As Sarah Kerr puts it, “Grief is a feeling; grieving is an action.” This week, I speak with Janelle Ketcher, an artist and archivist who envisioned a unique way to take action in grief and honor those we’ve lost. What is the Postal Service for the Dead? How does it function, and why is it significant? Could this “simple action” offer a powerful way to process our grief? And what is this magical community of letters all about? Janelle shares, “Ultimately, whether you write a letter or not, I hope this podcast inspires curiosity and sparks conversations!”

⁠https://www.janelleketcher.com/postal-service-for-the-dead⁠

⁠https://www.instagram.com/postalserviceforthedead⁠

Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullet, and you’re listening to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. And today I’m here with, I think a really super interesting guest. Welcome to Janelle Ketcher. 

Janelle Ketcher: Hi, Diane. Thank you so much for having me. 

Diane Hullet: So Janelle and I’ve kind of seen each other on social media. Her work is called Postal Service for the Dead.

And we kind of like, I knew she was out there. And then recently in November, when we were both at the Endwell conference and the, death overdrafts the night before we met in person. And as soon as I realized who you were, I was like, Oh, we got to have a podcast conversation. So this is great. I just think the work you’re doing is so interesting.

Tell us, you know, tell us a little bit about who you are for listeners who have not heard of you or postal service for the dead. 

Janelle Ketcher: Yeah so a little bit about me. As you said, my name is Janelle. I’m originally from Des Moines, Iowa, but I am living in Los Angeles right now. I come from an arts background, which maybe will Talk a little bit more about and about two years ago, I pivoted and now I’m in graduate school for library and information science.

And I also work in the library and information field. So with that background, postal service for the dead is kind of this convergence of all my interests in art. And archives and, like, grief and end of life work. So if you see, like, a Venn diagram of all those things, Postal Service for the Dead is right in the middle.

And what the project is, just quickly, I’m sure we’ll dive into it more, but it is a project where people can write letters to anyone in their life who has died. And so we have a physical P. O. box so you can go through the act of literally sending mail to someone. 

Diane Hullet: I think it’s such a powerful experience and expression to write something, put it in an envelope, have a place to address it, put a stamp on it and put it in the mail.

You know, it’s funny, we’re recording this in December, so I can’t help thinking of like letters to Santa Claus and how those used to be sort of just, you know, you left them out on a table if you were in that celebrating tradition. But then people did develop like P. O. boxes you could send things to. And so yeah.

There is, I think, this history of how, how do we connect and express across distance and across imagination, if you will. And there’s something about when our deceased people go to another realm, what if we could actually mail them letters or mail letters that would Be in the ethers and in the experience somehow, right?

And say on your website, which is such a great website, you talk about the post secret as inspiration and what is post secret? Because I was fascinated when that came out as well. 

Janelle Ketcher: Yeah, PostSecret I think has been around since like the early 2000s, but it is a project where people can similarly mail in, but they mail in secrets.

So people write down, and a lot of times people, Will either, like, create their own postcard, or they’ll, like, add to postcards, or something like that, where they are writing down secrets. So, that has definitely been something of influence to me, just with the power of non anonymity, and what can be said when you have that kind of safe space in a way.

So at Postal Service for the Dead, we have three levels of privacy if you choose to write in. So imagine you have written your letter, you’ve addressed it to our P. O. box, and on the back side of the letter, if you leave it blank, then we will never open it, we will never read it, but the letter is still received and saved in our archive.

So I like to say that it’s safe. It’s in community with all these other letters of grief and loss. If you mark it with a heart, then that means you give us permission to read the letter, but we’re not going to share it publicly. Again, it’s still saved in the archive. If you mark it with a star, then you give us permission to share it publicly.

Another level that we add to that is we do try to redact names to continue in the same vein as post secret, that level of anonymity. For people writing in, but also to honor the dead who have not, you know, they have not given their consent to be a part of this. So it’s a level to try and respect and honor their privacy as well.

Diane Hullet: So if I write a letter and I put a star on the back, is it you that reads it? Is there a staff? Like, how many people is Postal Service for the Dead? 

Janelle Ketcher: Great question. Right now, it’s just me reading them, but as I mentioned, I am a student working on my Master’s of Library and Information Science, and I’m actually really excited next semester, I’m going to be working with a small group of archivists here in LA, and we are going to be thinking about how we process the documents and some ethics behind it, trying to create documentation around it, because my, my end goal is like, I don’t want to be the only one doing this.

It’s just out of capacity, and it really is a community effort, so I’m trying to think about how it can be a community of people that are receiving and processing and digitizing these things. 

Diane Hullet: And then if I put a star and you share, what does that mean to share one of the letters? Like you said, you take names out, redact names, but where are they shared?

Janelle Ketcher: So, right now, they are just shared on our Instagram and our Facebook page, so social media. We have a newsletter as well, and I feature some on the newsletter occasionally. And, down the road, some goals for Postal Service for the Dead are that we, In working with this archivist group, too, and kind of trying to build a solid foundation of processing the letters, I would love to work towards creating a web based archive that helps create more accessibility to the letters.

So, in my dream world, you know, maybe we have letters that get tagged in certain ways, so maybe someone’s writing about losing a parent, or maybe someone has written about losing someone to addiction, perhaps. How can we tag those and categorize those so that Maybe researchers and just the public can look at letters and connect to other stories, or maybe we can perhaps look at them and learn something new about grief.

Diane Hullet: I think it’s so fantastic. I love the way you said that. It’s also sort of about the letters being in community. Like, there’s something great about that, too. So it could be accessible by the public, accessible to researchers. And then also somehow this idea that these letters live together in some way is just such a great level of community.

And again, art, right? 

Janelle Ketcher: Yeah. Thank you for that. It’s definitely and I think community can be thrown out as like a, a buzzword a lot, but I really do think about like the letters living in community together and what it means. For a community to have like a broad range of how we grieve and how we approach death and how we talk about death and to have them all living together I think is I don’t know.

I don’t know what it is, but for me it’s really important. Lovely. And it’s exciting. And it’s a reminder that not only are you not alone, but however you are feeling is totally fine because there’s so many ways to be with grief and death. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah, there’s something about it being I think that’s where the community and you’re right.

It can be a buzzword, but there’s something about it being bigger than your individual letter. That is, I think, the piece of it that feels right to me. I think, I mean, overall, your big underneath goal is just the same as mine with best life, best death, right? Create conversation, bring it out of the shadow, get out of isolation in these spaces around end of life, death, grief, because they’re, because our society is so illiterate in these spaces.

I think the more direct and creative And out of the box opportunities we have to share with each other matters. So there’s something about this that I just really am taken with because it’s a different way of exploring your grief. And I, you know, I work with people where I sometimes encourage people to write a letter, but to have a place to send it and then to have this agency over, do you want that just kept sealed?

Do you want it? hearted so that somebody reads it and receives it but doesn’t respond. It’s like not having comments on something, which I think is so powerful. In fact, if people are watching the YouTube video, I’m sitting in a corner of my office again, where I do a little painting. And the painting work I did was with a woman named Michelle Casu in San Francisco.

And a big piece of the painting work was it was called process painting. And the work around it was very much about not making comments on other people’s creative expression. And so there was this incredible safety that I found in that, that something could be received and witnessed and seen and not talked about and not commented on.

I mean, we’ve got so much commentary going on in our head about our grief and how we’re living with the person that we’ve lost. So. This idea that there’s a place to write it and send it and express something in that. I believe these gestures move things. And then the third level is you can put a star and say, you can read this and you can share it.

And I, my story can be public, quote unquote, in, in kind of a. A subtle way. I mean, I don’t know how many thousands of people are seeing this probably not tens of thousands, but there’s that possibility of it being seen and shared and how that might impact and help somebody else. So there’s just so many layers to this that I think are really fascinating.

And, you know, I also wanted to add, I was thinking to about how. Like sometimes gestures are small on one level, but they’re big on another level. And that’s what I think postal service for the dead is. Like somebody might write a simple postcard of love to a brother they’ve lost or a parent, or they might write a long letter to a grandparent about, you know, a deep relationship, or they might write a letter about something difficult and how much they didn’t like the person and there was conflict before they died or.

Their whole life with this person. I mean, I do think we run into this place where we act like all grief is positive and love, and in fact, it, it, it often is fraught, right? So maybe write a fraught letter, but whatever these letters are, they’re shared, and that is different than writing a letter and burning it or writing a letter and putting it in a drawer or half finishing the letter and losing track of it, you know?

So I just love that there’s a place where these letters to the dead can be received. 

Janelle Ketcher: Yeah, and yeah, I think there is definitely some magic in it being sent and it being received, and whatever you believe happens in that, if it’s just purely the U. S. Postal Service getting it from point A to point B, or if you believe that some other communications are happening in that journey, then I think, I welcome that.

all interpretations. But I do, to your point that, like, letter writing, I encourage people just to do that too. Like, this doesn’t have to be the end result. We know from art therapy, from so many practices, that just writing is so helpful, right? So my hope, like, I know the name is kind of cheeky, right? So Postal Service for the Dead.

Even if that sparks curiosity or a conversation like, Oh, if you were to, even if you’re just theorizing about it, like if I were to maybe write a letter, what would I write about? Or if you, if you spark that conversation with people in your life, if you have a shared person who has died and you brought up something that I try and be really intention, intentionable, intentional about as well.

I think sometimes it’s really easy to say like, writing to loved ones or you’re near and dear or whatever and we’re creating space for all of it. They don’t Maybe they weren’t loved ones, and you need a space to write about that, and how their death impacted you, and that’s okay. So, I try and be mindful of that language I’m using sometimes it slips in just cause they’re like things we learned in our communities and societies to replace, Talking about dead people.

Right. So yeah, just some comments based on what you were saying. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s like we, we, we sort of as a society want to revere our dead and and yes, and yes, that’s important. And sometimes it’s just more complicated than that, because they were human and we are human. And so there’s more feelings than just simple near and dear.

Like you said. Yeah, do you want to read a couple letters, Janelle? Would that be a place to do that? 

Janelle Ketcher: So I’ve picked a few. As you mentioned, we have a variety of length. So I’ve just picked a couple that are shorter in length so we can read them. But again, if you want to read more that we’ve digitized, you can go to Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook’s probably easier to zoom in and stuff to read those longer ones. So the first one I’ve pulled up It is a postcard, and it starts, Baba, I wish so badly that you live to see my hard work pay off, because after all, you were my biggest cheerleader. I would only be a fraction of myself if it weren’t for you.

Every triumph has an air of sadness to it now, because you are not here to see it or celebrate it. You deserve the world, but instead you gave it to me. I only hope I do your love justice. I love you. I miss you.

 And another one to it I’ll say generally, if there are any more negative or more complicated feelings that people are writing about, those tend to be longer letters. But I did find one that kind of hints at more of a complicated relationship to, in a shorter message. So this one starts, Poppy, I never got to say goodbye.

I never got a chance to know you. I I never got to say sorry for the ugly things I said to you that day, blanks, office. I wish I could change so much. I hope one day my grief will be less painful. My internal love, always.

 So it’s, and, and you know, there’s some that are throwing some profanities. There are some that touch on really challenging topics. So this is just giving. I think kind of a small sliver of the spectrum of how we’re seeing people relate to the letters and what they write about. 

Diane Hullet: I think one of the reasons this has captured my imagination is also because, you know, we’ve kind of been a quick text and a quick email, like people have gotten away from the written letter.

And yet, as you said, there’s such power in writing and there’s such power in handwriting, that that that can be really a different way to connect with an experience and write about it, sort of changes your experience of it. It illuminates it, or it can shed light on it, or it can help it move. And I was thinking again about You know, there’s something Sarah Kerr says she says, you know, grief is a feeling and grieving or mourning is an action.

It’s something we do. So I think when we are overcome with grief, the more we can find actions to take that are That really put it, you know, put that feeling of grief into motion. I think the better off we can be, not to make it sound all, you know, simple and like, Oh, the better off and now it’s all fixed.

It’s not that, but I think with grief, we’re trying to live our way into integrating it in some way. And that takes actions so that we are both growing around our grief. And integrating our grief in a way that I think things like writing and art do in a way that other things don’t talking about it sometimes is helpful.

And sometimes we get loopy. So I’m a big fan of these creative pieces that can move things within us. And I think grief is a really tricky one to be with and move, because in part, it’s so poorly held by society at large. so much. 

Janelle Ketcher: Yeah, so we, in addition to having this, just the project at large where people can write in, in the P.

O. Box, we do programs as well where we do pop ups or workshops or collaborate with other people, and so I get to see kind of firsthand how people engage with letter writing, and more times than not, when people sit down to write, that they come out of it at the end saying things like, I didn’t realize I had so much to say, or like, wow, I didn’t know that that was there.

 So again, just to reiterate, like, sending it doesn’t have to be the end result, but just sitting down and doing the act taking time, carving out the time to do it You know, I’ll confess, that’s really hard for me to do too, and for any self care type thing. But if you do it, it will probably be really meaningful.

Another thing we do at a lot of our workshops is not just letter writing, but we’re creating the cards. So we have collaging materials, a lot of times we have stamping materials, and a prompt I give people, which I think this prompt can help people. lend itself to start thinking about the person you’re writing to or thinking about your grief in relationship to that person is If you’re gonna collage a card, you know Like look through a magazine and and look for colors or textures or words that remind you of your person or of the grief you’re feeling it can kind of go multiple ways and And I encourage people, I’m like, you can use scissors if you want, but you can also rip it, you know, like, rip the stuff out, get really physical with it, let it be, like you mentioned with the painting, like, don’t comment on what the end result is, but just let it be whatever it’s gonna be, and let the, that creativity lend itself to thinking, yeah, just thinking about your situation, your person, and I don’t know.

It’s a fun, the, the, the creativity, the creative forms coming together are always something that’s really interesting to me 

Diane Hullet: as same. And so if you, you know, rip some images and rip some textures and, and glue them on a postcard or a piece of paper, and then you write some words and mail it to somebody. I just, again, I feel like most people don’t do that these days.

And so we’ve kind of lost track of the power of that and what that, how, how art in creating an expression is maybe the most basic word of it, right? How expression helps us to move things. So an expression has to be received in some way, but to have it received in this anonymous way is so cool. Okay. I am totally going to the next pop up of postcards.

No, I keep calling postcards. Okay. The next pop up of Postal Service of the Dead. It’s so neat. What, what kind of places do you do pop ups? 

Janelle Ketcher: So we have one in Los Angeles coming up on December 21st. I don’t know if this probably will come out past that but we are in partnership with a park. And a residency, an artist residency called Bed and Breakfast, so we’re kind of merging a lot of, it’s like Park, Bed and Breakfast, and another art group called Autonomous Zine Library, so we’re going to be doing some end of year reflections on zines that have been created and then we’ll be making cards and writing to people, you know, at the end of the year there might be people you want to share updates with that are dead and you can’t write to them.

So kind of just an end of year gentle reflecting space. And then I’m hopeful in the new year For work, I’ll be traveling to New York and I’m hopeful to plan like one or two programs in New York at the end of February. So that’s something to look forward to. 

Diane Hullet: I think it’s really interesting. Well, I’m going to definitely look for opportunities for collaboration and kind of where, where would be a great place to bring this?

I live in Colorado. So might we do something in Boulder or Denver? And who might the partners be? Right? Creative partners. And yeah, it’s just adding a different element to what might otherwise be kind of a convention or a conference or a workshop or something. And this element I think is so important for expression.

Janelle Ketcher: Oh, I’ll just add one thing too, like I know I’m just one person in my dream world, there’s like a whole slew of us that can just go across the country and do all these programs. But in lieu of that, I have made a blog post on the PostalServiceForTheDead. com that kind of outlines if you wanted to host your own workshop in your community.

You know your community best. You know, your, your family, your friends, whoever it is. I’ve outlined how you can do that. So go check that out on the website and if you organize anything, please reach out to us, send us photos. We love, we love to hear what people are up to. 

Diane Hullet: Fantastic. Okay. So that’s the call to action listeners.

Everybody let’s host some of these in our communities and just sort of see where it goes. I think it’s such an interesting way to promote conversation about end of life, grief, the dead, all of the above. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Janelle. I think it’s such an interesting community work that you’ve created here that allows people to participate.

And express something from themselves. And I don’t know. I just, I hope this goes in really interesting directions for you as an archivist and a death doula and a person working in this field. I think it’s a very interesting place of expression. And so for people listening, you can get more information about postal service for the Dead at Postal Service for the dead.com.

You can send your letters too. 

Janelle Ketcher: You can send the letters to, oh my gosh, you’d think I would have it memorized, but I fully don’t. How embarrassing. Let me look it up. You can send your letters to Postal Service for the Dead, P. O. Box 31412. Los Angeles, California. 90031 is the zip code. 

Diane Hullet: Hey, and as a final thing, do you hear back from people?

Like if you, somebody puts a star on their letter, you open it, you end up putting it on Facebook. Do you ever get comments back? 

Janelle Ketcher: I occasionally have. I’ve gotten some thank yous, some direct messages Just this weekend, I did a pop up at Studio Death Doula here in Los Angeles. We had like a death holiday market.

And someone came to it that has written in and introduced themselves to me. And that was really meaningful. It was kind of like a weird emergence of This, the area, the land of the letters, and then the land of reality, and then but yeah, the sometimes some human connections happen and, and I’ve connected with people in Los Angeles through workshops and some regular people come to things and it’s, it’s just been a lovely virtual and magical and in person community.

Diane Hullet: Oh, I love calling it a magical community. I think that’s what it is. That’s what it is. When we send letters, it’s magical. It’s like, it’s like we think about you know, smoke, smoke going up and into the ether and letters going up and into the ether and how we are communicating with the dead, I think can vary widely, but you’ve given us a concrete, postal address that we can send letters to, and I just think it’s wonderful.

Thanks so much for your time, Janelle. Anything else you want to add? 

Janelle Ketcher: Oh gosh, I don’t know. Thank you, Diana. This has been really great chatting, and yeah, at the end of the day, I hope Whether people write in or not, I hope this podcast and this conversation and just so many of the wonderful things happening in the end of life space just spark curiosity for people to have conversations.

Diane Hullet: Ah, that is the, that is the end word for sure. Thank you so much. You’ve been listening to the Best Life Best Death podcast. Thanks for listening.