“I was definitely very morbidly curious… I played funeral home with my cousins.”
As a licensed funeral director and sacred grief practitioner, Joél Simone Anthony helps guide individuals and organizations through difficult conversations about death, dying, end of life, funeral and burial planning. Her professional approach is rooted in ancient and ancestral wisdom passed down generation to generation.
“My life and my work is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy I also believe it is a part of ancestral legacy, as well as ancestral fulfillment of destiny.”
Ms. Anthony considers it her life’s work to educate everyone, regardless of their faith, race, age, or status, that death, dying, and grief are a sacred and transformative part of our journeys as human beings. She talked with WPSU’s Lindsey Whissel Fenton about her lifelong fascination with death and dying and about the challenges and rewards of a career in the funeral industry.
“We’re on call 24/7 or we’re missing milestone events with our family or holidays, with our families or becoming isolated internally…The demands on our physical bodies are astronomical. Caskets aren’t light. Deceased individuals aren’t light. Flowers weigh a lot. So, there’s so many things there’s so many factors that I think contribute to burnout…We’re taking on everyone else’s everything, and then we start to self medicate or participate in self harming behavior and you get into this spiral.”
Ms. Anthony notes the particular challenges death care professionals have faced as a result of the pandemic.
“It’s unnatural to walk into a room and see bodies literally stacked from the floor to the ceiling [from COVID].”
She notes that the pandemic has served as a catalyst for change.
“I think, as an industry, COVID woke us up to a lot of things and now funeral homes corporations and schools are incorporating not necessarily education about mental health.”
Listen to the full interview here.
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