Episode 326: Nora Belal of Death Practice Journal
In this episode, Fiona chats with Nora Belal, the founder of Death Practice Journal. They discuss the importance of embracing conversations about death, preparing for end-of-life planning, and exploring how death impacts our lives. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The value of open and honest conversations about death and its impact on individuals and communities.
The collective experience of death and the need for more comfort
The importance of embracing grief
Normalizing conversations about end-of-life planning
The distinction between solitude and isolation in remote work
Creating spaces that unite the dead with the living
The importance of breath work and its benefits
The significance of writing about death and grief
The importance of setting boundaries and being a good boss to oneself
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
I think a way for you to approach death and end-of-life planning is to do your death work and figure out how you feel about it and what you would want to happen in an ideal situation and maybe what would happen in an ideal situation. I think a lot of my work is just letting people know that there's not always one answer and that their experiences are always going to influence how they move through the world and how they move through their end-of-life planning. And that’s fine.
—
Welcome to episode 326 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today you're reading an interview episode and these are just so fun for me to record interesting because I just feel like I learn so much about people, whether they are people that I've worked with as a coach, or they are people I've understood a little bit about through say social media or I've seen them speak at an event or maybe they've pitched themselves to us and I just feel like I get to dive deep with people and have these chats, and I hope that it's helpful for you too. I think that it is based on the feedback that we get. Today is a small business interview and it is a business that is very different to most of the business owners that you hear from.
This one is a little left of centre, but I think something that is important for every single person to consider. Before we get stuck on that, I want to mention two things. The first is I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this podcast and I meet these people, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing I wanted to mention is that Group Coaching is open. We only open this twice a year. This is a 12-month program, and we try and curate a wonderful group of creative small business owners. If you're reading thinking, I want to apply, but I'm not technically creative in terms of maybe being a maker or a designer or something like that, as long as you are running a small business, you are creative.
In my mind, I work with people in the non-traditional creative industries such as accountants and lawyers and anesthetists, and all of them are super creative. Don't let that put you off. But it is for people who are wanting to create businesses that align with their values, that align with their purpose, and their meaning. They are not necessarily people who just want to get in and make a whole bunch of money tomorrow and get out, and they don't care who they hurt in the process. Of course, they want to make money, but they want to do so in a way that aligns with who they are as a person and the values and beliefs that guide them. If that is you and you are keen to work with me for 12 months and learn from not only me but a whole bunch of other small business owners, then get on over to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching and apply. We do interview people on a first come first serve basis. If you are keen, get in soon because we'll close it soon. But also you want to make sure that you get your interview in first. Let's get into today's interview episode.
—
I have been looking forward to doing this interview and sharing this interview for so long. And that is because the topic is something that I think for some reason we don't discuss as much as potentially we should. It's also a topic that has impacted my life, as it will. Every single person that's out there, everyone that's reading, no one can avoid this. Not a single person, not even the Beyonces of the world. And that is death. Today I am talking to Nora Belal, who is the founder of Death Practice Journal, and she is based in the US and she's a death worker and she works with people not just looking at the actual death part of things, she's a trained and accredited death doula, but more so at uncovering your life based on the fact that you will die, we will all die.
What she says on her website is that we should begin at the end, we're all going to die. What does that mean for how we live? If you want to check out her website and the things that she does, it's deathpracticejournal.com. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. But I met Nora because she had bought my book and she came to me for coaching and I just found what she was doing fascinating. Not only working with people to talk about death, but to look at how you have those conversations in your life with the people that you love. How do you have those conversations with yourself? What does death mean to you? But also, she's a writer and she looks at the different rituals that happen all around the world. She's taken trips into all sorts of different places all over the world to look at how death is talked about how death is seen, how death is viewed, and the impact that death has on various communities.
Anyone who has never been impacted by death so far, I think for many people reading may have not gone to a funeral for maybe 20 years. Maybe you went to the funeral of elderly people when you were young and you just remember that it was hushed or sad or it took forever or anything like that. It can be a confronting thing if you have not experienced death then think about it and talk about it. There might be people listening to this podcast who are thinking, “Should I switch off now? Because this might make me feel very uncomfortable.” Chances are, it may. In certain parts, we do talk about things like end-of-life planning and what's involved with the practicalities of dying, and also talking to people like your parents about death and what are their wishes and what people want to do if there is an accident, what do you want to do?
Are you wanting to be put into a coma? Are you somebody who would want life support turned off? and a lot of this will also bring up your own beliefs in say, an afterlife or religion. And we don't talk about religion in this episode, but I know that there'll be people listening that have certain rituals around death that relate very much to the religion that they are raised in or their spiritual practices. Death is such a collective experience. It's the only thing that every single one of us will have in common. In a way, every single person on the planet will experience death themselves, but also will no doubt experience the death of somebody that they love in their lifetime. It's a very collective experience, but at the same time, the way that we talk about it, the being comfortable talking about it, the things that we want to explore about our life because we know we're going to die, all of that is so individual and these are kinds of questions and the topics that that Nora is an absolute expert in.
When I started working with her, I just found the whole thing fascinating. To give you context as well. I've experienced quite a bit of death in my life. My best friend died when we were in our very early twenties. She passed away in a car accident, and that was a complete shock. Six weeks before that, she and I had been talking about a fellow person that we went to school who had also passed away from an accidental death at the age of 20 or 21. I think my best friend was 21 when she passed away. And that has stayed with me and had a huge impact on how I live my life. More recently, I have lost my mother very suddenly, with no warning. She was gone. I lost my father two and a half years after that, my father-in-law last year, which was a couple of years later, close aunties and other people in our life.
I remember when I talked to the funeral director on one of these occasions and they said, on average as an adult, you'll lose somebody close to you once every 13 years. He is like “You guys have lost quite a few people in a very short amount of time.” I understand that my perspective of this stuff is interesting because I have been there firsthand and witnessed so many deaths in a short amount of time. But I also understand that there'll be people reading who perhaps have been incredibly fortunate and not had to experience the death firsthand of somebody that they're very close to. I would just go into this interview with a very open mind in terms of what things is it bringing up for you and maybe exploring those things in more depth, whether that is with Nora or through your research or studies or whatever it is, your practices.
But I think that's why she's called her business, Death Practice Journal. There is a practice around accepting that death is going to happen, and then looking at, once we accept that, how does that then impact and influence the way that we live our lives? I think what she's doing is phenomenal. I think that this is something that everyone needs to be talking about more. I think that it's businesses like hers that are going to pave the way for us to all be able to be a lot more comfortable, especially in the West talking about this stuff. Here it is, my interview with the wonderful Nora Belal of Death Practice Journal.
—
Hello Nora, welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling about life right now?
I am feeling great. I'm happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I booked it a few months in advance, I've been looking at it as something that I was just going to be happy to do in a few months. It got me through some long work days things like, I'm here chatting with Fiona, all this will feel good.
I have been looking forward to this so much as well. I just find everything that you do fascinating. Even just before we hit record, I could just keep talking to you for hours and then forget about the podcast interview. But where are you joining us from? Your accent is not Australian, we have guests from all over, but where are you joining us from at the moment?
I am in Chiricahua, Apache Land in Arizona in the US. Southwest Desert Land in the United States of America.
In the United States of America, the universe earth, the universe, the world.
I remember saying, I was in conversation with someone one else said the States and another person was like, “What do you mean the States? You're not the only state or America isn't just America, there's South America and North America. I feel weird, maybe not patriotic, but saying the USA, it's not how I usually say it, but I like to clarify when I know people outside of the USA are reading.
Yes. Thank you. You and I first met when you booked in for coaching, and when I learned about your business, I was just incredibly intrigued. Because the business is so fascinating in its own right, no matter who was running it, but also because you're pretty young to be running this type of business. I don't know if that's like being ageist or not, but just like when I met you, I was like, “Wow.” And this is the type of business you run. Can you tell us about Death Practice Journal? What is it? How did it start? Why did it start? What does it involve?
I'm almost 40, I'm a couple of years away from 40, not that young anymore.
I’m in my forties and I’m not that old.
I'm joking. I get that a lot. I think that it's funny because one of my first reference points as a conscious human, is when you're a toddler or little person, you're just starting to understand who you are and who your family is and that you're developing your consciousness. I knew from a very young age that I had almost died. I had appendicitis when I was I think four or five. And my mom knew something was very wrong with me. She brought me to the hospital. One doctor said she was fine. She just has a tummy ache. My mom knew that that was not true. She brought me to another emergency room and the doctor immediately realized that something was very wrong. I had surgery and my appendix burst.
While I was in the hospital, I reacted to antibiotics because I had gotten a staph infection. I was allergic to the one life-saving drug that they could give me. And not that I have super clear memories of that, but I do remember putting my hand over my scar, which at that point was the size of my hand. My hand have grown a little bit since then, but it's still a pretty big scar. I think now when you get your appendix out, they go through your belly button or it's barely visible or something. But in very general terms, my first reference to being alive was that I almost had died. As I grew up, my sister is chronically ill, she has a chronic illness and she almost died multiple times.
I remember sitting, trying to fall asleep in high school and just crying myself to sleep and praying to God that I'm pretty sure I didn't believe in but was just like whatever it takes. I also grew up in a town where there was just a lot of death. A lot of kids died, when kids are dying, they're dying in unusual ways, in traumatic ways and violent ways. I never grew up with the idea that I was guaranteed to live until I was 85 or 90. I forget that that's not normal sometimes. When I meet someone that hasn't been to a funeral, I don't know what that is like.
The age thing has never been something that I took into consideration, but I did know that it was not something that everyone thought was a natural path for me when I first did a death doula training shortly after I went to a funeral pre-planning event and I wasn't there to present or do anything, I was there as an attendee, but this perfect little grandma with her sweater and matching her lipstick and flashy necklace and 25 rings on, looked at me and called across from the little snack table where we're all like getting our pamphlets and cookies, you're too young to be here. I was like, “You're never too young to die.” And that was just the first thing that popped into my head. And she just slowly backed away.
It’s true. We all have this idea that will last forever.
Yes. I think the business, not necessarily, I'm not saying that it was built from this idea that I've always known I was going to die. I think that there's a very specific time shortly after I completed my first official death doula training, that I would've given a very specific answer about a very specific death and a very specific time in my life. But as I started my practice and developed more into what I'm doing now, I realized that that story was not true. It was one I was telling out of hopes for ease or practicality or like a very straightforward reason. But I think most things in my life that I've done professionally and just from what I'm interested in when I'm looking at how we function culturally and socially, that I've always been meandering towards death work, that's my long-winded answer to that.
It's fascinating and I just think, every person has such a story behind them, don't they? You just never know what has gone on for somebody in childhood or randomly when they're 70 or something. I just think everyone's like a library. But on that, Death Practice Journal is the name of your business. You've said before Death Tour, there might be people reading that have no idea what that means and you're a death worker. What does that mean? What are the activities or elements of your business that you may be doing as part of running Death Practice Journal?
For me, running Death Practice Journal does not involve any work as a death doula. Death doulas are working one-on-one with people that are actively dying or know that they are at the point where they are starting to make preparations for how they want to die and where they want to die. A big thing is wanting to die at home within that death doula community or a birth doula. Having someone that's with you in the hospital that's able to advocate and that isn't unbiased because I think that as people working one-on-one with other people, you end up having opinions, but you're there to support their wishes and you're there to make sure those wishes are understood and heard.
Usually, when someone says I'm a death doula or I'm a death midwife, they're referring to working one-on-one with people that are at the end of their life. For me, death work shortly after I got my official certification as a death doula, which I do want to say real quick that, certification as a death doula is not the same as licensure. There's not a governing body that says like, you're a death doula and this is your license and your number. It's similar to pre-massage therapy practices where anyone could say, I'm a death doula.
I started saying death work and that felt more appropriate and encompassed what I was trying to do and what I believed in my work to be, just because I saw some gaps in my training. And not to say they were bad training, but I just realized that I wanted my conversation around death to be far more expansive than just preparing for your end of life. I was interested in how death shows up when we're just outliving our lives and how it is ingrained in our societies and our cultures and communities and ways that we don't always acknowledge, but that are just ever-present. I have moved to Death Practice Journal and death work as a way to talk about that larger conversation and pulling that through a line of what death work is to me and why it's not being a death doula only or solely and how I find ways to incorporate it and, and integrate it into our whole collective experience of being alive.
Yes. Because it's so ridiculous that death is the only certainty that every single person on the planet will face. Weirdly, we don't talk about it enough. You and I have had conversations you've had a lot of deaths and near deaths and things happen in your life and I've had gone through a lot of deaths and loss in my own life and I've had people who said like three months after my dad died, you're not coping with this. You keep bringing it up. I'm like, “It's a part of my experience. Plus it's only three months ago.” We have a real tendency, in Western society to not talk about death and then if someone does die, to get over it very quickly that it's not a lifelong process of grieving for that person.
Having studied this and working in this space, why do you think death is still seen in the West as such a taboo topic? We have coaches and we have mentors for everything that people are into, but when it comes to death I think it's still seen as a like why would I, why would I want to talk to somebody about death unless I've got terminal cancer or I've got something else that's happening.
There are so many ways to answer this question. I think first of all, when someone says, “Why are you still talking about this?” It's been three months or three years or anything that is part of the reason that we're not able to properly process grief and I use it properly as a loose term, I don't think there's one way to grieve in that. I don't have specific directions for that, but I think that there is an idea that is probably very much tied into how we view time and capitalism and productivity that tells us that we have a certain amount of appropriate grieving to do and then we just get to pick up and move on. But one of the things that is very obvious to me through conversations with clients and people that I work with directly, but just in a very general passing sense of when I'm speaking with someone and mentioned death work or they mentioned something where people want to talk about it.
I think that some of the discomfort comes from this self-perpetuating myth that no one wants to talk about death or that they should be doing death a certain way or that they should be talking about it in a certain way. it's detrimental I think, on an individual level, but I think it's also detrimental on a collective level because it makes us feel like we're all experiencing something that's not real when it's almost the basis of how we function as a society. I think that in very tangible ways, where we're constantly just inundated by images of death and who gets to die and why people are dying and of what, and that to ignore that is just not doing anyone any favours. But when someone said death was taboo, I would fight them on it and say, it's not taboo. People are constantly talking about it. We constantly see it. It's always there. But I had a student in the first course I ever launched called Death Perception and we were talking about this idea of taboo and they brought up one of the older definitions of the taboo of being more in line with something that's like Sacrosanct or inviable where it's so special that it's this unchanging too important like too highly regarded to just bring up casually.
I love that definition.
I think that was great. Because I was like, death is taboo then like let's bring it back to that definition. I think that sometimes we're confusing the idea of talking about death as being easy or fun when I don't think that it always needs to be easy or fun or that grieving is just like, just embrace your grief and keep going. Like it's going to be painful, it's going to be awful. Sometimes it is like a release and a relief, but I don't think that death is one thing for any one person. I think that's where it gets complicated to talk about because it is this individual experience that is also a part of the collective. Probably the one thing that we can all say that at this point we all have in common.
That's the thing like I said, we've discussed death and this is your business to discuss death and be talking about death and all sorts of ways. We said, everyone will be impacted by death at some point, whether their own and facing their mortality or the death of loved ones. Can you talk us through the practical ways that people would work with you? I know when we first talked and you were like talking about people's passwords and I was just in the US recently to visit my uncle and on the last day that I was there, he was like, I've made coffee. I want to show you this folder. And it was like a folder of every single certificate, like yes. I told him about you and I was like, she'd be so proud.
My aunt as well, who he married later in life, but they both sat down and she was like, here's my divorce paperwork and here's this and here's my license and here's the insurance for my car. Like every single thing was listed in this folder. His whole life was there because there can be so much angst and stress afterwards trying to find this information for like closing down bank accounts and doing stuff. I've watched my dad who got so fed up with people, a certain company kept calling for my mom after she died and he told them three times she's died. And I remember him picking up the phone and he was more, he was just devastated. They'd been together for almost 50 years and he just started almost crying saying, “Please, whatever system you have, she's dead. Stop calling the house.” There is a lot of practical work that goes into preparing so that your family doesn't have to do that. What is the other stuff that people come to you that is not just the end of it's more proactive?
I think that the practical is often followed by having usually many conversations. Not everyone's like your aunt and uncle. I think that's amazing that they just took the initiative and did that. But I often deal with people that are asking me, how I talk to my mom about death or how I talk to my grandfather and he won't tell us anything. He says he has a will and he's all done. And like that's fine. I think that the practical things are great and once you get them going, you realize that they're oftentimes the things that make your life much easier too. Having your passwords in one place, knowing where your titles are and the different bank accounts and who to call and that and the list can get long, but it's also not information you're pulling out of thin air.
I think that having folders and having a little organization is great, but I think more important before that is normalizing conversations about what your wishes are and what your plans are and what disposition options sound good to you or what would happen if you got in a car accident versus were needing to be induced into a coma for some treatment that would prolong your life while you're in the hospital and whether they think that you would be leaving the hospital. It's still very difficult conversations, but I think that the thing that I try to stress for people and making plans and having these conversations is that it's not going to be one conversation and the best way to start these conversations is to make your plans. I tend to work with people that are in that middle ground of they can see that their parents are aging and they'll probably have some caretaker role to fulfil, but then they also often have children and they want their kids to be taken care of or have an understanding that they would be taken care of if something were to happen to them.
I think in that space of like thirties to forties where you have realized that you are not immortal and that the people around you are not immortal and that's usually the big catalyst of like, I have a lot to do. And that can be overwhelming but like I said, I think that we're very capable of as humans of doing hard things and that sometimes we confuse doing hard things for like causing harm or discomfort for damage where maybe you're going to bring up end of life plans with someone and they're not going to want to talk about it once, that's fine. Maybe you bring it up again like it's going to take a couple of times. I think that your responsibility, or maybe not responsibility is the right word, but I think a way for you to approach death and end-of-life planning is to do your death work and figure out how you feel about it and what you would want to happen in an ideal situation and maybe what would happen in an ideal situation.
I think a lot of my work is just letting people know that there's not always one answer and that their experiences are always going to influence how they move through the world and how they move through their end-of-life planning and that that's fine. That there are huge amounts to navigate in that. It's not a straightforward answer, which is, I also think why it sometimes seems like something where there are business coaches, there are health and fitness coaches where it's like the goal is very clear. Death is a little more nebulous. Death is personal and depending on your belief system, depending on your community, all of those things change and influence how you view the end of life.
I think it's so important when you said to start with yourself because like you said, all of these things are everyone's experiences and backgrounds. My mom was in the health space and had seen many people die. My brother and sister are both in the health space we grew up very much having very open conversations. like when my dad got cancer, we all sat around, my sister drew all the pictures like she's a doctor and she was like, this is what will go downhill. We all had a photocopy, I think of their end-of-life plans in our wallets. We knew did they want life support. Did they want this who would need to be at the hospital like they're both Catholic, you'd need to call a priest.
This is the last rite. The last rite should be done earlier. Like all of these things. When I've tried to talk about it to other people, let’s say, my in-laws or my family, so many times they said don't talk about it, turn it off. Why are we talking about that? Even with my husband, I will talk about like if I was in a car crash, and my best friend died in a car crash when I was 21. It's like I understand we're not all going to live forever and things can happen that you don't expect. I think it's really important because as you were talking I was thinking, but how would you start that conversation? But I think it's important, if I was to say to my husband for example, here's all of my plans laid out.
Here's what I would like to happen because I know that as hard as it's been to lose both of our parents, at least my siblings and I were very clear on what they both wanted, how they wanted to be buried, like all the things. Even with hospitals, we were all very clear with like, this is what they want, this is what they don't want. I think that is just such perfect advice to start yourself and then so literally like practically show that to somebody and be like, is this what I'm working on this week? It's fun because it is a thing and I think you hear so many families completely exploding when a death happens because people are arguing over it, should we turn the life support off? Should we not?
I wanted to ask you, you also mentor people in this space and you've, you have people coming to you that are wanting to get into death work or are into death work. What had that journey been like attracting an audience and even the people who just want to come to you for death work, they're not trying to get into that space themselves because it's quite a niche area. How old have you built an audience for this?
One of the things that happen when you start doing your death work and whether that's personal planning for yourself or your family, I do little retreats and death meditations and breath work and stuff like that where people are allowed to dive into what the world of death work looks like. I think the natural progression is to say, I want to do this. I think this is important. My niche I think is also people that are pending towards creativity or exploration. And not to say that everyone's a yoga instructor or a writer. I think the last retreat I did was amazing cause I had someone that made prosthetics for custom prosthetics for people. There was a nurse, there was someone that works in the psilocybin counselling space.
It is all walks. But I think that it's people that are naturally drawn to a deeper inquiry into how they're living their life. Again, not to say that if you're a tax accountant you can't do death work or that you can't be creative, but I do think that I tend to attract people that are, have a little more flexibility in what their careers look like. they can imagine how death work might fold into their current practices. I hesitate to call it mentoring I guess, but when I'm offering people advice or guiding them through what that could look like for them on a personal level, I think of my first death doula training and sitting there and just having this realization that like every job I've ever had has prepared me for this.
Because I used to work in restaurants in the service industry. I worked in production in the commercial photography world and event planning. I think that when you're someone that's looking to make death work like your professional work, there are so many ways to go about it. But when you do start to dive into I'm going to look for a death doula training or I'm going to see what home funerals are about, you're very quickly in a vacuum of the same things being said by a pretty similar group of people. Again, part of my reasoning behind wanting to form a Death Practice Journal and put that out there as the work that I was doing as a death worker was to expand that conversation. I think that mentoring comes for me from a place of, what are your skills?
What is your capacity? Because I think it's okay to realize, and this was something that I did too, where I was like, I don't know that I have the emotional capacity to work with the dying. I still think death and dying are important and that accompanying the dying is important, but I don't think people realize that in that space you're also dealing with their family members. You're also interacting with hospice care or nurses and doctors and some people thrive and that's not how I thrive. I think that realizing your skills and then also realizing that even though death work is often a passion-fueled business, it's still a business and that it's okay to want to make money and that it's okay to charge for your services because I was also told as a beginning death doula, death worker that my services should be free.
If I volunteer or I'm in support of people offering what they do at no cost, especially for people that need it. I know a lot of people that work on a sliding scale and that's wonderful, but I think that at the end of the day, if you are starting a business, you also need to understand that it is a business. I put a lot of time and money into investing in myself in a way that was a catalyst but also made it a necessity for me to take myself seriously in a way that I went to art school. I think the idea that I was always going to struggle to make money was a subtle undercurrent of that whole experience. I don't think I answered your question.
I was asking about building your audience.
When I first started I was dedicated to Instagram. I was planning all of my posts three months in advance and then I was like spending all this time liking and commenting and interacting. There were a few people that I met and that I still count as friends, but I realized very quickly that I get extremely burnt out by Instagram and that most social media platforms are places for consumption. And after a while, I think you also said this to me, where you were like, “Your marketing plan isn't planning your Instagram posts.” There are ways to do this and whatever you choose needs to serve you as a business. If Instagram is not the way that you want to show up or you feel like is not working for you, which it wasn't for me, I was counting followers as a viable audience. And that just wasn't the case where I could have 600 people. I stopped posting on Instagram a while ago, I think that's where my account stopped. Which is nothing when it is in the world of Instagram.
What I have done as far as building my platform and just being willing to abandon Instagram and other social media platforms that are based on constant content creation, is build a newsletter and interact with the people in that newsletter. And remember that even if I feel like my numbers maybe aren't 50,000 people on my newsletter, I don't need 50,000 people to make a living. I don't need 50,000 people to have interesting conversations with the people that are reading these emails. I've worked hard on building that list by just showing up in certain spaces where I think people are, are more likely to be interested in what I'm doing. When I am facilitating something in person, or even when I've done events and people maybe don't attend the event, they see who I am. That's been a huge source of growth for me. I never even thought about like, my Eventbrite page for this retreat I did is going to live on even though the event is over.
Little things like that have slowly started to make me realize again that where I exist, I guess on the internet because I primarily work remotely or most of my planned income is from remote work and I still do in-person stuff starting to again, I didn't obviously for a long time because of the pandemic, but that, that's also just a place where I show up and then that will eventually feed into how I am naturally finding people that are interested in what I'm doing. But I work on Pinterest a lot because it's a search engine. Everything I post there, it's not found in the same way that it's found on Instagram, but the people that do find it are already very interested and it lives there forever. Every week when I look, how are people finding me?
Where are people finding me? It's just through these posts that I made two years ago. I have a small blog and I have Pinterest. And something surprising to me recently is my newsletter is not hosted on Substack but I'm on Substack as Death Practice Journal. There are a few newsletters that are not even in the death work world, but that are adjacent. Like there's one where it's like beauty and capitalism and the patriarchy and aging and all of these things. I'll occasionally make a comment to the writer about that or about a specific post or something that they said. And suddenly that drives a ton of traffic to people signing up for my Newsletter. I think people forget that when you're building an audience, those are people.
That you don't need the huge platforms that you think you need. Oftentimes those are just these cycles of regurgitating the same information over and over. And that people that are there are primarily there for their advertising purposes. I'll use Instagram still to like send someone a message or to look at a restaurant if the restaurant's website is out of date or something. I'm not totally against Instagram and I think it doesn't work for people, but as far as platforms go, that's been the least effective. I just think it's important for people to know that you can have you don't have to be an influencer to have a business.
Yes. I'm just over here nodding myself. Because just everything you said in there, there's so much gold. The fact of actually engaging on Substack with stuff that you are interested in as opposed to a very passive black heart, funny smiley reply. Like to an Instagram story, because it takes two seconds to do that and it's almost like you are on autopilot like a little robot there going to like versus, I've read that and I took in X, Y, Z that you said and now I want to engage in a conversation with you. And that ends up benefiting you as well. But the reason that you've put that comment there was not to benefit yourself. It was purely to start this actual connection with that author. I think we forget about all the platforms that are out there outside of social media. Even now I'm seeing so many people jump to threads and I just feel like we just constantly sometimes say to clients like, it's like we're all feeding Netflix with all these films and all this stuff all the time and Netflix is just getting richer and richer and richer. But we are getting nothing. That is what we're doing on social media most of the time. Most of the time we're creating content.
Right. Also, I think even if Instagram had worked for me and I had a bajillion followers and these cool death brands were like, “Hey, be our spokesperson.” I don't know that I would've done it because it made my brain feel bad. It affected everything else in my life. I could not put a sentence together after being on Instagram for 30 minutes. What you're hinting at too, where it's like who am I benefiting? Because even if I was benefiting from this, like who's the benefactor or maybe not benefactor, like who am I feeding here? Is it my audience or is it a bazillionaire that I disagree with on a core level? Pretty much everything they're doing.
Totally. That's the thing we forget, we are just putting in more and more content so they have more and more people read like on there all their attention and then they're just selling all of us to make to the highest bidder. You mentioned that you work a lot remotely and part of that is that you have chosen to, and I know you've changed things slightly differently recently, but you've chosen to live pretty remotely in a very rural part of the US. Sometimes when you'd show me photos or even the photos you could see on your Instagram, I mean it's stunning, but it is a very quiet part of the world. How have you managed to grow a business to network, to connect with people whilst also living so remotely? And what advice would you give to others?
Because I feel like there was this mad rush to be remote when, when the pandemic hit and people were locked down, it was like, let's change everything. And now I feel like there are some people that I've even some of my clients who are like, did we do the right thing and I can't get out and network. And part of your brand as well is that real connection with people and you said going to events and retreats. How does that all work and is there any advice you could give to someone who is working remotely right now and feeling like maybe that's a bit of a hindrance?
First of all, just remote work is hard. I think that even if you live in the middle of the city and you're working from home, then it's difficult to maintain boundaries and understand on a physical level and mental level like, am I working right now? Am I not working right now? I experienced that a lot when I worked in, more like production and photo and other jobs where I was getting text messages at 4:00 AM for a job that I had to be on-site for at six. I was just like, this is not important and could have waited. But I think going back to remote work you are always going to have to understand what your boundaries are. When people have jobs where they want freedom, they want to work from home, they want to be able to travel, and then they just end up being far more tied to their work than when they had a nine-to-five job.
The problem isn't necessarily that you're working remotely, it's that when you work for yourself, you have to learn how to be a good boss to yourself. I think establishing how you work remotely is important and that's difficult. But I think that as far as connection goes, again, connection doesn't always mean being available all the time. I find that I have better and deeper connections with people when I've decided to be in conversation or when I'm working these hours and that this is when I'm available. And knowing that those connections are based on maybe something with a little more integrity rather than, well you're just available so I can always count on you. It's like, well you can always count on me because I have no boundaries. Just maintaining connection means that you can work in solitude but not isolation.
I think that that's something I struggled with a lot when I first started to work for myself but also work in a place that is three hours away from anything. The romanticized idea of working in the middle of the desert and surrounded by mountains and wildlife and all this stuff is very romantic until you realize that it's you and your dog and I have a spouse but he's not tapping away at me like my dog is. But when I started to understand that solitude was something beautiful and productive and made me feel more myself and then isolation brought me further away from that, I did start to go out a little bit more in our community. I think there's maybe 600 people or something and that maybe you're not going to find your best friend or like the, we're the youngest people and probably the most liberal people by a very long shot.
But that doesn't mean that I haven't had interesting conversations. I think that it's taught me a lot about how to coexist with people that I don't necessarily agree with in on everything. And that if you are someone that wants to live early and have a romantic idea that you are going to move to the country and your own bread and then have your clients three days a week, that's fine. And that is possible. But also that the reality of maintaining connection is that it's work and that it's wonderful to work, but it's like being in high school and then you get to college and then you get to work and then suddenly you're like, every friend I've ever made has been because I was forced into a situation with them. And not to say that those friendships are not real or valued, but that you need to find other ways to stay in touch with people. What I was saying maybe going into newsletter groups or chatting with people, feels a little awkward cause you're like, “Hey friend, I thought that thing you said was smart and funny.” And then it's like, it's awkward but you learn that connection doesn't mean just like happening to be in the same space as someone.
I feel you so much. And there are quite a few people on Instagram for all its evils that I think I've become good friends with because they have put in the work to be like, “Hey, I saw this.” I've never met them but it's like I would meet them if we lived in the same state. Like it is work and I feel like that's an important thing that you said. Plus I love the differentiation between solitude and isolation. I just think it's so beautiful. The other thing that came out in the work that I did with you as well is just your interest in death and the rituals around death and what different people do and how we can be buried and all sorts of fascinating things. I feel like we talked about, or you talked about really bringing some of that really interesting stuff to the forefront, which then brings the topic of death to the forefront as well. What are some things that people may not know about the funeral industry or innovations that are happening? I know I've read that people can be made into pearls now. What are the more interesting ways that people can choose to finish up their earthly life?
There are so many and I think what's more interesting about them than the actual product that you end up as like you can be a coral reef, you can be a diamond, you can be a pearl, you can be put into a biodegradable balloon and released up into the sky, which I think is cute. I think that is so adorable. But you can become a Riverstone, you can become like a vinyl record that someone can play.
A vinyl record.
I liked that one too. But there are so many disposition options that I think are very sweet and are mostly based on what you can do with cremated ashes. All of those are great. I think that I'm not really against cremation. I think right now there's a movement towards more environmentally friendly greener practices. But I think ultimately, ExxonMobil is the one that should figure that out. Or should the one person getting cremated be held responsible and feel guilty even in death? But I think that there's also something about like feeling like you are giving back and feeling like that your body in its last state is giving a gift back into a world that's been, I don't want to say decimated by humans, but that the humans have done some damage too.
I'm interested in this more philosophical idea of what humans can do as decomposing bodies. My favourite I think is, it doesn't exist yet, but I hope it is available soon. It's from the Columbia Death Lab in New York that has proposed all these beautiful projects if you go to their website. But they, the primary hope and this manifest in all these different ways. There are parks and there are beautiful city installations, but their concern is what we do with bodies because we're running out of space. This is something that I've read a lot about in Australia where cemeteries are full, not just in Australia but worldwide and Paris catacombs. There are so many places and many examples of having to move the dead to make room for the living.
What I'm most excited about are these ways that instead of keeping these two things separate, we learn how to create spaces that honour the dead, incorporate the dead, but then also create spaces for the living to just exist in, but also to maybe like grieve and feel collective compassion for how people have died or why people have died. Or just instead of having your stroll through the cemetery, you stroll through one of these public city spaces that are illuminated by the bio, they call biogas. I think that maybe before it's available to the public, they need to work on their brain or coughing. Because it's like, I don't want to become biogas but maybe like bio vapour. But something where the idea is like your bioluminescence, but the living things that are coming from your body.
Because when you die there is still a lot of life left on you. Like your microbiome, all of the bacteria, all of the yeast, and all of the little viruses that are still there start to do some very interesting things once you take your last breath. I think this idea that your body continues to live and to work and to spread out in a beautiful, ethereal way, I love the idea of walking through a park and knowing that the soft lantern light is just coming from the lives that people lived. I'm someone that like spent a lot of time in cemeteries, and loved being in them and I never felt like it was disrespectful or weird to just hang out in them. I also grew up in New Englthey're everywhere. But I just love the idea of projects that are uniting the dead with the living in beautiful and contemporary ways.
I love that vision of walking through a park and feeling that. I was fascinated with cemeteries, especially older cemeteries where you'd see people that died and then you'd do the maths and be like, they were young or this and I just think walking through cemeteries, I used to always feel like if I went to a new city or something, I'd always be like, “Can we stop and have a look at the cemetery?” And it might've been a bit weird as a child, but my parents were also like, “Yes, it's history.” It's walking along and having a look. You mentioned as well, and I could just talk about this all day, but you also work on breath work and the breath is the biggest sign of life that we have. You're working death work and breathwork, but what is breath work and how does it benefit people? And particularly I guess as small business owners who might be reading to those who are stressed or overwhelmed, how does breathwork work?
Breathwork works in a lot of ways. It can be a lot of things. Its origins are in the pranayama practices from India. But thousands and thousands of years show that breathwork has been practised in India. Japan, like ancient cultures, have always practised ways of controlling or intentionally breathing. You're breathing all day and it sounds like that's something that comes very naturally. But once you start to intentionally breathe in very specific patterns, your body responds to that. For me, breath work was something that I had not always done, but I had started to do it because my sister, didn't trick me, but she didn't elaborate on what it was. We were like going to this breathwork session and some warehouse in Brooklyn and they turn out the lights and they put music on and incense is lit and then suddenly like three seconds into it, everyone's crying. I was like, what in the performative wailing is happening? I did not understand. But the breath is something that can release a lot of emotion and maybe it was performative because I was in a cool neighbourhood in Brooklyn or maybe it was just people.
Being able to release a lot of things that we keep inside way too often. Something that happens when I do breathwork is it's not always this like huge emotional relief where I'm crying and then I'm screaming and then I'm laughing. But it is a way for me to transmute whatever I know that I have all jumbled up in my brain and my body and it's a way to move it lets a lot of stagnation loosen up. I always find that I have a lot of clarity on something that I wasn't even maybe aware of that I needed clarity on. It's just something that I value. I think is one of those things too that you can do by yourself, but you also can always practice with someone and there are different experiences you get from working with a facilitator and working on your own.
But the type of breath work that I facilitate, I learned from Chauna Bryant, she's a facilitator within the course she created called Breath Liberation Society. She has a very trauma-informed, non-appropriative very cool format. I think if someone's looking to pursue training in the world of breathwork she's a great person to learn from. But for me, it's just been an indispensable tool in death work as well because I've been a person who I've not always been able to express exactly how I feel or like, am I mad? Am I sad? It never was easy for me to completely verbalize and like articulate what was going on. I think that breathwork has been a way for me to release things without having to specifically identify them or know the specific story that I was holding onto and find a lot of, I don't want to say lightness, but find some new level of mental health and clarity without having to tear myself open, which I'm not saying that you shouldn't delve into where you're trauma lies or like what has affected you and is still affecting you in your life. I go to therapy and do all those things, but I think that breathwork is just like a way to get unstuck and find movement in places where there was no movement before. And just like deeply in choir into yourself.
It's like music when you can put music on, you can change things up and I feel like breath work is the same that I've only done it a few times with a facilitator, but even just like, I've always said to my kids, “Come on, take three deep breaths. Come on let's everyone do it in the car.” Instantly or even at the shops, we'll be like, shake it off. Just shake it off. Get the breath moving, get things moving around the body. But find it fascinating. I wanted to ask you, you help people a lot with both death work, breath work, and a whole bunch of things. Who has helped you build this business? You mentioned this person before that you've done training with. Is it who or what, are there books or documentaries or is there a mantra that has helped you and especially sustained you in this business? Because it's very not serious because it's also fun and you're a fun person. Who or what has helped you?
You have, there's a little book you wrote called Passion Purpose Profit that I read before we worked together and that was the catalyst for me wanting to work with you because I had worked with a lot of, not business coaches one-on-one, but I had done a lot of launches and small business and solopreneur. That world of online learning can get pretty messy pretty quickly. Finding you and knowing that I had immediate value from reading your book and things that no one had said to me after a billion courses and there is another coach I worked with that had a holistic business academy and she was the first person I worked with and it was like a soul, I forget what you said, like soul-centred entrepreneurs or there was a lot of witchy tarot, like astrology people.
That was the only place that I felt like I fit in the super broy marketing, like a work-from-home situation that was pretty prominent on the internet. But she would ask, who are you being right now? And that is something that I repeat to myself often because I tend to over plan and I'll map out like the next five years and like make this list and then like, all I have to do is these 9,000 things. I think having that question to fall back on, I'm like, who am I right now? Means like, what can you take action on today? What are the things that move you forward in this business that you're creating? And have a five-year plan, have a 50-year plan and this is also death work where it's like make your plans but also know that you are living in a world of extreme uncertainty and that you can be completely blown off course by anything.
Going back to who are you right now means what action can you take. I love that because oftentimes the 75 things that I had to check off were not necessary and they were just things that I was doing because planning feels good. Another thing that I've fallen back on and formed the basis of my business is understanding how to write and why I write and what I'm saying when I'm writing. Because I think that copywriting and like marketing and branding, especially when you are a do-gooder business, I guess like it feels gross and you're like, I don't want to be advertising myself. And it's like, how do you ethically do that? How do you do that in a way that's speaking to what you're trying to do versus writing sales, like gross advertising copy?
I think getting over that has been helpful. I did that with you, I did that with Sarah M Chappell and then taking courses with Alex Cattoni for copywriting. I like her. She's very super positive. I'm a little more laid back, she's like three levels up. I just feel energized by her. But she's also like very much about ethical copywriting and figuring out what your message is and why it matters and understanding that talking about it and writing about it effectively is not like some scum that thing to do as a business owner. Chauna from Breath Liberation Society was wonderful too for my breathwork training.
Amazing. We'll link to those in the show notes. I guess I always like asking people this question and I think you'd have a long list, but what are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
I'm proud that I'm doing it still. I think that when I started out I had a very specific idea of what my business would look like and it doesn't look like that. And that if I had not been willing to understand what I truly wanted and truly needed, how much money I needed to make and, what my real requirements were for making a business be worth my time as far as like worth my time versus having a nine-to-five job or going and working in restaurants again, like knowing that I have continued to show up in ways that just felt exhausting at some points. That recognizing sometimes exhaustion means you need to rest and then sometimes exhaustion or like feeling like you don't want to do that thing. It's like maybe because that's not the right thing.
I think that I'm most proud of my willingness to change while also staying the course or like realizing that the ways that I'm building this web is is okay and that I have a business based on death. I can be weird, I can try new things. I think that and then also investing in myself, and I'm not saying this just because like, I'm on your podcast so I want to say nice things about you. But like I do think that that was a huge investment that I did not feel ready to make and not huge in expense. I think it was worse.
I get it.
Then I paid, but it was just such a leap where I was like, I'm going to get a one-on-one business coach. As that seems, there was something that seemed like preposterous about it where I was like, you're just a solopreneur girl boss. I think that being willing to invest in myself in those ways too is something I'm proud of because it can feel scary and weird to a place that number as something you're worth too.
Thank you for sharing that. I feel like a lot of people go through that. I know when I invested in a mastermind in the US I remember thinking, this is so much money. This is so much and also am I at that level? All the things that go in and also feeling selfish for putting it on you and it could go into your mortgage or something else. Thank you so much for sharing that. What's happening next for you and where can people connect with you if they're reading and thinking, I want to work with her.
My website is DeathPracticeJournal.com and once you get on there, a little popup happens where you can join my newsletter. I love people doing that because I'm at that sweet spot of like, I can still respond to people most of the time in a fairly timely manner. When when you respond to one of my newsletters, you're hearing from me and it's just nice also just you're not screaming into a void of internet webs. Knowing that the people that are joining you on your newsletter are real is great. I love people joining my newsletter, but my next, I think big project that I'm launching, and I don't have an exact date for that, but I'll figure it out and let you know because I want to give people a little discount code that listen to your podcast.
But I'm starting a course called Writing the End and it's focused on how and why we write about death and loss and grief. It's something that's always been part of how I work with people. But I wanted to do a course specifically focused on writing because I think that writing so many people want to write many people believe that they're not writers. When it comes to death and our stories of loss and these cycles of grief and revert that we go through, it's hard to put it into words. I wanted to create a way for people if they just feel like they have a story to tell or they're thinking about how they want to talk about their death work practices as professionals, there's a place to do that. I think that it's just incredibly fun and nurturing to be around people that are writing and working things out and sharing, again, I think it's like we've said a couple of times at this point, but it's easy to feel these false senses of connections when you're working on the internet.
Yes. Please let us know when you're when you have launched that and we'll add that to the show notes and put it on social media. But it's been such a thrill to talk to you again, thank you for giving up your evening to do this and of course, especially in such a hot environment at the moment with your summer.
I'm going to turn the AC back on I think. I was happy to turn it off for this interview.
Thank you so much. It's just such a delight to chat with you and I know there'll be a lot of people interested in this whole world who perhaps didn't maybe even know that it exists. thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you. I loved chatting with you. I'm sorry I rambled on for so long.
Thank you so much. Bye.
Bye.
—
I could just talk to Nora for like another three hours and I know that this was a long one so I just so appreciate Nora giving so much of her time, especially in the evening and it was a very hot day where she was and she turned the air conditioning off to do this interview. Appreciate her time and her wisdom and insights into death. I mean it is a big topic and it is a very confronting topic for a lot of people. It can be a beautiful topic as well to think about that stuff and discuss so that people who are left behind are not left wondering or having questions about things from really practical things to worrying if they've made the right decision. That can be something that potentially stays with them forever.
If you can have those conversations now and also by having those conversations, consider the life that you want to lead and the life that you want to live. Of course, if this whole discussion has brought up things for you that you are feeling pretty uncomfortable with, please seek help. Please talk to your GP here in Australia. You can go to Beyond Blue. We'll link to a bunch of resources in the show notes for this, which you'll be able to find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/326. But as usual, I'd love to highlight two things that stood out for me in terms of business as well because we're talking about death a lot, but we are also talking about the business Death Practice Journal that Nora runs. As I mentioned at the start, you can check out Death Practice Journal, deathpracticejournal.com.
You can also find Nora over on Instagram, although she did talk about it not being her number-one channel for marketing, which I love that she talked about that. It's just @death.practice.journal and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. But the two things that stood out for me among so many in this conversation were, when Nora talked about when you're working for yourself, you have to become a good boss to yourself. That means setting boundaries and looking after yourself and realizing that you are not just a business, you have all these other facets to your life. I think that's an important thing. We can often have this idea that business, having a business means working 24/7 or that we should say yes to every single opportunity that comes our way.
Especially when you're starting a business, it can feel like that. It can feel like you have to say yes to everything because you're not going to make money otherwise or how are you going to get out there otherwise? And of course, definitely say yes to things if they feel in alignment with you. But I know firsthand that I said yes to some things early on in business and I ignored my gut feeling around things and I wasn't looking out for myself. I wasn't being the good boss that Nora is talking about. I love that idea interlinked with that when she talked about the idea that you can find beauty in solitude, but it doesn't have to lead to isolation. They don't have to be the same thing just when you're working for yourself and by yourself a lot of the time that it doesn't have to lead to feeling isolated, that there are lots of places to get out.
Even when she talked about getting out into her rural community population of 600 and getting out and understanding that not everyone's going to think like me and not everyone's going to be my age or interested in the things I'm interested in, I'm going to get out there anyway and chat to them and live outside my bubble. I think a lot of us saw a huge amount of like, what would you even call it? I guess the difference in the pandemic was when we were coming up against people who maybe thought very differently about things like vaccines or thought very differently around political issues. I think the reason that sometimes we can be so shocked by other people's attitudes or things that just are so unjust to us or feel just so different is because we spend a lot of time in these bubbles that we have manufactured.
I love that she talked about the whole idea that you can enjoy the solitude and embrace and love the solitude of working for yourself and working remotely and that it doesn't have to lead to isolation. By being a good boss to yourself, you're going to get to that situation where you can be working in solitude but also not feel isolated. The other thing that I enjoyed hearing from Nora and I think is an important one, particularly if you've been in business for some time but you're not feeling it anymore, is that she talked about being trained and accredited as a death doula, but understanding after some time that wasn't where she wanted to put the vast majority of her work. She didn't necessarily want to be doing that stuff. It didn't light her up, it wasn't her area to thrive in and she has changed her business to be able to be a death worker and to work with people like she said who are trying to have more conversations around death and what does it mean to the way that we live.
It's very obvious from the way that she talks as well. She's a very deep thinker and wants to open up a whole dialogue and get more and more people talking about this stuff so that we can be open and we can chat about this important part of life. There are so many things that stood out for me from this chat with Nora, but I would love to know what you took away from it. Please don't be a stranger. You can send us a DM @mydailybusiness_ and you can also email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com. Of course, I'm sure Nora would love to hear from you whether you want to book her as a speaker. She also didn't mention that, but she does do some speaking on this topic. I think it's just a fascinating topic, to be honest.
Even thinking about how it makes us run our business when we are aware of and embracing that we are all going to die. If you are keen to get in touch with Nora, you can find out more about her and any upcoming work that she's got going on over at deathpracticejournal.com or you can find her on Instagram, like I said before @death.practice.journal. Thank you so much for reading. I know this was an interesting different chat, but I hope that it gave you a whole lot of food for thought. I'd love to hear from you, don't be a stranger. I'll see you next time. Bye.
