“I’m so sorry”, people often say to us. “I’m not very good at funerals.”
“You’re not supposed to be,” we tell them. “It’s a funeral.”
From We all know how this ends.
Hot on the heels of their new book We All Know How this Ends, we’re delighted to welcome end-of-life doula Anna Lyons and progressive funeral director Louise Winter (AKA Life.Death.Whatever) to teach us how and why we all need to think about death in a radically different way.
When someone dies, our life changes. The enormity of the change can be huge, in many ways beyond the physical loss of the person. Funerals can serve as an acknowledgement of that enormous change and can help us to adjust to our new reality.
It’s not about perfection, it’s about doing something that honours the person who has died while also allowing the living to do what they need to do. A good funeral can be a profound and transformational experience.
Anna Lyons is an end-of-life doula and Louise Winter is a progressive funeral director. Together they are the team behind Life. Death. Whatever. Their joint mission is to redesign the dialogue around death and dying, and as a result, shift people’s ideas of life, living, illness, funerals and grief. Ultimately, they believe this will provide you with a more empowered approach to whatever you’re going through. They believe that death is a normal part of life and dying is part of living. Acknowledging and accepting that one day we will die is fundamental to living a full life.
