A new calling as a DeathCare worker
Photography by Dana Brushette, Artwork by Sapphira
Welcome here to GriefStruck, a publication where I explore the complexities of grief through the lens of taboo. This is a storytelling and knowledge-filled space where I bring together my newfound work as a DeathCare practitioner, weaving together lived experience, death education, art, architecture and soulful inquiry to reimagine how we understand loss, remembrance, and transformation.
I invite you to step inside a wonderfully raw and deeply emotional space where storytelling dares to enter the taboo. Here, grief meets awe, and the soul’s darkest landscapes are gently transmuted into places of beauty, meaning, and transformation.
Through honest reflection and radical tenderness, GriefStruck explores death, loss, love, neurodivergence, disability, and the extraordinary alchemy that can emerge when we dare to face what is most often left unspoken—including mental illness, trauma, addiction, abuse, gender-based violence, domestic violence, sexuality, abortion, spiritual crisis, and existential dread.
Rather than turning away from these difficult realities, in GriefStruck I ask what becomes possible when we meet them with curiosity, creativity, and compassion.
Explorations on how the deepest fractures of human experience can become sites of profound connection, healing, and meaning.
I am also looking forward to the important next step of deepening my knowledge and expanding my practice in DeathCare, grief, ritual, and remembrance beginning this September at Humber Polytechnic’s Funeral Education Services in the Funeral Directing Class 1 (Embalming) program.
Photography by Volker Lauterbach, Artwork by Sapphira
