Enter Sarah Chavez. I’ve admired her work for a very long time, even before it aligned with my personal views and realizations. Sarah is the executive director of the “Order of the Good Death” and she’s the co-founder of the feminist site “Death & the Maiden” (which I urge everyone to check out). She’s also the host of a brand new podcast, Death in the Afternoon, which you can support here.

Her voice is an important one—it’s feminist, inclusive, and compassionate, and she uses her voice to “to examine the relationship between ritual, decolonization and death itself.” You can read all about her incredibly important work here (and, if you’ve read Caitlin Doughty’s From Here to Eternity, you’ll find Sarah as a subject in that work).

Below, I chatted with Sarah, who kindly and generously offered some ideas around grief and death positivity. I recommend this read for anyone ready to encounter that intersection, in addition to its alignment with feminism, gender, race, class, and ritual.

I hope that in your journey toward exploring death and grief you find some light and peace.

LISA MARIE BASILE (LMB): How does grief intersect with the death positive movement? How can the tenants of death positivity help us move through that pain?

SC: Megan Devine, a clinical mental health therapist and author, recently said that she thinks we are more afraid of grief than we are of death and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. To stand by and bear witness to incredible pain that we cannot fix, makes most of us unbearably uncomfortable. Particularly if that grief stems from an untimely or violent death, because then we cannot escape the harsh reality that yes, anyone at any age - your child, your best friend, your partner - could die at any time.

By having some level of comfort with discussing death and by learning how we can best support others in mourning, is a big part of being death positive.

What often happens is the people we depend on to be present to help us and support us through a death, (including medical professionals), are so uncomfortable themselves, or don’t know what to do or say, so they end up ghosting instead. This often makes the grieving process even more difficult, and can result in the grieving person feeling even more isolated or even suicidal. Death and grief is a painful but normal part of life; by recognizing that and treating it this way, it can go a long way toward helping our loved ones and ourselves navigate through all the pain.

What would our society look like if, instead of turning away, we could accompany and lovingly support one another through the experience of loss?

LMB: Women are such a key component of the death positive movement. It's amazing, because women give life and they also help move people through death. For instance, my mother worked in hospice for a long time—and she was always asked for by the dying to come sit with them as they passed. Why do you think it is important for women, specifically, to take part in the death positive movement? How can women specifically benefit? I know this is very open-ended, but I'd love to include your thoughts directly in addition to linking to the many wonderful articles that tackle it.

SC: Not long ago dying, corpse care, and mourning was largely considered feminine work, that took place within the home. However, when death and dying became profitable industries, (the medical and funeral industries), and deemed something only privileged, educated men could do, it marginalized women, severing them from roles they had previously played for centuries, and pushed them into the role of consumer.

In result, our interactions with, and relationship to our dead, became mediated and staged via a system that was contrived by men, and which still largely financially and socially supports men.

One has to ask, who is our current system serving? Surely not the people who are having to pay thousands of dollars for procedures and practices that distance us from one another, are often completely unnecessary and cause harm to the environment. Our deaths and the rituals surrounding death should be things that hold meaning and importance for us, things that support us, and we need to have the courage to ask ourselves and our loved ones, what those things are and why?

It is important to recognize that gender – as well as race, disability, sexuality and privilege – play a large role in determining our relationship to and experience of death and dying. For centuries our access to opportunities and spaces that have a direct impact on the quality of our lives and in turn, our relationship to and experience of death have been restricted. I believe we have the power to create healthy, meaningful, human-centered practices, not profit centered ones. I encourage others to reclaim these spaces and roles from the patriarchy, from centuries of colonization, and from capitalism.

I view my work as a death positive activist as a feminist act – I’m advocating for others to reclaim these spaces and roles from the patriarchy, from centuries of colonization, and from capitalism, so that they can have agency over their lives, their deaths, and the death care of their loved ones.

Also, I think it is feminist AF to take control over what happens to your body when you die. We’ve had our bodies subject to standards, rules, and laws created by men our entire lives and we often modify our bodies to appeal to the male gaze so we can be “valued” in the patriarchal society we exist in. Be body positive AND corpse positive! Learn about all the options for body disposition. Ensure that your death reflects the things that are important to you in life – you can be of service to others by donating your body to science. If climate change and environmental issues are important to you, then look into green or conservation burial and forgo harmful procedures like embalming. Have your ashes turned into a firework, a diamond or pressed into vinyl. Do whatever you want, but let that final act be one you decide – don’t give that control away. We should be empowered to make decisions regarding our bodies in life, and those rights should also extend to the body in death.

I find it interesting that many of the women entering the funeral business or leading the grassroots movement of death doulas or death midwives are women in their 50s and 60s.

We live in a society that bases a woman’s value on a youthful, “beautiful” body, as well as in the child bearing (and child raising) body, but devalue or have limited places in our culture for older women. I think many of these women are striving to reclaim and imbue both of these important spaces (aging and death) with the meaning and value they deserve.

There are many issues that are a big concern to me that demonstrate how feminism and the Death Positive intersect:

Gender-based violence is escalating and our trans sisters of and women of color are especially at risk. Last year the Center for Disease Control released it’s findings that domestic violence is a major cause of death for women. Calling it, “a serious, preventable, public-health problem that affects millions of Americans.” Women are out here being murdered simply for trying to exist and have agency over their own lives.

Who is Killing American Women? Their Husbands and Boyfriends

The Link Between Domestic Violence and Mass Shootings

The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.

We need better medical and mental health care and support for people experiencing miscarriage, abortion and infant/child loss. Most women grieve in silence because society often blames or shames women for these types of losses.

In the U.S. Black women are dying in childbirth at nearly four times the rate of white women. As for Black infants? They’re dying at about twice the rate of white infants. Racism is fueling these deaths. Not to mention the immense stresses on women raising Black and brown children. Knowing there’s a real chance that when your child leaves the house to go do something as ordinary as play the park they may never come home alive?

According to reproductive justice advocate Caroline Reilly, the greatest weapon in the anti-choice movement arsenal is our fear of death. By comparing abortion to murder and framing themselves as “pro-life,” they depict women as evil, immoral individuals rendering them incapable of making “good” choices.

In the days following Trump and Pence’s election, women have had to contend with continuous threats of having their access to reproductive health care stripped, being forced to have funerals for miscarried fetuses, or having a president who stated there should be some form of “punishment” for women who have abortions. This issue has become even more urgent with the possible Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, who could jeopardize our reproductive rights.

LMB: For people who are new to the death positive movement or haven't heard of it, but are deeply struggling with grief, fear of death and obsessive thoughts of the necro, what would you say?

SC: Your relationship with death and your own mortality is like any other relationship – it needs work, reflection, and self-evaluation. Death is so hard, and for as much potential for meaning and beauty as there is to be found in aspects of it, there are equally horrible things to grapple with as well.

My colleague, Caitlin Doughty, host of Ask A Mortician, suggests something that I found to be the most simple and helpful; in lieu of getting overwhelmed by the idea of death, examine what your specific fears are and work towards minimizing that fear through actions.