This week’s podcast is especially close to my heart. In the spring of 2025, my family said goodbye to our beloved 16-year-old dog, Kaya. Sarah and I explore the many complex decisions that arise around the death of our cherished animal companions. With her years of experience and compassionate perspective, Sarah and I talk through the importance of acknowledging pet loss and holding the both/and. As she says, “There is beauty available, even in the heartbreak… Paradox is the only basket large enough to hold the truth.”

https://sacreddeathcare.com/

Transcript:

Diane Hullet: [00:00:00] Hi, I am Diane Hullett and you’re listening to the Best Life Best Death podcast. Today I’ve got a colleague from right here in Denver. Hi, Erin Morelli. Hello, Ms. Diane. Thank you for having me. I feel like this has been a conversation long in the making. Erin is a death doula, an educator, a ceremonialist, and a presenter and a public speaker, and so there’s just a lot of overlap in our interests and.

I just want to talk about what you’re doing these days and why you and I both think the public in general needs to have more conversations about death. 

Sarah Kerr: Yes. Well, thanks for having me. We are definitely aligned in our mission and why we’re here and the things that are important to us, so I’m sure there’ll be a lot of resonance and like head nodding as we go throughout our conversation today.

Yeah, yeah. The head nod is the thing, right? That is the thing. Yeah. So those of you listening and not watching, you’re missing out on. The head nodding there. There are so many reasons why we need to have this conversation. We could probably unpack 50 on demand if we needed to, but I think that what it comes down [00:01:00] to is that when we don’t have conversations, especially about hard things, we’re really ill-prepared and ill-equipped to show up and handle them in any good kind of way when they happen and with something as inevitable as death that we know is gonna touch.

Every single person. It’s like the more you know, right? Like if you don’t know much, it feels like a macabre scary thing to enter. But once you know a lot, it feels like a responsibility. We have to know this in order to care for the people that we love, because we can’t just love ’em up until they’re gonna die and then stop loving ’em.

Right? Like it’s a responsibility to, to understand how to carry people through until the end. And, 

Diane Hullet: oh, I love this. I love everything you just said in that opening because it’s also, to me, it’s about. Loving and caring for the people we love, but it’s also about showing up for those around us who go through huge loss.

And loss is death, and loss is a terminal diagnosis and loss is a divorce, and loss is everywhere. We all hit it as we’re adulting our way through these lives [00:02:00] and you know, there’s just this. Tragedy to me in kind of current culture that people don’t know how to show up for that. And so I love that you used the word responsibility and just, you know, the responsibility is to show up as a human for another human when hard things happen and one of those hard things is death, so, wow.

Oh, okay. So you and a colleague, Lauren Carroll, founded Death Wives. Like almost six years ago. And so tell us a little about Death Wives and how you got into this in the first place, and then kind of the evolution of where you are now. Just, you know, all that in just the quick 

Sarah Kerr: version. Thank you. Yeah. I love Death Wives, death Wives we started in 2019.

It was everything we just said. Right? I came, I was working as a death doula at that time, and I still am. And before that I had been a wedding planner and a birth doula. So I had this like Merriam and Barium Sacred Transitions, you know, kind of gig going on. I. I partnered up with Lauren, who had been a funeral director for [00:03:00] many years, and then turned kind of rogue green funeral director.

And so we both loved the same conversation, but approached it from a little bit different place and together it was just very complimentary and we began to teach each other things and, and finally, after some convincing, Lauren, I’m not throwing you under the bus, but she would say. She would say, I wanna do this, but like, there’s no way to make this a business.

People won’t come to these classes until it’s looking them in the face. They don’t wanna, you know, and so it took me a little time to convince her. And we started offering classes just on the side. We were still had our day jobs and whatnot, but the attendance was amazing and the interest was amazing.

We were kind of surprised that we didn’t have to like, beg people. They wanted to have these conversations. And so it was reverse supply and demand. I mean, there was more demand than we had supply in in the early days. And. So then we started, you know, people said, can you do a class on this? Can you do a class on this?

Can you do a certificate program? So we diversified, you know, the training and kind of broke it down into really accessible parts of the conversation. Because as you know, [00:04:00] this is such a comprehensive conversation. There are very few. Things in life that don’t intersect with death in one way or another.

And different people come for different reasons. And so can we have a, a class, you know, just on grief or a class on compassion fatigue or a class on psycho pumps in the afterlife, or a class on practical preparedness and wills or a class on environmental burial, right? So. So compartmentalizing it, making it affordable and kind of bite-size because people are intimidated by this conversation.

Right? And, and 

Diane Hullet: everybody has their entry point, like you said, like for listeners who just heard those five or six things you said, like each one of those is an entry point that might have some spark for you. So I love that that death wise kind of created this way to, you know, at an affordable price point, kind of dip your toe in the water with different things for what interested you.

Sarah Kerr: Yeah. And like, why are you here? Right? Are you here because you’ve gone through something really devastating and you wanna find a space where other people know that pain. There’s a certain comfort when we’ve gone through something and [00:05:00] other people who have experienced the same kind of loss. So how do we show up for those people?

And then there are people who they don’t wanna talk about any of that. They’re not in, they don’t wanna talk about any of that. But like, grandma’s gonna die in the next year and I wanna be prepared. Right? And both reasons are so valid and so worthy. So we welcome everyone. And then it, it just continued to evolve.

We kept teaching this great program called Death School over and over and over. I’m gonna teach it for the 20th time and probably the last time next week. And it’s such wonderful, valuable information. But we all evolve and that’s what Death teaches us too. It teaches us everything. But like the big lesson is to live.

While you’re alive and what are we doing with our time, and time is really, really sacred and what are we trading it for? And so death wives needed to evolve too. And so we turned all of these awesome classes into evergreen classes. We made them even less expensive and people can just go watch them on their own time.

And then that freed Lauren and I up to really dive into like, what’s the next level of our own evolution in death care and what does our soul want us to do with this gift? [00:06:00] Because I also think that those of us. Who know what we’re here to do and what messages are here to come through us and what we’re birthing into this world.

We’re really, really lucky for that. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve sat with that, gosh, I wish I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wish I felt passionate about something the way you do. But with that also comes a responsibility. A responsibility to really exercise it and to really take whatever gift we’ve been given and multiply that and give that away.

Right. So, so these new businesses that Lauren and I have both been creating have been that, how can we still serve at a really accessible level and then also still on our own calls to growth in this space. 

Diane Hullet: So I have to go backwards slightly ’cause you were a birth doula, is that right? Say briefly. I was, I was 

Sarah Kerr: briefly a birth doula.

So my kids are older now, 15 and 22. But when they were young and I was a young mom, I trained with a birth doula program. I was inspired by a birth doula friend. And just worked in that space briefly. I, I would hesitate to even call myself a professional. I was a student learning to become a professional in the birth [00:07:00] space, but it’s what it was, the aha moment, right?

It, I had, I didn’t know about Susan O’Brien yet, who was like the OG doing it before everybody. There weren’t very many death doulas. I don’t, I don’t even know that the word, like the first time I said the word, I was like, there should be a death doula. I didn’t realize it had. Been put together yet. So it was that birth space and you know, there’s, there’s so much commonality.

Birth is this gestation. It’s coming, it’s growing, it’s growing. And then there’s this, you know, explosion of energy and a new life is here and death is the opposite. Death is this contraction, this contraction, this contraction. And, and as we know, when we’re working with people who, you know, it’s not in an instant, there is a gestation to death as well.

It’s the inversion. And so I realized that, and I realized it’s. It’s the same liminal space. It’s just the front and the back door of, of this place. And there’s so much awe in that space and there’s so much privilege in that space. Like once you know that you can spend your precious time in this liminal space of life coming in and life leaving, [00:08:00] and you can be so moved by it deeply and personally, and then you can also get paid for it.

And then like the person that you helped is, feels really supported by the fact that you were there to help them, like. You know, it’s brilliant, 

Diane Hullet: right? It’s like, yes, please. Yeah. There’s something about those spaces that are those liminal spaces, those portal spaces that are just profound. And I think anybody who’s maybe witnessed to birth is e easier than going through a birth right, in terms of experiencing it.

But there’s something, they’re both laborers. And they’re both intense touches of what it means to be human. I just think that’s a great way to put 

Sarah Kerr: it. So, and they’re both things that can happen outside of industry. I’m really grateful that we have industry to support people, but they’re bigger than anything We’ve built.

Birth and death are gonna happen no matter what. And so we can try to keep up, we can try to understand, we can try to serve, but they are bigger than us, so they’re the ultimate teachers for us. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, I think that’s so intriguing. I like, I was thinking about sort of historically in the US and I was [00:09:00] thinking, okay, you know, how could we do this better?

Like, I don’t, I don’t think that when death left the home, so to speak, when it went into being cared for more by an industry. I don’t think we’re going back to a time where grandma is laid out on a board between two chairs in the front living room. Like I don’t think we’re doing that. 

Sarah Kerr: We don’t have to go that 

Diane Hullet: rural.

We can hybrid the best of both, right? We can have the best of both. Exactly. But I do think there’s something about this reclamation of death, this, this. Bringing it back that allows us to sit with our fears around it totally differently. And I think what happened is when death left the home, I mean, I’m generalizing wildly, but when death left the home, it fear came in because it became this distant misunderstood, or poorly understood piece of human lives.

And so, you know, I, I think the arc of the history of how we’ve gotten to where we are now is. Super interesting, so, okay. Okay. Wait, so like six things are popping around in my head. I know. I’m like, do, do. So you’re now traveling [00:10:00] and you’re teaching and it’s, it’s called Death Ed and you’re crisscrossing the US teaching workshops and also exploring different cultures and what they’re doing in end of life work.

So say a little about any or all of that. 

Sarah Kerr: Yeah. I have so much to say about it too. My brain’s like, which direction first? Okay. I’m gonna backtrack a little bit. You mentioned how, you know we’re not laying grandma out on two boards, between two chairs anymore. But we used to, right? And, and there are modern ways of having home funerals if we wanna have them.

But you hit the nail on the head. We are afraid of what we don’t know. We’re just afraid of what we don’t know. We like to be in our comfort zones. It makes us feel safe and secure, and that’s okay. We’re not bad for that. But it’s because we’re afraid that, you know, of what we don’t know, that we can’t evolve it into something that can be so much more soothing and nurturing for the dying person, the family, and the community.

And for the same reason as we were just saying. This used to be community work, right? Pre-industrial Revolution. There was usually a woman in the community, or several women in the community, and it was traditionally in, in [00:11:00] most cultures there are a few exceptions, but in most cultures, women’s work, and they just jumped in.

There’s the death in the community. You don’t, you know, ask your neighbor what funeral home they used or Google funeral homes near me. You go to the bedside and you might, there might, I’m not saying that there might not be uncomfortable feelings for the average person knowing what they’re walking into, but it was an expected part of life.

A responsibility, right? We didn’t use to outsource. Our medical care to the extent that we do now, and we certainly didn’t use to outsource our funeral care to the extent that we do now either. So yes, traveling throughout the United States and teaching these workshops, and one thing I like to, you know, ask people is like, why, why are you here?

What is the reason that brought you here into this space? And I see so much openness. In the younger generation, I’m kind of proud of like, we can’t take credit for this, but I’m kind of proud of those of us who have been having this conversation for a long time. That’s. How legacy works and how things [00:12:00] change.

It can be really hard to change the minds of the people our age or older than us. Not impossible, right? But, but we pass, we pass it down. And so these younger, you know, people in their twenties are like, yeah, of course, of course. That’s how it should be. Of course we should reclaim it. You don’t have to convince me I’m ripe for it and I’m ready for it.

Right. And, and you know, it’s permission is what it is because we’re so afraid of death and dying. We think that there’s some authority on it. That there’s really not, there’s really not a funeral police. Right. And where I’m speaking generally about when death is anticipated and there’s no foul play and all of that kind of stuff, but like, you don’t need a, a priest to legitimize it or a doctor or a social worker or a chaplain or anybody.

I. To legitimize it, death belongs to us, and we are allowed to take care of our loved ones the way we want to and the way that they would want us to. And that extends beyond the death too, right? You don’t have to call the funeral home the, the minute somebody’s died and say, Hey, come and get ’em. You, you can [00:13:00] still love your loved, your loved ones.

You can keep ’em there for an hour or a day or a few days. We didn’t, you know, we continued to visit my sister and see her body decompose after she died for nine days. And that might sound a little extreme. Part of that was just the logistics. There’s a cue. She was water cremated and you gotta wait your turn.

So part of it was just logistics, but I had such a spiritual experience of like, she died unexpectedly and when she first died, even with all of the training I have, even with all of the stuff I know, it felt, and this is completely incorrect, but it felt like. Getting rid of her body, breaking her body down through water, cremation, it just didn’t feel right because of the denial.

Right? I don’t want her to be dead, right? But after going and seeing her three or four times across these nine days and watching her body say, it’s time for me to leave through slight changes, decomposition, you guys, it’s not as scary as it sounds. It doesn’t happen at once. They. They look pretty much the same, a little deflated, but [00:14:00] her body was showing me that it was okay, right?

And so then it felt better to go ahead and do it, and it felt like this is the next thing I’m supposed to do because your body is telling me, and that helped me with my grief that, you know, didn’t diminish it. Grief and love are gonna coexist. So as long as there’s love, there’s gonna be grief. But we really can carry it in a better way.

We can carry it in a way that doesn’t splay us open all the time. And in my observation and in, and I think most death workers in their observation as well, have this consensus that the more involved a family is, the more willing to look at it in the face that they are during the dying process when death occurs and in the first, you know, 48 hours or so, the more they’re willing to do that instead of run from it.

Like the much better they will be doing a year later, the much more integrated their grief will be a year later. I feel like I took this conversation somewhere 

Diane Hullet: completely different than you’re No, it’s so, it’s so right on. And I was thinking, the way I think of that is that our soul needs time to catch up with what’s [00:15:00] happening.

And that soul time is a little different than body time and death time. And so if someone dies and their body is gone one hour later, your soul hasn’t really caught up to the fact of they’re being gone. There’s, there’s something about. A willingness to just kind of hang out with that as a sacred liminal time that you will not get back.

That I encourage people to do. And so, you know, the first thing, what’s the first thing to do when someone dies? Nothing. Nothing. Just, just take some breaths, make a cup of tea. Sit, call a few key people because there’s this rush. We go to that. I think then sometimes we miss the opportunity, right? Yeah. So, but where you were headed, where you were going, and I think that was a really valid and so personal rabbit hole tangent, if you will.

So thank you. And I remember when your sister died and it was, you know, you shared it really openly on social media and that was when I first was sort of taken by, [00:16:00] who is Erin and you know, this willingness to share something so difficult and so personal in the death space with a lot of people I think moved a lot of us.

In in its transparency. So you were going for, though you were kind of heading into this, the cultural differences you’re seeing as you travel around the US as you travel internationally. Tell us more about that. 

Sarah Kerr: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you this much about that. You and I were having a conversation before we jumped on about different kind of death events in Denver and in Boulder, death over bruise and there’s death over dinner.

And you were saying that on the East Coast, this seems to be popping off and I could not agree more. We taught a, a class in New York a little over a year ago, and those students are like, they are go-getters, man. They’re doing so much in the city. So that’s really cool, but. When you take that concept of like, let’s get together and have a death event, and you take that out of American culture and you plop it over here into, I’ve spent a lot of time in Jamaica this year into Jamaican culture.

They would be like. [00:17:00] What’s wrong with you? Huh? Why would we, what wrong with you? Go? 

Diane Hullet: Why would we go have a beer and and have a whiteboard and talk about that, or, yeah, right back in cards and have to have 

Sarah Kerr: questions to spur a conversation, huh? Yeah. And it seems like, so when I first started having these conversations in this culture, I felt like they looked at me like I was a little bit weird, and why was I doing this?

And so, you know, my first thoughts are like, okay, maybe they’re not that open to it, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s the, it’s the opposite. You know, it’s the first time that I went to a grave digging in Jamaica and there’s easily 50 people there, and there’s a like an easy popup tent in one corner, and people are like selling patties and beers and stuff.

Somebody’s got the music going and there’s just all these, all these people, they’re taking turns. Digging the grave. They’re buying stuff from the popup tent to support the family financially, to helping cover, cover the expenses of the burial that’s going on. People are singing, they’re literally, you know, throwing beer down on the ground [00:18:00] for the person who died.

And I said, does everybody you know who’s here know the person who’s died? Is this like a formal event? Is there a funeral home? And they just said, no. Like we help each other when this happens. Most of the people here don’t know the person who died. They were driving home and they saw that this was happening and they stopped to help for a little bit.

It’s so integrated into the culture, right? It’s so integrated into the culture. They also have something called a nine night. And I, I like this, A lot of cultures give us timelines. They’re loose timelines. It’s not like they’re laws, but rituals and timelines to follow, to give some kind of direction to our grief, right?

Because when somebody dies, one of the most common things you’ll hear Griever say is. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. There’s this like feeling that we have to do something. It feels like an emergency, as you said, even though it’s not right. But that’s a very human reaction to it. And so I love it when cultures give some sort of set of instructions on how grieving goes.

Like in the Jewish culture, they sit Shiva for a week and you know, they were black and [00:19:00] they tied the. The curtains and, and there are morning rituals. You immerse in it and then when the time comes, you move on to another phase. And so in Jamaican culture it’s nine days of grieving. And then on the ninth night they have a party all night long and they make the person’s favorite food and they play their.

Their favorite music, and it is supposed to be celebratory. And that doesn’t mean people aren’t still sad, but they’ve had nine days of committed grief. Right. And the belief behind it, the, you know, religious belief is now they’re going home to be with God and we’re gonna celebrate that. So if you say, you know, come to this thing, we’re gonna have beers and talk about death, they’d be like, no, come to this grave, dibbing like, what are you, what are you talking about?

Diane Hullet: I know that and that’s just like one example of something so different. Caitlin Doty has a great book about, oh gosh, what’s it called? Do you know the name Off top of your, from Here 

Sarah Kerr: to Eternity or it’s the other one. She has three great books. The one from here, the one that’s on cultural differences.

Is it from Here to Eternity? Yes. 

Diane Hullet: Yes. And it’s so good. And that book really opened up my mind because yeah, you [00:20:00] just, you know, you’re swimming in the culture you grew up in, not to some, yeah. Three. And so I just thought, well, this is how people do death and this is how people do funerals. No, not at all. Not at all.

Not at all. Not even, even within the US or Canada. There’s huge variation and it’s so interesting to see that variation. Well, you’re headed to Canada in 2025 for the collaborative doula conference. Yes. Tell us what’s that about? 

Sarah Kerr: There is this awesome birth doula and death doula named Amy Silva, who lives in Ontario, Canada, and she’s putting together the first of its kind doula conference in Canada and it, it is more so for birth doulas, but she’s blowing the lid off that she’s saying.

Listen, these are two really similar spaces. There are a lot of birth doulas interested in death training and you know, even if they’re not interested in doula ship. I personally, you know, have have been there when birth and death are happening in the same moment, right? Stillborns happens. And so we need doulas.

Who can. Can expand into that space or know how to partner with, with [00:21:00] death doulas when that happens. And so I appreciate this merger. She’s bringing all the different types of doulas together and in some ways it’ll just be a networking event for us to get to know each other and to wisdom share. That’s my favorite concept in life right now.

A student taught me that at a class last year. This idea of like. Just wisdom sharing with each other. Like, here’s my wisdom, I wanna share it with you. What’s your wisdom? Share it with me. So that’s kind of what this conference is, is we’re all gonna share wisdom with each other. I think, you know, it’ll be kind of like serious during the day and party at night.

So we’ll have a really good time. My role is to, I’m gonna lead everyone through kind of an end of life. Practice, we’ll start with sound bowls. People will be laying down on yoga mats, and so I’m gonna bring them through their own death and everybody is welcome, but I’m kind of designing it in mind for the death worker, somebody who’s in this space.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working really deeply with a client, and in the back of my head there’s been a voice saying, I wish somebody would do this for me. Like, I need to do this work too. I need to reconcile for, I need to reconcile this for myself [00:22:00] too, in a deep personal way, not just in a like.

Check the boxes. I know what to do professional kind of way. So that is, yeah, that’s my role. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, that’s fantastic. That that’ll be so interesting. I love that you said the wi, the wisdom sharing, and I think that this connection between birth and death and the doulas working in those spaces. And as you said, the crossover that babies, babies are sometimes part of the death world, and that is gonna be some really rich, fertile connections, I think, for what’s next in terms of how our society evolves, how people create a new relationship with death.

I, I don’t know. That’s, I, I mean, I love working with individuals and I love interviewing people, and I also love this broad question of. How are we shifting as a society? Is it possible to shift? And I mean, not that I’m driving some kind of thing that I think of how it should be, but as you said earlier on, I think that people are better better, is that a bad term?

Better [00:23:00] off in their grieving when they’ve grappled with this in a way. So I’m interested in helping create a society that’s more grief literate and death literate. And maybe that also means birth literate and. Human literate, right? Human literate. 

Sarah Kerr: Yeah. You said so many good things. We, we need the community to be able to grieve.

So when you talk about like changing the culture, I think you’re moving the needle. I think all of us in this space, as I looked over your list of past guests, I was like, love her, love her, love her. We all have such a shared, a shared humanity and like what we’re saying, it isn’t even this. Crazy idea. It’s just like really getting back to the roots of how to care to for people on a human level.

But we all live in a bit of a fishbowl, I think, because we know each other and there is this really blooming industry that is, we all, we all wanna change the narrative around death and dying. And I think collectively that really is happening. It’s hard to measure because we live in a, you know, in a fishbowl.

And so I’m not sure how much the needle is moving, you know, on the outside, but [00:24:00] to change the culture. What we really need to instill in people is that responsibility. Yes, we don’t wanna work ourselves out of a job. I still wanna be a, a professional death do and a professional death educator, but like what really?

Makes my heart swell. And what the really, really the point is, is for these messages to get underneath people and them to say, oh, I can do this too. Like, I can care for my loved ones better too. I can learn about this too. We, we just wanna create a different culture where it’s not, here’s me and I don’t know, that goes behind the curtain after it happens.

Right? And instead being like, I’m gonna stay with them until they’re in the ground, whatever that looks like. 

Diane Hullet: I’m gonna participate in this and I’ll be supported in my participation. Yeah. 

Sarah Kerr: And then to your point, when it happens to somebody else. It’s okay if you don’t know what to say, right? It’s you just, you just show up.

You can show up and not have anything to say as long as you show up. That’s really okay. Well, I love 

Diane Hullet: a quote from your website, which is, we are all going to die and to manage [00:25:00] that well, we need to talk about it. So I could not agree more, and I’m so delighted, Erin, to have this conversation and just, you know, open up a little, one more Best Life, best Death podcast where we can, you know, hear, hear some thoughts from people who are working in the field and.

I have the sneaking suspicion you’re writing, writing, writing right now. ’cause you said something about that. So I can’t wait to see where that goes. Tell us where we can find out more about you. 

Sarah Kerr: Yeah. Death wives.org is gonna have all of our evergreen kind of 1 0 1 and community level classes, so for people who just wanna dip their toe in, go there.

And then erin morelli.com is my personal website, and that’s where you can find out where I’m traveling and what I’m studying. And I’m also trying to work more with hospitals and work with, with birth doulas, as we mentioned, and, you know, these places where we intersect with death so that we can make changes on a, on a systemic level.

Diane Hullet: Fabulous. Well, thanks so much, Erin. As always, you can find out more about the work I do at Best Life. Best death.com. Thanks so much for [00:26:00] listening.