Embracing Death and Transformation with Tash Ritz

Tash Ritz joins the conversation from Sydney, where she reflects on her global journey, growing up in New Zealand after being born in South Africa. With over 14 years of experience working in social enterprises, she has helped founders build businesses focused on social impact and environmental sustainability. Most recently, she authored the book Souling, a deeply personal exploration of self-discovery and spiritual growth.

She explains the concept of social enterprises in Australia, where for-profit businesses integrate meaningful impact beyond financial success. These companies work in areas such as waste reduction in fashion, food security, and supporting vulnerable populations, demonstrating that profit and purpose can coexist.

Tash shares her earliest memory of death, recalling the loss of a beloved family friend at the age of three. This experience, combined with being raised by a midwife mother, fostered an open dialogue about life and death in her household. As a Jewish woman, she has experienced the unique traditions surrounding death in her culture, where the deceased are cared for and buried swiftly. She contrasts this with the Māori practice of tangi, where open caskets and communal mourning create a powerful expression of grief.

 Tash discusses how her understanding of grief has evolved. She reflects on the Western tendency to suppress emotions, which she believes can manifest in the body as illness. She emphasizes the importance of movement, sound, and somatic practices like yoga to process grief, highlighting that healing is not just mental but also physical and energetic.

Tash explores the idea that death is not only about the end of life but also the shedding of old identities, beliefs, and experiences. She finds inspiration in Eastern traditions that embrace transformation and renewal. Acknowledging the value of both medical and holistic approaches to mental health, she advocates for a blended path to healing—one that includes therapy, medication when needed, and alternative practices to help emotions move through the body.

https://souling.au/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Tash: I also look at death as it's not only about the death of a person, it can be the death of parts of yourself, and an ego death, or this sort of cycle of death, birth, and renewal, and that can be like a peeling of layers of yourself as you learn who you are, and You learn about your spirituality and you learn what is right for you and what isn't.

[00:00:20] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects.

[00:00:40] I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, I talk with Tash Ritz, who shares her insightful perspectives on grief and death. offering a deep reflection on Western culture's approach to both. We talk about how emotions when suppressed can manifest in the body as illness and the importance of somatic practices like yoga, movement, and sound to release these emotions.

[00:01:08] Tash and I talk about the contrast between Eastern and Western views of death, noting how Western culture often links death with shame, especially in the case of untimely or tragic deaths. Tash suggests we rethink our traditions. Advocating for a more positive life affirming approach to death, including using practices like sound healing and even envisioning our bodies feeding nature.

[00:01:32] This episode is a powerful exploration of grief, healing and the transformative potential of death. Welcome Tash to the podcast. Thank you so much. so much for coming on. I know we've been trying to have this happen, but you are in a very different time zone than I am. It's 4 p. m. for me and it's 6 a. m. for you.

[00:01:51] So thank you for getting up so early in the morning to talk to me. Thank you so much for having me, Jill. It's great to chat. Why don't you tell us where you are now, where you're 

[00:01:58] Tash: from, whatever you want to share about who you are. I'm in Sydney at the moment, as you can see, it's still dark outside, but the sun will come up as we chat.

[00:02:07] So it'll be quite beautiful actually. I was born in South Africa. I grew up in New Zealand. I have lived all over the world. I've traveled all over the world for the last 14 years or so. I've been working for social enterprise businesses, helping founders. Who work on social impact or environmental sustainability with the business lens bring their businesses to light.

[00:02:29] More recently, I authored a book called Souling and that came out in March and that's been sort of a real long journey of experiencing my soul and who I am and sharing some of those ideas with the world. Oh, that's 

[00:02:44] Jill: wonderful. And so a social enterprise, I believe I know what that is, where it's like a nonprofit that has for profit to help fund it.

[00:02:54] At least that's my understanding. But what exactly does that mean? Enterprises can be 

[00:02:59] Tash: set up in multiple ways. But in Australia, the sort of setup of it is actually a for profit organization that focuses on having an impact and a purpose more meaningful than. Profit itself, it might be that the business is looking to reduce waste in the fashion industry, or it might be the business is focusing on focusing on food systems and how to support people experiencing homelessness, or it might be a business that's looking to support.

[00:03:30] Women going into homelessness or period poverty. So it could be a really broad range of things. It's a business like in America, I suppose it would be like an LLC, but it's got a focus on profit as well as purpose. They sort of go hand in hand and one can't live without the other. 

[00:03:47] Jill: Oh, yeah. So that's pretty similar.

[00:03:49] Cause I worked for a. Nonprofit, but we ended up being a social enterprise because we have businesses that bring income in and we do job training and have a soup kitchen. So we give back to the community, but also that costs a lot of money. And so we kind of bring in money to spend the money and it's a whole big circle.

[00:04:10] We also get private funding. There's no government funding, but we get a lot of private funders. So yeah, I'm pretty passionate about that kind of work as well, which is cool. I didn't know you did that. And when you were growing up, what was your experiences with death and dying? It sounds like you had a varied background as far as where you lived.

[00:04:29] So culturally and within your own family, did you talk about death and dying? How did you deal with death and dying when you were coming up in the world? 

[00:04:38] Tash: Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it, to think about. My first experience of death was when I was about three and I was In New Zealand and we had a long distance family friend, I think he was actually a cousin of my mom's and he was such a wonderful man and for whatever reason him and I got on really well.

[00:05:01] I remember him really clearly because he was quite a character. He smoked from a pipe, had really cool gray hair and wore funky little outfits and, and him and I just clicked and. Anyway, he, he unfortunately died by, by suicide, but he, him and I just got on so well. And I remember writing a song for him as a three year old sitting with this guitar, not knowing how to play guitar, but singing to him and feeling unsure of what that actually meant and where he went.

[00:05:32] I remember asking my mom, where did David go? We had those kinds of conversations. On the other side, it's interesting because my mom's a midwife. For my whole life, she's brought life into the world and been very much at the coalface of that experience where the mother and the baby are these two lives she's had to look after.

[00:05:51] As a child, I grew up in a home where we talked a lot about life. We talked a lot about sex, like how babies happen. And we were very open about that because we were open about life. We were also open about, well, we all. And then I guess, you know, more culturally, my experiences have been quite varied also because my family is Jewish.

[00:06:14] When we have people in the family die, the Jewish sort of traditions have what's called a Hebra Hadisha come and they look after the bodies as they passed away. They bathe them, you know, clothes them and prepare them for burial as soon as possible. Often death in Western culture, the funeral might be seven days after or longer.

[00:06:38] In the Jewish religion or tradition, it's pretty much the next day or within 48 hours. So that's an interesting experience. And then in New Zealand, it's really fascinating. The Māori culture, the indigenous culture of New Zealand have what they call a tangi. That is a funeral, but essentially it's a really beautiful practice of having an open casket where people can come and view the body.

[00:07:04] And that is a very healing experience, I think. And also what happens is the women in a Māori funeral will have this. It's quite intentional cry together that is a wail and there's a really specific tonality to it. And it's a, it's a deep mourning of the loss of a person. It's so expressive. When I've compared a Māori funeral to more white or European type funeral, people are sort of in a more white context of trying to withhold their emotions, they're withholding Tears and the grief and trying to stay strong, quote unquote, whereas in a Māori funeral, the emotion is part of the expression of the loss that, that everyone's having.

[00:07:58] And the loudness of that wail is so powerful and so beautiful and haunting. My experiences of death have been really varied. Now that I've faced a lot of it, I've had five friends. At quite young ages pass away. The process of grief has changed for me over time and it seems to be different for different people or different experiences as well.

[00:08:22] Jill: Yeah, it's definitely different for different people and I'm finding, it's so interesting how many cultures have this whay kind of ritual or whatever you wanna call it. That I don't think was passed from these different cultures, they do it in Ireland, I talked to somebody else who had family, I believe it was Kenya, but then New Zealand, I don't think they're passing it to each other, it just seems like it's a natural desire to express our grief in this way.

[00:08:55] I actually even talked to somebody once that it was not a part of her culture. She said it came out of her unexpectedly after her sister and then her mother died. And she was like, the noise that came out of me, it was like an animal and she didn't know where it came from. It just kind of came out. So there's something in us.

[00:09:12] It seems naturally as humans that wants to express our grief in this type of way. And I love that in some cultures, people that intentionally start it so that then the people around them that maybe are feeling it, but are a little bit hesitant, they're maybe not as willing to just begin it. Then we'll feel more encouraged to do it as well.

[00:09:35] And so that's pretty neat. I'm finding, I hear it more and more now and I'm like, wow, so there's something in us that wants to do this. I think it's beautiful. Honestly, you know, the culture that I was raised in is very much more reserved. You hold it all in, even crying a little bit is. shameful. And so the idea of wailing, but of course, if God forbid, if anything was to happen, especially to one of my children, I mean, my whole neighborhood's going to know because there's no way, especially at the point that I'm at now, there's no way I'm holding that grief in.

[00:10:05] It's coming out however it wants to come out. But hopefully I'm not going to ever have to find that out. Right? Fingers crossed. I hope 

[00:10:10] Tash: not. Yeah, no, that's so true. And I think it's really interesting because In our Western culture, we're taught to be much more reserved and withhold a lot of that stuff. My view, and it's not just my view, there's many people that feel the same way, is that we then hold those emotions in the body and it can fester into disease.

[00:10:35] Right. Or confessor into physical manifestations of the emotion we haven't let go, or we haven't moved through the body because emotion is just energy in motion. So it's, if you don't allow the emotion to express itself and you withhold it, then, you know, you're spiritually withholding it, but you're energetically withholding it and physically, because in our physical body.

[00:10:59] You know, we feel emotions in different parts. You may feel some emotion in the heart, some in the throat, like anxiety sits in the throat. The gut is a huge emotional center. It's also an intuitive center. So you have all these parts of the body that if we're withholding that grief is probably. Really not great in the long run.

[00:11:20] And that's why practices like yoga, movement and sound and expression, these things are all so powerful in the process of healing and grief. And, and they're honestly, you know, when I've talked about death and I wrote about death in my book. But I, I also kind of have liked to look at death as it's not only about the death of the person.

[00:11:41] It can be the death of parts of yourself and an ego death, or it can be the sort of cycle of death, birth and renewal. And that can be like a peeling of layers of yourself as you learn who you are, and you learn about your spirituality and you learn what is right for you and what isn't, you know, in the parts of where you're having death of yourself.

[00:12:05] That can be really painful and really hard to let go of. And there's so many practices that we can access and do that probably more Eastern cultures have done that are really healing, you know, like even soundbathing or like tantric energy systems and things like that are fascinating and. Really powerful in that process of moving grease through the body, because I think also, you know, nowadays it's a really positive thing.

[00:12:32] We've been talking more about mental health and that's really great. And we've been talking more about seeing therapists and we talk about cognitive behavioral therapy quite a lot. And, you know, these. Modalities, and, and they're really helpful, but there's also sometimes not, like, sometimes talking doesn't help someone, but you have to find other ways to move those emotions through the body.

[00:12:55] I think grief is a really interesting part of the death experience over 

[00:12:59] Jill: it. Yeah, because we do need to move the energy through our body and. We're not taught about our emotions in general. We don't often deal with any of our emotions well, positive and negative, right? It's just kind of not, you know, I think even like of children, right?

[00:13:17] When children get really happy and they're really excited and they're loud, people are always like, Oh, quiet them down, quiet them down. Like we shut it down. We do that with the positive and the negative. So when it comes to grief, especially. We really don't know how to express it. Yes, moving the body, vocalizing, what a lot of people would consider alternative methods, as well as other things.

[00:13:39] You know, I've seen people that have had traumatic losses and need some antidepressants. You need some medication to get through it. But there's also other things that you can do as well in combination. Unfortunately, a lot of times people just get on medications and it's kind of like, okay, there's the thing.

[00:13:56] And then it's like, well, is there a plan to work through this to get people off of them? Or is it just, all right, now you need to take this for the rest of your life? That's a huge topic. That can go all over the place. 

[00:14:07] Tash: It is a huge topic, right? And I agree, like, all of the different access points are really helpful depending on a person's experience and how they're responding to something.

[00:14:19] I've taken anxiety medication, so I definitely am an advocate for the mix of all the things. Having the traditional methods and medical support and advice and then Having some more alternative or holistic or somatic approaches. And I think the whole plethora of gateways or portals into ourselves are really important.

[00:14:39] One interesting thing to consider with any kind of drug is that when it comes to emotions, usually the drug is dulling those emotions because you're struggling to manage it yourself, or you're struggling to face it, having the knowledge. Being armed with that knowledge of like, what does this particular drug do and what does that mean for my senses?

[00:15:01] What does it mean for my emotions? Just at least so that you have some kind of acknowledgement of what's going on physiologically, so that you can make sure that the process that you're going through for your healing is you have some kind of awareness and intention around it. And it can be really hard, you know, like when someone's.

[00:15:21] Passed away quite tragically or quite suddenly. You are in a world of like, what the fuck is going on? And you can't see anything and your blinkers are on and you can't even breathe. So that can be really challenging. But as you come up and surface over weeks or months or even years, sometimes it can be good to try to be a bit intentional about.

[00:15:39] everything that you're doing and all avenues you can take. Having 

[00:15:42] Jill: intention behind everything that we do is important. If we don't have an intention in what we're doing, then why are we doing it? Sometimes it's just because we're going through the motions because that's what we were told to do. I don't think that's a good way to live life.

[00:15:55] You get to the end of life and then you go, why did I just waste my entire life by doing things I thought I had to do versus doing the things that brought me joy? Not everything's going to bring you joy, but there's going to be things that. You're going to do that can be difficult and hard, but the intention behind it gives it more meaning.

[00:16:13] I don't know. God, what do I know? Sometimes I'm just faking it till I make it through my life, right? Exactly. Just doing the best I 

[00:16:20] Tash: can. One thing I think. Is really interesting is that, you know, Western culture, we actually unintentionally link death and shame together. It's always such a shame when people die in our culture.

[00:16:37] And particularly when people die young or by suicide or in some kind of tragic accident. And we link that and people say things like, Oh, gone too soon. They didn't get. To live their full life, which actually the underpinning emotion of that is shame, right? Because it's like saying that the life wasn't full lived or that the life wasn't quite enough.

[00:17:03] You know, but when I've got to thinking, I'm like, well, if a person does die before we believe as the living humans, they should have, maybe that was just their time and maybe that was their life full lived. You know, and it's really hard to know. And as humans, we want to make meaning. That's why religion exists, spirituality and all of these things.

[00:17:26] We really want to make meaning and we're conscious. And so we need that in order to, I guess, have any semblance of sanity. Otherwise you would all be just like smoking weed and napping all day because it would be difficult. But I do think that we have this really bizarre and kind of unhealthy view that death is bad.

[00:17:48] It, it's such a shame when someone dies and don't get me wrong, it's deeply sad for the people that are left behind and the mourning and the grief that comes with that is, is hard, but it's also completely inevitable from the minute we're born. That's the only sure thing we know is that we'll die. So why does it have to be such a shame?

[00:18:11] In that same vein, it's really interesting to consider some Asian cultures and how they view death. A lot of time in our culture, we wear black. We go to a funeral, we wear black, we're mourning, it's dark, it's sad. Everyone's sort of trying to cover their faces to not show their tears. But in some Asian cultures.

[00:18:29] They actually wear white to funerals. It signifies death, birth, renewal, reincarnation, and the cycle of life, and the celebration of life. When I was writing, I was questioning that process that we take of such a sad, mourning, shameful experience when it comes to funerals, and not all funerals, of course, but, but many.

[00:18:53] And I just wondered if Maybe we could change it up a little. When I die, I want people to play my favorite songs, eat my favorite food, and maybe travel to countries I love, and celebrate the life I did have, instead of focusing on, well, now that life is over. I don't 

[00:19:10] Jill: know. Yeah. I mean, there's more and more people that are trying to do more of a celebration of life, and there is so much shame tied with death.

[00:19:20] It's interesting because for some reason using the word, it's a shame. I never really put those two things together where I'm like, Oh, it actually has the word right in it. Like it's a shame, but it's difficult because I think there's a few things that go on. It's partially that we're a death denying culture.

[00:19:39] So death at any age is viewed as a failure. Now, of course, if a child dies, even somebody that's maybe in their 30s, 40s, even 50s, there is going to be some of it where it's like, oh, it's a shame they died too young. They died before they were able to accomplish everything they wanted to experience. But you'll even talk to people that, you know, somebody died in their 90s and they're like, I can't believe they died.

[00:20:02] I'm like, really? Because what do you think they were going to do? They're not going to live forever. And I think some of that is just that denial of death and that view is that death is this failure. I like to think that no matter what age I die, people will celebrate my life. At that point, I'm already dead.

[00:20:21] We can't change that, right? We can't go back and be like, we'll just move back time and have it not happen. So why not celebrate the life that I have? But it's hard because people will always feel sad. If you love somebody and they're now gone, you're going to feel sad. So it seems difficult for people to think, well, I can't celebrate when I'm so sad, but you can do both, right?

[00:20:46] I really do feel that we can have both experiences at the same time. There can be joy. There can be sadness. I mean, like other experiences in life, when babies are born, when people get married, right? When you go through big life changing events. There's some sadness in what is now gone, right? Those big life changing events, parts of your life are changed forever and those are gone.

[00:21:08] While there's also the joy and the excitement. There's a lot of times in life when we have both. With death it is. It's really difficult, but the shame in showing the emotions is hard to get people to break. The other problem too, is that people don't want to talk about it. How do we change things if we're not willing to get uncomfortable and have the conversations and talk about why it's uncomfortable for us?

[00:21:37] It's going to be uncomfortable for different reasons for people. For a lot of us, it's uncomfortable because we've done everything we can to push it away and not think about it. But that doesn't mean it's not going to come for us one day. And then when a comfort like comes, it feels like you're getting run over by a train because you've completely tried to avoid it your entire life.

[00:21:55] And you can't avoid it for your entire life unless you die before everybody else that you know and love, which is unlikely. It's going to come for you eventually. And then you have to deal with it. And you're so unprepared because you avoided it your entire life. And that's a shame. There's the word again.

[00:22:10] That's the real shame, all right? That's the thing there. 

[00:22:13] Tash: That's it. And it goes back to an earlier point you made around, we're just so disconnected from our emotions. There's some amazing research that Brene Brown did around the 87 human emotions that we have. Often these emotions can be mixed together and happening all at once.

[00:22:31] Like you described that sort of joy and sadness and that's cognitive dissonance. You can have these two experiences at the same time and they're both true. And that's so hard for humans. Cause our brains are just. Really hard to compute. So I think that's maybe where it starts. Just permission to access our emotions, permission to reframe how we think about emotions.

[00:22:53] We categorize into good and bad or positive and negative, but really they're just human emotions. They're just an experience rather than. Thinking sadness is bad. It's just that sadness is an experience we can have. We can let it wash over and go through the emotion like a tunnel, you know, like a beginning, middle, and an end, because it always does have an end.

[00:23:15] It doesn't feel like it at the time, particularly when you're grieving. It really does. End at some point, and, and then you move through and you can have a new emotion. That's the beauty of being human, right? We have so many of these emotions. When we think back to more primitive times, the reason that we have emotions and the reason that we have fear is literally for survival.

[00:23:39] To not access those things means that we're actually not. In a thriving kind of access of all of the parts of our bodies to reject our intuition when you have hair stand up on the back of your neck or you have a gut feel or you have words appear in your mind that are jarring and like, what the hell that is all intuition.

[00:24:02] And that's. Instinct and emotion and so in ignoring all of that or pushing it down or logicizing that because of the systems we live within, we actually are abandoning ourselves. My view is that we have an opportunity to always step into ourselves to give ourselves permission to ask ourselves what we actually need in any moment, particularly for women.

[00:24:29] It's thinking about yourself. First, even if you have children, because how could you be there for your children if you're not even there for yourself? In all of this thinking, there is polarity. There's always an opposite end to every kind of human experience. We can only know the depths of love and the deliciousness of fullness of love when we know grief, because that's the polarity of love.

[00:24:53] You can't really know it truly in wholeness. If you don't have the experience of some kind of grief, it doesn't have to be grief of a death. It can be grief of a loss, loss of yourself, loss of a relationship. You have to be able to grapple with both of those things on both of those sides to become more aware of the wholeness of that experience.

[00:25:15] So that's an interesting thought, I suppose. And one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking was we also have really interesting traditions of burial and cremation. More recently, I've seen some interesting technology about how you can use your body to grow trees and things like that. And I think that's a really interesting thing for us to consider is like, okay, we're decimating the planet, you know, so could we use our bodies?

[00:25:44] To replant and reforest and give back the nutrients that comes from any death of any animal really into the soil can create a lot of nutrients for a forest. And so instead of having cemeteries where there's stone and, you know, I have a weird tradition as a kid that when we'd go past a cemetery, you had to hold your breath.

[00:26:05] I don't know why we did that. But we did, you know, and I still do it. I'm like a 33 year old woman and I still do it. It's weird. So I don't know. I think there's maybe different ways for us to be considering like burial too. Yeah, 

[00:26:18] Jill: for sure. I heard a podcast once and a shaman from I think Australia somewhere was talking about this idea that part of the problems that we're having with the environment is because we stopped returning our bodies to the earth.

[00:26:34] That we are taking so much and not returning it. And I was like, that is a fascinating thought. Because you're right, in all cultures around the world, they've been doing that for the last couple hundred years at least, where we're not putting bodies back into the earth to replenish the earth. And I was like, I thought that was interesting.

[00:26:59] And now with The body composting or human composting in the United States, I know there's a couple different places. Part of what they do is the family can get back some of the compost and then the rest of it, if the family doesn't want all of it, they will spread it into forest and they're starting to see this regeneration of the plants in these forests from this human compost that's being spread out.

[00:27:26] When I went to a green burial. In, uh, South Jersey, not too far from where I live, the paths were all moss, this bright green moss. It was beautiful. And my husband was like, do you think they planted that on purpose? I was like, moss is not the kind of thing you plant on purpose. It does not grow where you want it to grow.

[00:27:47] It grows where it wants to grow. And it looked beautiful. Like it was done on purpose and I don't think it was I think it was because lining this path was bodies like all down the path and so it obviously was doing something to that area to re Grow what we're losing and Yes, I think we need to reconsider the way that we are returning our bodies and the nutrients It's back to the earth because we are making a hot mess out of this planet and that's one of the things that maybe we could do to help.

[00:28:23] I don't know. I'm not a scientist. 

[00:28:25] Tash: I think it's so interesting, right? Because when you think about like, this is getting real funky, but when you think about mycelia, the mushroom network and that system that sits underneath the forest, that is a pretty magical system that feeds the least likely to get there.

[00:28:43] Imagine if we gave our bodies into a mycelium system, right? The mycelium would naturally, like the network that it is, like our brains in a way, it would feed an entire forest. With this one body, I just think, God, that's beautiful. That is quite magical. And that really is the circle of life rather than being put in some fucking box.

[00:29:09] I just don't really know if that's what I want. Claustrophobia is real. Even when I'm dead, I kind of want to meet a forest or the ocean. I think our traditions, I think we've got it wrong. We've really got it wrong, and that's okay. We're in a suppressive time, and we're coming out of it. More and more people are becoming aware.

[00:29:27] There's more and more people who want to change, who want to learn about themselves. I talk a lot about the systems that we're in, and I think With the rise of women finding a little more equity and a little more equality in the world, there comes other more positive feminine traits and energies like love and compassion and presence and life giving and all of these things that come with the feminine.

[00:29:52] I think there's a big rise of this happening. It's sort of slow, but it feels like a pendulum almost. And I think that's really positive. I think it's positive. for death, because we bring life into the world. And so us having some kind of input or say into how death could work, or how we accept it more into our societies and into our community is an interesting thing to consider.

[00:30:16] Jill: Yeah. And when people hear this idea of like the feminine kind of rising, There's going to be people that like they prickle because they're like, well, what's wrong with men? And I'm like, here's the deal, right? It's not even that women are better. It just means we're so out of balance right now in our culture, the masculine way of doing everything, the forcing the using aggression, all the different things that are so masculine, even in a lot of female bodied people.

[00:30:48] We tend to have too much masculine energy. It's really about bringing a balance back. Part of bringing that balance back is that women are going to need to have more say. We're going to need more power. It's proven that if women have money, we spend it in a way that it gets out into our communities. We don't hoard money.

[00:31:06] We don't have that same fear of like, but it's, it's that lack mentality of like, but I need to hold onto it super tight. Like, no. We spend it in ways that it gets out of the communities. We need more of that around the world. And yes, I think you're right that some of it too is that women's work tended to be in the birthing and the dying in cultures.

[00:31:30] Right, that we had very much this, like, women that would come in and they'd help you birth the babies, and then they also would be there helping souls move out. And we've, again, westernized death, which is very masculine, dominant, which is, again, controlling it, trying to stop it at all costs. It's this terrible thing when it happens, and it's like, no, I mean, yes, it can be tragic.

[00:31:52] It can be sad, but it's part of human existence. We will all die eventually. And you mentioned it earlier. There's going to be children that are going to die. There's always been children that died. If anything, we're doing better now than we used to. There's less children that die now than used to. And so it's just part of the cycle.

[00:32:11] And I think that's why cultures where you mention how, you know, in some of the Eastern cultures, they wear the white because they talk about the cycle of rebirth. I don't know for sure, but I would think that if you really believe in reincarnation, because I don't know what I believe. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, sure.

[00:32:26] Reincarnation sounds good. Maybe. I don't know. But if you really believed in reincarnation, their soul's gonna come back. Yes, it would be sad for the humans that lost a child, but the soul's gonna come back. Maybe it wasn't their time. Maybe the soul got here and was like, you know what, I did what I needed to do.

[00:32:43] Suffering is part of a human existence. If there really is karma and reincarnation and a soul's purpose, maybe a soul's purpose was to come into somebody's life and to leave when that person thought it was too early to teach them whatever lesson it was, right? I don't know. Again, it's just part of being a human is questioning it, hopefully questioning and thinking about it, not just getting set in our beliefs and being like, no, this is it, this is the only way.

[00:33:10] It's unfortunate, but we will All experience, some suffering. It really is just what we do with that suffering and how we react to the suffering. Again, you're still gonna feel sad, but it doesn't have to destroy us either if we don't allow it to. 

[00:33:27] Tash: Exactly. And you know what's so interesting when it comes to death as well, I've had friends who've had children die.

[00:33:33] That is one of the most painful things to ever experience. I've heard those parents say, I don't know how I'll ever recover from this. And then something new and joyous happens in their lives. And suddenly they feel happiness again. Really interesting two part thing. They feel joy, which is nice, but then they feel guilt for feeling joy.

[00:33:59] I think that last I've experienced. So there's a really interesting set of emotions at play when someone's going through something so difficult, allowing all of those things. And it's like you said, the ability to question, you know, what I've learned in, in academia is the ability to question, read and consume multiple and varied views, approaches, ways of thinking, philosophical systems, religious ideas.

[00:34:28] And. Whatever it is, it's just having the ability to expand our ways of thinking. And in the end of the day, as a human, you're going to mush the things together that work for you and leave behind the things that don't. That's kind of the point, like not getting so stuck or linear and a way of this is how it should be, or this is the only way that it can be done, like.

[00:34:53] You know, and I think we see that in our culture right now more broadly is like, it's, everything's so polarizing and everything is so, if you're not this side, then you're this side and that's not really true, right? Like it's true in the sense of. We're in a total social media warp where our attention is being dragged into these devices and we think we're connected but we're actually the most disconnected we've ever been because we're disconnected from ourselves, we're distracted from ourselves, it's just another thing to dull the emotional experience of humanity, there's this opportunity for us to open up All kinds of conversations and death is a really interesting one because it's one of the more difficult conversations to have around all the different ways that death could be experienced, all the different ways that the living go on to move after the person is gone, how that can look and how everybody does it and Why people do it in different ways and why cultures do it in different ways.

[00:35:59] And that's a beautiful approach, but I also think it can be applied to anything in life, you know, it can be applied to the family systems we look at. It can be applied to education system or health and, you know, health and wellness, just this openness instead of a polarization would be a more interesting place.

[00:36:20] I was writing the other day thinking, when did we get to a time where we can't have. Open discourse and disagreement without it becoming political and aggressive. It shouldn't be that. It should be that, Oh, wow, it's a different shoe and it fits that person. It's an interesting view. It's all right. If people have different opinions, that's okay.

[00:36:39] I would love to see us evolve as a species to get past this kind of. weird polarization that we're in. 

[00:36:47] Jill: I would love it too. Because that scares me, right? It's not even that other people's points of view and beliefs scare me. It's this polarization and the fact that people are so like, again, you're one side or you're the other side.

[00:37:03] It doesn't feel healthy. It doesn't feel good. I don't think we've ever done a great job communicating. Honestly, like humans in general. We're not great at communicating with each other. But if we could learn to have a conversation with somebody and really listen to what they're saying without just listening to have a response back.

[00:37:23] So often we're listening and already in our head, we're thinking, Oh, well, I'm going to say this because I need to prove them wrong. Even though we're maybe not consciously doing it, that's kind of what's happening. If we could listen to them to try to understand where they're coming from. We could still respond with what we believe to be true, but without the purpose of trying to convince them.

[00:37:43] It's hard because unless you're both in that space, I might be trying to listen and respond and then they're coming at me with, no, but you're wrong. Then it just gets me like angry. Right? And so they're putting that energy towards me and then they're more likely to get it back. And it just goes in a circle.

[00:38:00] Most of the time, we're not having those. Types of interactions face to face. It's behind the keyboards, right? When we can't see the person and we can't hear the tone of voice. That adds a whole dimension to it where it gets really ugly. For a while I was one of those people that some of the stuff that I would see in here to be like, you're wrong.

[00:38:20] Like straight up, you're wrong. That's not cool. You shouldn't be saying stuff like that. Now, if I see that, I just scroll right past it, or if I see too much of it from somebody, I block or delete them because it does nothing but agitate me. And I think in some cases, that is actually the purpose. They're not necessarily consciously doing it, but the purpose is to put that out there to agitate.

[00:38:45] And then it's bleeding into my life. It's bleeding into my interactions with my children when I'm on my device. And somebody says something and I feel that energy in my body, then my kids come up and they're like, Mom, I need this thing. And then I'm like, Oh my gosh, would you stop? But it's not them. That energy's in me and it's going to come out.

[00:39:03] So yeah, the whole thing. We got a ways to go, but hopefully we're going 

[00:39:07] Tash: to get better. Totally. And look, I, I guess this is part of the experience we're in. I also believe that we're really lucky to live in the time that we live in. I feel really grateful for the time that we live in. There's just always an opportunity for learning.

[00:39:20] There's always an opportunity for new ideas and Growth and listening and all of those things and I guess this hunger for new knowledge would be so nice if we put all of that to good use rather than stood arguing from our soapboxes that often doesn't seem to do very much. As a recovering activist, I think it can be really 

[00:39:42] Jill: challenging.

[00:39:43] It can be challenging and you're right that there's a lot of really great things. We're talking to each other. Because of social media, because of technology, I'm seeing the sun come up behind you. I'm like, we got to be getting close to time because now it's sunny and I'm watching it get darker on my end.

[00:39:59] That's amazing, right? We wouldn't have been able to do that 50, even 20 years ago. So there is a lot of really good things. It's like we said earlier, we could have both things. It could be really terrible in some ways, and also really amazing in other ways. And The important part is finding ourselves not attaching to one or the other and trying to find the balance of being like, I'm going to delete and block people, but then I'm also going to use it to connect with people that I'm like, I want to talk to you on my podcast, even though you live literally around the world from me.

[00:40:30] And that's kind of cool. 

[00:40:31] Tash: Yeah, it is. It is really cool. 

[00:40:33] Jill: It is nice. 

[00:40:34] Tash: Thank you. This has been such an awesome and interesting conversation and gone in so many varied ways. I've never sat and talked about death for so long, actually. I think it's really nice. 

[00:40:45] Jill: I love it. I love 

[00:40:46] Tash: talking about 

[00:40:47] Jill: that. I would hope so, considering I have a whole podcast where I do that.

[00:40:50] So why don't you just tell us, you mentioned a book, what's the book called, where can people find it, and even if somebody wants to reach you, what's the best way to do that? 

[00:40:59] Tash: You can find my book on my website, which is souling. au. The book is called Souling, and it's essentially a verb about the experience of.

[00:41:10] Or the action of experiencing your soul, you can find it on my website, or you can find me on social media at souling. au on any social channel, I would love for you to read my book, you can email me at my at souling. au as well, which is just NY. So it would be great to connect with anyone interested in any kind of conversation or work around the experience of the self and learning about who we are.

[00:41:35] I always love chatting about it. 

[00:41:36] Jill: Awesome. And I'll put links to all of that in the show notes so people can find you really easily. Thank you for getting up so early in the morning to talk to me. This was a great conversation and I appreciate you taking your time to talk to me about death. For about an hour.

[00:41:53] Tash: Thank you, Jill. Thanks for talking about death. 'cause you're right, people don't, and I think it's really important. So thank you so much. 

[00:42:00] Jill: In my next episode of Seeing Death, clearly Annie Sklaver Ornstein opens up about her journey of grief following the death of her brother Ben in Afghanistan. Fifth.

[00:42:12] Feeling unsupported as a grieving sibling, she wrote Always a Sibling, The Forgotten Mourner's Guide to Grief, a book dedicated to the unique pain of losing a sibling. Annie shares how most grief resources focus on parents, spouses, or children, leaving siblings to navigate their grief alone. She discusses the emotional strain of trying to support her devastated parents while mourning her brother.

[00:42:37] Through research and interviews, Annie discovered that many surviving siblings feel invisible in the grieving process, often bottling up their emotions to protect their parents. This interview and her book offer a much needed resource, validating the grief of siblings and reminding listeners that their loss is Significant, regardless of the nature of their relationship with the sibling.

[00:42:59] If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others.

[00:43:15] The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free. Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can.

[00:43:32] You can find a link in the show notes. To subscribe to the paid monthly subscription as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of seeing death clearly.