Is it a Happy New Year? Should I Quit Deathwork? An Update from Erin
How happy is America, half on fire and half on ice? The sun sets at the same time we get off of work and we’re on the edge of another polarizing political play. In our bodies it feels more like a time to hibernate than a time to create.
It’s a proper conundrum, a familiar one
How do we keep on during our own grief? How do we create and produce, create and produce when we are running low? I don't know about you, but spring, the blooming of the vine, this is when I feel renewal. Not now, in this season of survival.
I’m going to get really honest. I wasn’t prepared for the changes coming my way at Deathwives in 2024. While I understand them now as necessary and strategically correct, I was sideswiped by the grief of losing my job. I loved my job. I was good at it. Not perfect, even messed up a couple of times, but really good. Living with purpose, helping others, and being paid for it. In many ways the dream. Stay tuned tho, everything changes.
In the middle of 2024 I came to learn that things at Deathwives were quickly changing
That I had little control over it. That I would need to build a new business very quickly. The grief hit me like it would in any other great loss: shock/denial/anger/fear. And to be honest, it hasn't been going great.
If you are looking for tea, it ain’t gonna happen. I will forever love Deathwives and the 5.5 years I built it with Lauren. I am truly grateful that it lives on in evergreen format, archived forever as THE BEST library of basic death education around. After months of absorption and adaptation, I can appreciate the big picture. Nonetheless, the loss was surprising and leveling. You have to absorb the impact of something like that before you can rebuild.
So it’s hard to create while we are grieving and it's unadvised to launch programs this time of year. Yet the clock ticks in our create and produce culture, tied closely to survival so I quickly went to work building a new business. New employees. New branding. New social media platforms (that are slow to take off), an AMAZING new website, and investors who believe in my work enough to carry me through the drought.
But businesses aren’t built in a day
After bringing my death doula workshop to many cities and having unforgettable workshops, I didn’t get enough registrations in Florida to cover my costs and proceed with the class. For the first time in 20 sessions, Deathschool (Evolved) enrollment was too low to move forward.
Last week I was talking to a friend, asking - should I give this work up?
I know in my heart that the answer is no, but my brain is trying to keep up.
Sure, it's because of the winter. The election. Because people are afraid to spend money right now. Because I can't reach the same audience with my new business as I could with my old one... and maybe the death doula training market has become saturated. Which is funny, and good. Many times I have said that I want so many people to learn about doulaship that I work myself out of a job. That we return this to the community. Right?
But I know better than to think it is external forces, when most everything is a seed expressed from inside of us. As above, so below, an uncomfortable truth.
The difference was this: I co-founded Deathwives from absolute passion. Pure excitement for change and progress. I built it from the love that remained from the people who had died in my life. A forever imprint. My new business, Death Ed with Erin, contains all of the same knowledge and experience as before, but I did not build it from pure excitement. I built it quickly, from grief, from necessity. The energy was different, and so, so was the outcome. Ah ha, I see.
So I asked my friend - how do I get back into the heart of this work?
Ask and you shall receive? The next day I found myself in the pews of Mother Cabrini Shrine, a holy relic and chapel that my family has had hands and heart in for generations - a story I'll share on another day. On this day, we were there to celebrate the life of my Great Uncle, Anthony, who had lived well all his 95 years. He was the last to die in his generation. The end of an era. Sentiment swelled over me as the priest spoke (I am a recovering Catholic, but it was poignant).
He shared a story about 3 different men who were bestowed different levels of talent. One very talented man who multiplied the gifts he had been given by using his talents to help others. One somewhat talented man, who, although not as talented as the man before, was just as hard working and also used his talents to help others. And a final man who was only given one talent. Because he was upset about his limited gifts, he made nothing of them. He did not multiply what he had been given. The moral of the story was: Use your gifts. Spread your message. That is how to get back into the heart of this work. Chills ran over me, the familiar kind that I know as signs. A full body whisper: do not give up this work.
The next day, I was called to the bedside
I sat in the liminal space between this world and the next as an incredible man made his journey home. This man died without regrets. He lived every inch of his life. He helped countless others - generations of them. He succeeded in every sense of the word, and he didnt let it spoil him. He lived a life of legacy. I have spent this week with his family, completing his story. Chills ran over me. This is how to get back into the heart of this work.
And so, that is how the story goes. What is meant for us cannot truly be lost, but it can change forms along the way, often unexpectedly. The more we resist, the more it hurts. I am only in the beginning of learning the lessons that this season of challenge has presented, but I am not going anywhere. Well, that's not true, I’ll be traveling alot!
New dates will be released soon for Deathschool, Evolved, and we will begin again in the early spring
I'll be teaching in Canada in May, at the first-ever Collaborative Doula Conference and in Wisconsin in June, so stay tuned for those announcements. I am working with birth doulas and midwives to expand end-of-life training in midwifery care, and am excited to share more about that soon. For personal growth, I am focusing on direct client care, leaning back into the roots of this work, and I am also studying (and visiting) funeral care in other countries and cultures. I am starting a blog (thanks for reading it right now) and am doing something radical. Committing a full day every week to writing, writing, writing - because that is where I find my voice and land inside the heart of this work. And I plan to stay here until the end.
