how to participate. We've forgotten how to be with each other, to companion each other. And you know, I know that I have a fix it bone in my body that I need to really keep in check, you know? But it's like if we can't fix it, we don't go anywhere near it. We go in the other direction and it's, yeah, the invitation, I think Catherine is what happens if we show up to each other. What happens if we care for each other and tend each other all the way through that terrain, through caring, dying, and grieving. And what happens if we share those roles that it's not just on one or two people. And they all just seemed to feed into each other, like they seemed inextricably linked to me. It's like I didn't want to just go and be a funeral celebrant, you know, and, and show up at the table and have a cup of tea and write the notes. And then, not that, you know, lots of celebrants are more hands on, but some celebrants, you know, you dip in and you dip out. And it's like, actually the richness of what this work offers me, offers us is a depth of relationship because you're having really truthful, vulnerable, tender conversations. And in a time when people are so desperately hungry and desperately lonely for each other, this is the place that we can reconnect and learn, relearn how to be with each other. And. How does your connection with nature influence the way in which you support people through that experience, or, it's interesting 'cause I, I liked the, the fact that you didn't use the word process when you talked about grief, but the fact that it's actually an experience and, and I think that's a lovely way to, to phrase it. And it is an experience, not a process that you move through.'cause it's, it's never linear, but yeah. So, so how do you use your connection with nature to, to help with that? Ah, so many ways we've lost touch. I think with nature, I mean, we tend to kind of put ourselves at the apex, but actually our, you know, we are the river. You know, if the river is sick, then we are sick. You know, if we don't have any bees, we don't have any food, it's, you know, we are so inextricably linked. In the natural world, we are of, you know, our bodies are 70% water, you know, water that's been cycling on this earth for over 4 billion years. You know, when you, when you think about your tears that you're crying and you wipe your tears away, that is holy. That is like such. An incredible thing to think that salty water is over 4 billion. Those tears have been cried again and again and again and again. So there's this idea of us being of nature. It just holds me. I think I mentioned my grandparents had a farm in New Zealand, so I grew up in nature, you know? Then I, and I grew up in a little village and we had the kanoi ranges, you know, the, the beach five minutes down the road and the river mouth that ran through the village and, you know, we, we run a mark. Everything was nature. Our toys were nature. We used to have, you know, these flax swords and you know, like everything we ate from the garden because you couldn't afford to not. So I just grew up with the essence of me being of the land. And I think my dear friend Cam, actually, he always used to say, and you know, no matter what happens, it's like you just somehow land on your feet. And I think that that is because of my connection to nature, that I feel that that's what I'm of. And so in my work, you meet with somebody at the end of life and they want the hospital room, or they want the, the room in the house that overlooks the trees so they can watch the birds, they can watch the light, they can hear the wind. You know, things get very, very simple, you know? And, and that's what people are looking out for and that's what we, in our very hurried and rushed ways, forget to take time for. So if I'm tending often, you know, a group or an individual often, you know, we'll meet outside, you know, it's, I have this wonderful woman that I, I meet with weekly and no matter the weather, and we've been out with our umbrellas, sitting on our rugs with the, you know, everything kind of, you know, wrapped around us in, in the rain, just in the elements. You know, it's, um, TNA heart says that the cream of his lifetime's work was his connection to ground. And I think when, yeah, when you kind of bring it back to something as simple, but so sturdy as where do I connect with the earth? Where do I connect with the ground? You know, that's steady, that's a steady place. That's a place that won't let you down. You know, you can always come back to that, you know, if you forget to breathe, you know, you, you remember, you know, my feet are on the ground, or my hands and knees are on the ground, or my back is on the ground, or my belly is on the ground. Yeah. No, I mean, I also think it plays into, you know, the storytelling, the mythology that happens through these experiences of caring and dying and death and grieving the stories. You know, it's. Somebody will say, oh, you know, there, there was the most beautiful rainbow on the day that we buried so and so, or, you know, I, I hold my sorry, body out of bed and I made my coffee and I sat in the sun. And you know, that's as much as I did that day. But a magpie came and serenaded me, or I saw a kookaburra. You know, I've, I've been in groups where that kind of nature symbolism comes through and somebody will say, oh, you know, I saw blah. And then somebody else will, you know, it'll popcorn around the room. Somebody else will say, oh, I did too on that day. Oh, me too. And then suddenly we have something, you know, a kernel, a seed that we can carry forward in the storytelling of this time in our lives. So nature, yeah. Is a, it's, I mean, it's everything. And what about the role of ritual? What do you feel that that plays? It's also everything, especially nature. Ritual is everything. And I don't mean that it needs to be, you know, some spectacular mandala, you know, made from foraged objects or, you know, these small rituals can be really, really deeply meaningful and offer us a ballast, you know, a kind of a steadying through caring and through dying and through grief. So whether it's, you know, through vigil or whether it's through ceremony or whether it's, you know, something that you do after loss. You know, and it might be very simple, it might just be when my dear friend Ang died, you know, we were very, very old friends. And when she died about a year and a half ago, it was bucketing rain. And I couldn't, I couldn't get up to her funeral. And so I took my daughter and we took all the flowers from the garden and a piece of bamboo and I just, you know, wrapped it, tied it and filled it with flowers. And we sent it, went for a bushwalk and we sent it out into the dam. And very simple thing, you know, nothing grand, nothing exceptional, but a walk to reflect, you know, some, some color. She was really vibrant woman. And in winter I use my granddad's teacup, you know, that I grew up with, you know, his birthday ISS in July. And in the winter I use the winter teacup and in the springtime I use the daffodil teacup. And that wasn't his, I found it in an op shop. But it says to me of, you know, speaks to me of, you know, I can reflect on all the spring lambs. That we used to go out and, you know, check on, you know, or sometimes we'll have a piece of Turkish delight or, you know, these, these things don't need to be huge and big. You know, I, I have rituals of, you know, burning sage every day. We always have candles with dinner, you know, that they can be really, really small things. There was a man that I cared for and after he died, it's ana tree. And the ana tree. It, you know, burst. It was so, so vibrant and it has all of these, this moss and these ferns and stuff all over it. And, and so that became his tree. That's, you know, his tree. And so I go to that tree now, you know, it's a place to go to ritual. It's fortifying, you know, it's studying. It's. Honoring a very, very dear friend of our family, Liz, who told me that as she was coming into land, as she was winding down, she said it was like a, a wind down toy. You know those tin toys that used to get you wind up? And they go, did, did, did, did, did. And she said, I feel like a, a, a windup toy who's just slowly winding down. But when she died, all the natal grass was out everywhere. So it was, it was the wintertime and there was just, you know, this beautiful kind of pink fluff all along the roads. And I took some pictures and I sent them to her and, and I said, you know, I'm always gonna now find you in the natal grass. You know, it's, I don't know these, these rituals. Bring joy. They, they give us lines of connection and ways of loving after all of the ways that we knew how to love are lost to us. You know? And it's sometimes they come easily and sometimes, you know, we need to locate them, sometimes we need to practice and find them. And it's not easy. You kind of have to build a muscle for it sometimes. It's funny that you say that because that was when I was recovering from my car accident and doing the rehab. Uh, it was one of the things that was part of our homework where, and our refiguring of how to find, I suppose, joy in, in a life that had been quite changed. And, and they referred to them as joy rides. So that was our, our task that we had to do is that on a daily basis we had to find a joy ride. And for me, those joy rides were. Going on a dog walk or a walk in nature and finding something that I hadn't seen previously. So whether that was a new flower or a new leaf coming up to bud, whether it be a lady bird, whether it be a rainbow, whether it be caught in a, in a shower of rain. But it was really amazing when you do exercise that muscle as you were referring to, how much more you then see. Yes. And so then imagine if we apply that presence and intentionality to each other. Ies. You know, that's, that's, that's what we are missing. And, you know, in, in a time where we are so, so lonely when there's an epidemic of loneliness. That's what we need for each other. It's, you know, we live in the same house, but we, we don't, you know, we ships in the night, we're so, so busy. And I was so busy. I, I sat out with my daughter on Sunday and we just sat in the garden.'cause you know, it's been so, so wet that we haven't been able to do that. And we just sat in the garden, talked and played and watched the bees and, and she said to me, mum, this is so nice. It feels like a really long time since we did that. And it is because we hadn't been in the garden for so long. But that presence and attention, it's meaningful, you know, it, it is nourishing, it's soul nourishing. And tell me, how do you encourage individuals and families to sort of embark on this path and, and have more open conversations? How do you suggest that, that people do that? It's so different every time. You know, you have, I'm traveling. I'm Companioning a beautiful man at the moment. And you know, he is so open and he's having all the right conversations with his family and he's done, he's prepared and he's just really, really open and willing and, you know, to have difficult conversations and, and it's incredible. But then I've been, you know, with other people who are not dying right up until they're active dying and who just refuse point blank to, you know, and it's not my job. It's not my job to make somebody understand or, you know, get them to do some truth telling. That's not my job. My job is just to love them. I. You know, my job is just to work through what comes up. You know, here, here are some invitations. Here is a process. Of course, here is a framework that we can move through. You know, what of these things have you completed, you know, what feels important to you, you know? But also it's, I don't know, life has so many forms and frameworks and, and sometimes there's more value in just humanizing, you know, just being with, I do, I remember when I was training in dementia and they gave, they gave me this flower thing, so, you know, what music do you like? You know, what do your dog, you know, do, have you had pets? And you, and I was just like, have we really lost the skill of having a human conversation with somebody to just presence them and be genuinely interested and curious about them? Where have we gone So wrong. You know, and what was interesting that I find that you said earlier is the fact that the need to fix it, that we don't always have to feel like it's our role to fix something. Sometimes it's better just to be with that person. It's it, it's, you know, it's People sometimes say to me, you know, what do I say to somebody who's just lost their husband or their child, or their dog, or has had a miscarriage? I love you. This is really shitty. Am I allowed to say that? This is really hard. Yeah, this is really hard. And there, there's nothing more to be said. It's just, you know, it's just, it's just showing up. And I think, you know, this is what we don't do well is this kind of consistency in showing up to each other. I. You know, it's like, oh no, I don't feel like it tonight. I'm too tired. Or, oh, I'm, you know, got a bit of a headache, or I'm feeling a little bit outta sorts. I don't feel like I can kind of, you know, be exuberant or be funny or, you know, perform. And it's like, you know what, what if we just remember how to be with each other and whatever shape we're in, it's actually okay to go to your friend's house and put the kettle on and sit in different rooms and read a book. You're just there, you know, or, or to take a beach walk and, and not talk at all. You know, this is what we have with family. And so what if we started, sometimes some people have this with family. Yeah. You know what, if we could just be, yeah, just be together without going, oh, I've only got half an hour and, you know, let's have dinner. But, you know, in six weeks from now, and, you know, if you think about caring and death or dying and grieving, it's what it's being, you know, slowing down and. Being, it's staying overnight when somebody has just lost somebody. You know when somebody has died and you go, you know what, I'm, I'm gonna be here this week with you, and then after that, somebody else is gonna be here for another week. You know, or, or it's after the ceremony and then everybody goes back to their lives and the bereaved are left to their own devices. What happens then? It's, it's, we need these ecologies of care to kind of go in and go, you know what? I'm gonna show up every day, or I'm gonna text you every day for a month, and after that I'm gonna text you every week for a month. And after that I'm gonna text you every month for a year. This, this continuity of showing up and just being with. Without performance. I, I feel, you know, with all this, with the social media, you know, everything's such a performance. It's, you know, you need the, the good clothes and the great car and the, you know, second house. And the, what I see at the end of life is people downsizing. You know, without all the stuff, you can't take your fancy car with you. You know, it's very humbling, I think, to be in the presence of somebody who is really grieving and it's very loving to contain that. And what I mean by containment is to wrap around that person and not hold space, but to wrap around that person and say, here we are. Let's see what wants to reveal. Maybe nothing, maybe no talk, maybe some quiet words. Maybe we'll listen to a song, but then just showing up again after that. And after that, it's this participation being with reciprocity. All these yummy, yummy words you, that we forget in our busy lives. You know, looping back to this, to this ritual, when somebody dies, we buy all these flowers. It's like, you know, bring a plant. Bring a plant that needs watering so that that person who's bereaved, contend something, you know, and look forward to. It blooming. When Uncle Magpie died, you know, I was given, his ex partner gave me a piece, Lily, and a year after he died, I got that piece, Lily and I separated it and planted more, you know, and it keeps going. And I have him now in more rooms than I had before. You know what a beautiful thing. Mm. And tell me how do you find people respond when they participate in the, the different workshops you offer? I know you have how grief moves, and then you've got the coughing coffin weaving as well. Tell me about how that role of doing something and being involved in those sort of workshops help people with these experiences of death and dying a few ways. One, one is, you know, some people just really like to talk, you know, this kind of idea of talk therapy, you know, to just get it out and tell the stories and, and verbalize it. But not everybody is like that. Some people, you know, really need to move their bodies. Honestly. All of us really need to move our bodies and need to move grief through and with our bodies. Some people, you know, really value making and the thing about making something is that you, you drop into a different kind of. Space. It's like a buffer, you know? It's not confronting, you know, sometimes you sit in a, in a group setting in a, in a circle setting and you just think, oh, you know, there's always gonna be one that talks too much and I don't really have capacity to listen to everybody's stories. And, you know, and then some people really like that. It really helps 'em contextualize their own feelings and, and locate themselves in their, in the experience of loss. But yeah, the, the making, I don't know, there's something really kind of old and ancient about making with your hands and it accesses you access a different part of your psyche almost like, you know, when you do somatic writing and you think, oh wow, that was surprising. I didn't realize that was there. It's, it's like, oh, wow, that old grief again, you know, or, gee, I haven't thought of, you know, that memory for a really long time. And listening to people kind of sharing as they're making. It's a very non-confrontational way of tending, loss or, or learning about difficult, you know, subject matter. And it's, it's a way also of working with metaphor. You know, weaving is a really, really beautiful metaphor to, to work with. I've got a, a, a workshop, a little morning workshop coming up where we're doing cyanotype. And so working with the color blue, you know, why do we use blue and grief? You know, what does that actually mean and what's the color theory of blue and what are some of the stories? And we, you know, talk about Maggie Nelson's Blue. It's, and it's so rich with metaphor that the storytelling is a more palatable way of dealing with really difficult subject matter, I guess. And it's a way of, you know, creating shared experiences, which is also lasting. You know, people create their own relationships, particularly with something like the coffin weaving that happens over a couple of days, you know, that, that creates new relationships. Or sometimes they'll run a program over seven weeks. And it's really interesting that about, you know, about four weeks into everybody's showing up to each other and themselves, there's a kind of intuitive sense, you know, there's a resonance that starts to take shape in the group and they'll say, oh, you know, this happened. And then somebody else will say, oh yeah, I was also thinking about that. Or something like that happened for me as well. And, and we've lost that as well. You know, we've lost that, that thing that happens when we spend a lot of time together that we kind of take for granted, I think with our really, you know, our close friends and family. But when we start spending time in, in people's realms, you know, you, you start attuning on a different level. A few things that I'm, I'm picking up in, in the fact that we don't have to present ourselves to be this particular image or this particular caricature to then present to someone else. We should just be there and, and whatever shape or form that is, and it seems to be, be there on a more regular basis than what we currently are. So it allows for these moments of just going for a walk together, sitting there, having a cup of tea together. So there's more of that connection. Would that be fair to say? I think that's it, Catherine. I think just, you know, really intentional time together. It is so. Strengthening. It's so soul nourishing for us as individuals, but it's also really bonding for us as human beings to, you know, to be in this way together and, you know, yeah, without the kind of rhetoric and without the performance. And this is, I think, really, truly what keeps me in this work is the, the purity, the honesty, the frankness, the humor. You know, there's no bs no, it's, it's just, it's, this is, you know, it's real. And sometimes I find it really difficult in, you know, in, in other circles to kind of figure out where I am. You know, what, what, what the social etiquette of this? Or, you know, if you've had my kid a couple of times, am I supposed to now have your kid a couple of times? You know, this kind of always balancing and, and the thing that caring and dying and grieving, it just, it's. You just, you can just love and just be honest and authentic and there's no guesswork. You know, there's, it's like, it's just, it's real In a very, very performative world that we live in. It's real. I can trust it, you know? I know where I'm at. It's authentic and genuine. And I, you know, I've, I had a situation one time, I was on a, a panel discussion and a, a woman came up and said to me, wow, you know, that was so great. I really valued what you said. And, you know, you're so authentic. And I, I kind of did a double take and I thought, wow, we've gone so wrong. We have strayed so far off the path that now authenticity is some kind of beacon, you know, like it's, it's a, it's anomaly. And it's interesting because, you know, you're so true in the fact that. There is, there is no, there's no bullshit when you deal with this industry and when, when you actually see on a daily basis what people are dealing with at the last stages of life. Mm-hmm. And the impact of that ar of on loved ones around. And it's interesting that you mentioned earlier that, that everything else drops away and it comes back to those very simple things that people want around them and of a lot of them being connected to nature. What are the, the sort, is there any themes that you've found that when, when people are dying, what their preferences are or what their choices are? Oh, it's so different. It's so different. You know, I, one guy, you know, literally 20 minutes before he died, wanted a cigarette, like, and I lit him up. You know, it, it's, that's, it's what he wanted. It's what he wanted. I was like, okay, but I'm not staying in the room just letting you know, like, you wanna do that? It's fine. The window's open, like, yeah, but I'm, I'm not gonna be there while you do that. And yeah, I'll be right back after. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's so different. It's so different for every, everybody, you know, some people, more than one person actually, I can count on, on a hand. People have said, I want you around because you don't annoy me. Now, I'm sure my daughter would really like, disagree with that, like vehemently. But yeah, it's, I think. What people want is love, love and connection. I mean, you know, and again, not everybody, some people don't, some people would rather slip away on their own without everybody by their bedside, you know? And that's okay too. Some people, you know, want to be sung over by a threshold choir or by, you know, or, or somebody of their family singing or some music playing, you know, people playing guitar or, you know, or, or the cricket on, or the tele, you know, like everybody is different. I mean, what it, low lighting, I mean, and I'm talking about active dying, you know, like low lighting and Yeah. And, and sometimes not any sound, you know, it's, yeah. And maybe just explain that, that active dying. Stage just in case people are unfamiliar with what that term means. So when I talk about active dying, I mean like really the, the end of the end stage. And so that can be from three months, it can really kind of kick in three months and it can kind of go on and on. And this is why in the act dying stage sometimes, you know, people say, oh, you know, I think we are getting close. And then it's like, oh, I've gotta get back to work, you know, I can't wait around here forever, kind of thing, you know? So it can go on for some time a little bit like, I mean, death is a labor, right? So like a labor could go from, you know, three hours, four hours to, you know, a couple of days or longer. But by an act of dying, it just means that our bodies start to wind down. You know, we are not really as hungry or as thirsty as we were before. The skin can get quite splotchy because, you know, the, the heart is starting to beat. Slower. Often people get very, very cold, you know, because the circulation is a lot slower. But equally, sometimes, you know, people can get very hot and it can oscillate, you know, hot and cold. The breathing becomes less, people might not have the energy that they had before. But you know, our lovely friend Liz, our dear friend Liz, I mean, she was lucid. She was so clear, and she called me and she said, you know, I really can't believe that in the next 24 to 48 hours, I won't be here. She was clear, lucid as you like. She was of the Baha faith, and she really, she was very, very practiced in her faith and, but you know, she was, she wasn't, I mean, regal just so, so clear, so, so clear. You know, some people, you know, might be just very, very drowsy. They might slip into unconsciousness. Whereas, you know, somebody like Liz was very, very clear right up until the end. And how important is it for people to have a community around them to support them? Vital, vital, where they say we need four New South Wales Palliative care talks about having your four, four people so that, you know, your primary carer doesn't get, you know, absolute burnout. But four people also is not, you know, it's not a lot. Then there's other research that says, you know, it takes 16 people, you know, for somebody to die at home, it takes 16 people for somebody to die at home. Well, and that, you know, that might be specialist palliative care in the gp. Maybe there's an OT or a speech therapist, or maybe, you know, there's a dietician or you know, whoever your team is. But that's also your, your carers. Maybe somebody of faith, maybe you know, a couple of neighbors, friends, family, whatever. I mean, I don't know about you, but I mean, counting 16 people, you know, really close people that you could call on. I don't know how many people can really do that. You know, you might have a handful of friends that you know that are like your besties. You're kind of in a posse, but are they going to be there as you are winding down, as Liz would say? Mm-hmm. You know, it's, I think that we invest so much time in our work and not enough time in our relationships, and the chances are that, you know, with medicine being the way that it is, that we are likely, you know, if we don't die suddenly, that we are going to be living with comorbidities. And by that I mean multiple diagnoses or multiple ailments. Um, and. You know? Yeah. So what, what does that look like for us? You know, when I read the seniors paper locally here in the Byron Shire, you know, people are really struggling. You know, tradies want to charge them, you know, $250 to change a light bulb. You know, they're living on sandwiches and you know, and we think that there are so many resources available, but there are not enough people caring for the people who need support. That's just, that's it. This is where the compassionate communities piece, you know, really comes in. You don't have to be best friends with your neighbors up and down the street. You don't have to do that, but you, you wanna check in on each other from time to time. And also that builds a space and a trust and a relationship so that when somebody does lose somebody or when you do, you know, somebody dies in your close network, that these already kind of threads of relationship that you can kind of lean into so you don't have to do it on your own. And can you tell us a little bit about, I know that you are not an expert in it, but just your experience with Compassionate Communities Australia and, and what you've, you've seen of the model they're, they're trying to bring into Australia and I, I believe that it's based on the UK model that, so if you can just talk a little bit through that and, because I think it, it really is from my understanding very much trying to replicate what your mum was doing at home all those years ago. Boom. That's what it is, Cathy. I mean, that, that's the kernel of it. It's just be kind, you know, just be kind to people. Pay attention, you know, if, if somebody's lawn hasn't been mowed in a really long time, you might wanna just pop a note in the mailbox or, you know, knock at the door and well, you know, holler over the fence. You know, all, okay, like, can I give you a hand? If you start to, you know, if you go out for an evening walk or a morning walk, you will encounter people, have a conversation. Just do that. It's as simple as that. You know, we don't all have to be best friends, but I can tell you after a couple of floods and bush fires and COVID, that our, our street network is so tight, so tight, and I know that, you know, if I've got a flat tire, my neighbor will let me know, you know, if I've left my lights on. Or, you know, if I go away on holiday and I need someone to keep an eye on the house, you know, I, I have a number of people that I can rely on up our street. You know, if there's excess something in the garden, my neighbor Ken will grow silver beet. He will grow just to be able to give fresh vegetables to neighbors. He won't eat them himself, but he will grow them in order to be kind, you know? And he will fix somebody's bike. He will go and snip of the lawn. Like, he's so active in this community and, you know, and he knows everybody and everybody knows him. And we've lost, we've lost that. So, compassionate communities is really just, you know, start in your own home. Start with your neighbors, start with your street start, and then, you know, and that feeds into community, participate, get active care, pay attention. But they also have a really wonderful program around super connectors and super connectors. Then it means that, you know, not everything rests on your shoulders because, you know, as we know, particularly with women all the time, everything, you know, the emotional labor of life can get heavy. So the idea of a super connector means that you have knowledge and you can redirect and link people up with the tools and the supports and the resources that they need. And this is, this is really, really powerful stuff because then, you know, again, it's not on you. I don't have to go and hang out with Joey down the road and you know, I wasn't in the war. He's a veteran, you know, but I can bring in, you know, somebody, you know, like I could bring in an OT, for instance, who works with veterans. And so that kind of trust then would be there. Or I could, you know, if I know that somebody's unwell and they play piano, then I could. Know somebody else in our community that can also play piano or I can reach out, you know, it's like this kind of PR job, you know? Yeah. And women, like we are hardwired for networks. It's, you know, if you've got a startup enterprise, you want women on the job because they will network like crazy and build and, you know, this is why you see, you know, book clubs and bowls and tennis and coffee mornings and, you know, the big morning teas and you know, like, this is, this is what we do as women. We, we bring people together. Not all of us, obviously, some of us feel introverted, but to become a super connector is a really powerful thing in a community. But it's, I mean, it doesn't have to be another thing to do, you know, it's, it's like, who are you and where are you at and what are your skills and resources and knowledge and, and how can you be in service to your community with what you have without doing too much more? And I think you give a a great example about just starting in your own own backyard and you know, where if someone's going away and, and you know, you notice that their papers, you know, being lying in the driveway, you know, pop it somewhere where it's, you know, away. And so it doesn't clearly scream that, you know, I'm away on holidays or take people's bins in. It was something that we in, in our street certainly did. There was someone who was, I would, I would say was a super connector in our street and, and now it's taken the form since COVID that every Easter we have an Easter egg hunt for the kids. On the, on the street we have a little sticker that we put on our mailbox and we have a morning tea together, and then we do the same at Christmas time as well. And it just means that for those. Two times a year we connect with other people in the street that we may just fleetingly say hello to. But it is nicer if you're part of a larger community and to know, like you said, that if you leave your lights on someone, someone will let you know, you know? And, and tell me, tell me about the, the Bay fm. So is this a new evolution for you, Emma? What's going on? This is what's happening. Yeah. Well that, that's pretty exciting. So last year I was invited onto one of their other programs a few times, and then one of the hosts really, she said to me, oh, well you should just have your own program. I thought, oh, well, I hadn't thought of that. And so she said she encouraged me to apply. It was a bit of a process, but we got there. And so I'm so grateful for that invitation. And I just think community radio is such a wonderful platform to be able to remind people of how to be kind to each other, you know? Yeah. So it's called Regard with Emma, and the idea is yet to really have regard for each other and for the place that we live, and what does that look like, and obviously weaving in the themes of caring, dying, and grieving as being a way to turn towards each other and, and care. And so, yeah, I'm really exciting. That starts on the 16th of June. And what region does the, the Bay FM cover?'cause it's 99.9 fm. Mm-hmm. Uh, and what is it, the region that you'll, you'll be covering? It's the Byron Shire region. Northern Rivers Byron Shire region. But you can stream it. You can stream it online. Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah. But you know, I contacted Haley West who, who has dead air, and I just said, okay, hot tips let go. You know, like, what can you, what do I need to know? Because it feels very, I mean, you're very practice host Catherine, but for me, seeing that the decks, you know, and like kudos to DJs because Oh yeah. It's very confusing. It's like a whole confus. Yeah. It's another language. Yeah, it is. It is. Like when I go into our local radio station here, I'm overwhelmed by all the buttons and all of the things that you could press that could probably make a real, real big mistake. Uh, yeah. So, yes, I, it. I, I like my little home studio that I've got, but yeah, that's, that's a whole other ball game, isn't it? It it's a whole other ball game, and so it is got butterflies in my tummy, that's for sure. You know, I definitely feel alive, but I'll have somebody with me for the first couple of weeks before I properly fledge and yeah, it makes me feel uncomfortable and it's probably not something that I would've sought out, but, you know, when you receive an invitation, and, and for me, my journey across caring and dying and grieving has been like this. It's, it's been a, a call and response. It hasn't been something that I, you know, did a course and then thought, you know, I'll get a nice website and, you know, now I'm, you know, a desk dollar, no. It's like, no, it's, for me, it's very much been a kind of ripening process, you know, and listening and responding. Mm. But I find most people that work in this space are informed by an experience. Their own personal experience is either, you know, the death of a loved one or something that they've felt that hasn't sat well with them, and they'd like to change it. And so it's. It's not a surprise that, that then you evolve as, as time goes on, because you are just responding to what you are seeing in front of you. So I think this is a, a very exciting evolution in the Emma BD world. So, so tell me, will you be having guests on? Is, have you worked out the format yet? Yeah, so the, I mean the idea, yes, we will, I will have guess that's like another layer of complexity that I'm going to need to navigate. How to, you know, do all the buttons while I'm engaging. So, no, the idea is to, to make it very much around local voices, because what I know from facilitating groups is that people, as I said before, can kind of contextualize themselves and other people's stories. And so we need to normalize death and dying. And grief in everyday conversations, we need to, you know, bring it back. It's, it's this idea of, you know, kind of life, life life, life life. Death is not, it's life, death, life death, life death, life death. And so we, we need it in our daily conversations because this is what offers us so much vitality mm-hmm. In our lives is, you know, this idea of, you know, this could be the last meal or this could be, you know, the last time that I make a cup of tea for this person who's sitting at my kitchen table. Or this could be. You know, this, this idea of preciousness of life and relationship. So bringing these conversations into the every day feels important and difficult conversations and opening up, you know, how other people ritualize their loved ones and opening up, you know, the complexity of, you know, disenfranchised grief and cumulative grief. And, you know, what does it mean to be, you know, have community death care and, and you know it, how willing are you to participate in the death care of a loved one? You know, like just letting people know what their options are. I have this little kind of snappy thing called, you know, get death sorted and it's, you know, G is for gather. The information and D is for discerning that information. And then s is for sharing that information. So GDS get sorted. And so what happens then is that people start to understand what is available and possible. Mm. You know, it's, it's kind of like people don't know and then they know too late and then they say, I wish I had of Yeah. Every time. Like every time. And so I think as a community, yeah. What does it mean, you know, to have this amazing platform of BFM Community Radio and to be able to share with people, well, the smorgasbord of what is possible and available and, and then them being able to say, okay, well I can do it my way, you know? Yeah, I can do this our way. Well now I know that I don't have to do that. We talked really early on about the tumble spin of the medical system can be, you know, some, sometimes not, but oftentimes it's a whole new language to learn and yeah. You know, sets of data and specialists and, and all the things, but what, what, what happens when you have a little bit of knowledge before you need it so that it's not, you know, initiation by fire? Yeah. You know, it's what happens if we as a community are practiced in the ways, what happens if we have come together multiple times to practice shrouding so that when we need it, it's available to us and we know how to do that. What happens if we, you know, I, I had a group of 11 to 14 year olds and we were out, you know, making water, music and, you know, out in the river, and I said, you know, if somebody died you could create music. You could come and you could make a song. And you could celebrate your friend in this way, or your brother, or your sister, or your parent or your grandparent in this way. You know, like just opening up possibility. You know? I think we first, we have to kind of imagine what is possible so that we can step into it. That is a super powerful way to finish our conversation today. I think, Emma, that is so beautiful. I think you should get that on a t-shirt. That should be your tagline. I, but I, I think it's so true. I think that, you know, you have to imagine to then be able to step into it. So I think that that's really beautiful. Mm. Thank you so much for being with us today, Emma. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. Thanks for having me, Catherine. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, brought to you by Critical Info. If you liked the episode, learn something new, or were touched by a story you heard, we'd love for you to let us know. Send us an email, even tell your friends, subscribe so you don't miss out on new episodes. If you can spare a few moments, please rate and review us as it helps other people to find the show. Are you dying to know more? Stay up to date with. 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