I quit my job
Yep. I looked at my reliable, well-paying corporate job and said no thanks. This is either the smartest or stupidest decision I’ve ever made.
Blame my intuition. Stubborn. Persistent. Kind of annoying, honestly. Ever since I started this website—and especially since I got my book deal—my intuition has been nudging me toward death and dying as a career. I could only ignore those nudges for so long.
But death and dying as what career? Great question. I’m a certified death doula, but I’m not sure I have the emotional bandwidth to do it professionally. I could go back to school and become a funeral director, a grief therapist, an estate attorney—but my parents didn’t leave me that much money, and besides, one go at grad school was good enough for me.
Here’s what I’m good at:
Communications (creative and corporate)
Education (if I can teach undergraduates how to properly cite their sources, I can teach anything)
Research (my first job out of college was in business intelligence)
Death (I made this entire website, didn’t I?)
And I see a communication gap in the death and dying industry: hospice facilities, funeral homes, estate lawyers, death doulas, and grief counselors are all profoundly connected, but they don’t act that way. If a consumer needs one of these services, they likely need all of these services. So why aren’t they talking to each other? Why aren’t they working together to serve people at every stage of death and dying?
The gap is especially large between death care workers and lawyers/accountants on the estate side—but it doesn’t have to be.
And then, of course, there’s the gap between these fields and the consumers themselves, which is why I created this site in the first place. When a loved one dies, no one hands you a checklist with next steps.
I’m still brainstorming the best products and services I can offer to fill those gaps—I’m sure it’ll be like throwing spaghetti at the wall for a while.
But if you want to watch the whole messy process, I suggest you sign up for my newsletter, The Columbarium, which launches October 1. It’s weekly and it’s free. It features death history, death news, death advice, death jams, and more. Perfect for regular weirdos and industry pros alike.
We all have to die someday. Let’s figure it out together.