Annalouiza  
Today we are excited to spend time with Brie  Smith. Brie  is the longest standing employee at Return Home, a leader in the new but old practice of teramation or body composting. She first served as director of services, then as COO, and now she is responsible for overseeing Return Home's community outreach initiatives, including both their in-person and their online efforts.

She's also the general manager of Return Home's newest venture, TerraPets. With TerraPets, she works to offer teramation to families who have lost their beloved pets. Finally, Brie  is the voice of Return Home, delivering our message of sustainable death care to both traditional media and social media alike. Brie  has been a licensed funeral director and embalmer in Washington state since 2014.

After graduating with honors from Mesa Community College Mortuary Science Program, she uprooted and made a pointed move to surround herself with the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, she wanted to be near her family and the majestic resident orca pods and marine life.

Wakil  
After beginning her work in the funeral industry in 2011, doing death calls, she quickly found a passion for helping people during one of the most challenging times of their lives. With an immediate knack for gentle guidance and a complete lack of judgment, Brie found herself feeling deep compassion for every single decedent and each one of their family members. Because of this sincerity, she has been able to continue providing excellent support to each family that she encounters, whether working with humans or pets. While Brie  originally joined in the Return Home team to challenge her professional aptitude, she quickly found herself passionate about the science behind the natural breakdown of the body. Always up for a new adventure, Brie  has been given the opportunity to dive deep into the process of composting.

She takes joy in learning about the intricacies that make each teramation successful. Her passion to deliver an industry-leading standard of care, combined with her vigor to learn and adapt to difficult situations, has made her a skilled executive of their team. So glad to have you, Brie . And boy, I resonate with all those things, wanting to be near the orcas and...

Annalouiza  
Yes.

Annalouiza  Ha ha ha.

Brienna Smith  
It's magical up here. The second that I got the opportunity, I was like, that's where I want to be. It's second to none as far as beauty, I think.

Wakil  
Yeah, exactly. Well, Annalouiza lives in Colorado, which is pretty awesome too. Yeah, it is, it is.

Brienna Smith  
It's up there. Yeah.

Annalouiza  Oh, but living there orca. That's pretty amazing. But welcome, Brie.

Brienna Smith  
Thank you, thank you. It's such an honor for me to be here chatting with the two of you. I am grateful for the opportunity to talk a little bit about something different today.

Wakil  
Mm -hmm, great to have you.

Annalouiza  
Yes. And with that, let's get us going on this conversation. Our first question we offer all of our guests is how does death impact the story of your life and your journey here?

Brienna Smith  
Yeah, I mean, I can go pretty deep on this. Just this question alone. I was raised by a family who had ranch properties. So I was raised in Montana and in the summers I would go to brandings and I learned very young the cycle of life and death. And with that came law enforcement family as well. So.

I was exposed at a very young age also to kind of a different side of life that not everyone might be exposed to. While my dad was working nights, my mom was a cosmetologist and in the evenings she would go do hair and makeup at the local funeral home. And so when I was a very young girl, I would accompany her to do the hair and makeup. She loves this one story where we were sitting there one night and it was a mop or maybe a broom fell and she freaked out and had her moment of panic. And I was maybe six years old and I just sat on a stool. I just looked over at her. I said, mom, it's not like she's going to hurt you. And so since I was very young, I've just had a real comprehension of life and death and the cycle at hand. And as it were, as I aged, I found out I had a knack for what is called restorative art, which is when someone has undergone a tragic accident being able to bring them back to their likeness for their family to say goodbye. And so I got into the funeral industry and the profession because I liked putting people back together again. And that was what I felt really passionate about when I first started. With that comes a journey of now about 13 years in the death care industry. And what I've learned is that I can still put people together without the use of chemicals.

And so I still get to utilize my skills, but really what I'm doing now with Return Home is serving the grief journey in a way that I hadn't been able to do previously. If you're not familiar with the service, it's composting. It's a much slower moving service. It's very gentle and passive. And with that comes a different grief journey than maybe having a service after a week or getting your cremated remains back of your loved one after a week. So,

I've learned a lot through my journey of traditional death care all the way through to now what I'm doing, which might be considered progressive, I guess.

Wakil  
I love it. Yeah, that's so great. Yeah, tell us a little bit more about the current work that you're doing, if you would, your role and...

Annalouiza  
So cool.

Brienna Smith  
Yeah, yeah. So when I started at Return Home, I was our first director of services. So I was the licensed funeral director and embalmer on staff. I met with the families who came into our care in the very beginning. There was a lot of navigating, you know, what you're used to and what your day-to-day looks like are completely different because you're not always actively with the person, you know, with disposition, usually the funeral director is kind of present the whole way through. And in this case, I would lay people to rest in their vessel and then I was hands off. So it gave me an opportunity to really focus on what it meant for the families to be able to be involved and really step into our namesake. So now after we've been open for about three years in June, we do home services, we encourage participation by the family.

Most funeral homes will not let you in their prep room. We opened up our prep room to the public for families to bathe their loved ones with us. And what we're seeing is a complete, like I said previously, transformation of what the relationship with death looks like. And really giving people back the power and putting the hands that love you in life, giving them the opportunity to continue loving you in death.

Wakil  
Beautiful.

Annalouiza  
That's so lovely.

Wakil  
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, what a wonderful opportunity. Thank you for doing that work. Yeah, we really appreciate that. We talk a lot about the process of death and dying and all that's here. And so there's all these places where people don't talk about these things and where they need. We were just talking today about what kind of ways we can be there for them. And so thank you so much for that great work.

Annalouiza  
Yes. And also thinking about where we assume the invitation is or won't be, right? Like knowing that your funeral home actually encourages and opens their doors for body care at the end is so unlike any other service that I hear about. And that's what we need to be doing. We need to actually be touching and just cleaning that body and saying goodbye. It's such a it's a wonderful start to that grief journey.

Brienna Smith  
Well, you mentioned sacred space earlier. And, you know, when I think about death, I come from a couple different stocks, but Armenian specifically is a great deal of my family and they handle things in a very different way. They're very tangible with their death. And if you think about it, you know, maybe a couple hundred years ago, even in the U S but, but all over the world, you know, for millennia, we've handled our own people for the most part. You know, if someone who passes away, you clear the dining room table and you lay them out and you anoint their head and you pray and you have these sacred moments. And it's a complex, what the industry is in the United States and in some other developed countries, it's become an industry and where funeral professionals are not the only people capable of handling the dead, but we've done a really good job of pretending like we are.

I feel much more useful to a family when I give them and facilitate their needs. And then usually I'm kicked out of the room and they're practicing their own new rituals and rights. And that has been so sacred and transformative and beautiful and healing. Yeah, truly healing.

Annalouiza  
Yes. And it's also creating memories for them, right? It's a really beautiful memory that has been usurped by that complex that you talk about, that industry of funeral care. So that leads me to my next question, which is, what are the biggest challenges that you face in this profession, in this journey?

Brienna Smith  
Less so now, you know, I, there was a couple of challenges. I think one of my biggest challenges was that I used to think that I was really helping people when I would pick up their loved one on a Sunday and then maybe I'd meet with them on a Monday. And then by Friday I had their death certificates and the urn to them. And I had done a really good job for that family. But what I realized is that I was doing a really good job for my boss and that maybe that family hadn't even seen their loved one.

Maybe their loved one passed away in the hospital. We didn't give them the opportunity to interact. They didn't want to do a viewing, you know, a proper viewing. They didn't want embalmed. So they thought that maybe it wasn't an option to be with their person. I cremated them and then I returned them and their loss hadn't even set in the reality of them not being there. And I'm giving their family their ashes, you know, and that was challenging. I didn't know it while I was in the middle of it, but looking back, I always like to point out how resourceful the funeral director in your life can be in the person in your town who deals with these things, because we are event planners. We know about end of life in estates and probate and social security, and we're just abundantly resourceful. And not being seen as that was challenging. And now we're seen as that because we have at least 60 to 90 days with this family. So they'll come to us with needs the way I wasn't seeing before. Another challenge I ran into, and this is just personal, but again, you could probably tell a little bit from my spirit by the fact that I came here for the orca, right? I'm really in touch with the water and I love water mammals and it's like my second obsession, right? But ultimately I think that moving to the Pacific Northwest and specifically, Pearson King County really opened me up to the fact that everyone here is cremated. Like 90 % of our people are going into the retort and I was just, you know, cremating all day and it did not fill the cup. It just, there was something about it that was so quick and you know, sometimes people don't know that professionals have to adjust the crematory and open up and move things around sometimes and, these are things that were heavy on my heart and I was kind of looking at other opportunities in the industry when I came upon Return Home because I did not like cremating every day. That was really hard on me. And again, I wanted to be able to embalm. I wanted to be able to bring people back to their likeness and make them beautiful. And that just isn't a practice that happens here as frequently. So.

Wakil  
Wow, fascinating. Yeah, I don't think that we've ever spoken to somebody who did that work specifically. That's really fascinating, interesting to hear. And thank you for sharing that and being so open about it, vulnerable. Yeah.

Annalouiza 
Yeah. Well, and I was just thinking about the choices that now you have found, right? So not everybody wants to be embalmed, but some people do. Not everybody wants to be cremated, but now we have teramation, which is an option. You know, some, I know some people who have said the minute I die, just like, you know, scrub me clean, whatever you're going to do and cremate me and just be done. Like there are people who have said that to me and there are people who'd probably, whose family would say, I want you to be here for as long as I could possibly keep you. So you have just in a few sentences given us a lot of different options that people really have, you know, in some places.

Brienna Smith  
That's my whole hope of existing right now, really, especially doing community outreach is to feel or to rather give people empowerment for them to feel really well educated. We've at Return Homes, people send their loved ones to us. We're only in Auburn, Washington right now. We don't have other firms. So we've reached out to, you know, people from 26 plus states and to be able to empower families all over the United States and educate them and teach them that embalming is usually not required. In fact, only one state requires embalming for out of state transport. And there's so many nuanced things that there's either people have a preconceived notion or they've been told something that's maybe a policy at the funeral home, but it's not actually a state law. So really being able to fine tune and get people comfortable with their laws and their state, that's been...
amazing and again just being a resource.

Wakil  
Wow, that's really huge. Thank you for that. I do a class about end of life planning. And one of the things we talk about is all the different choices that are out there now. But that's something I've got to add to it is that you can move from one state to another without embalming. Because I think a lot of people would assume that's the way it has to be and that they have a great resource with you all down there. So that's good. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Brienna Smith  
You bet. Yeah. Actually on our website, we have a full resource center that's not about return home at all. It's just about death and different resources for different services or information, why we wear black to funerals, just random things. But that's been a fun place for us to be able to put our passion because we are really passionate about giving information and letting people feel like they have complete control over what their options are going to be, where they're going to go, who's going to touch them. It's really important to people more now, I find, as younger generations are aging up. A lot of boomers in my life are like, just throw me out in the woods and let me, you know. But a lot of people my age are like, wait, no, I want to put my mind behind this. And I want, you know. So it's interesting to see the shifts culturally and generationally, too.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, I think both Annalouiza and I have agreed that they could just roll us off a cliff somewhere and we'd be very happy, you know. That's one.

Annalouiza  
I would love to feed the birds. No lie.

Brienna Smith  
Skitch it to Nepal. Is it Nepal where they? Sky burial.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, the air sky burials, that's right. Although when I was doing my natural funeral care training, my teacher actually had a family here in Denver whose mom wanted to be left out in the woods as well. And they were just like, mom, you can't do this. And she found that in Grand Junction, there is a, those places where you can lay your body out for scientists to see how forensics.

Brienna Smith  
Body farm? Yeah.

Annalouiza 
Yes. And so she said that she showed up at the house when this woman passed. They cleaned her up, put her in a cardboard coffin. And there was a caravan from Denver down to Grand Junction. And they knocked on this place and brought her in. And she said, it was so fun to see these guys. Like, this has never happened to us, but welcome. And they laid her out to rest to be eaten by the animals of the place. So I love that. I would do that too.

Brienna Smith  
It's cool because a lot of the species that will find you help pollinate the trees and the flora in the area. So it's actually like, it's a practice. In fact, on the ranch, while we would take our, you know, there would be sometimes animals that were not our animals and we would put them along the trails in the back woods area because it would help pollinate the trees. Yeah.

Annalouiza  
What?

Wakil  
Yeah, exactly. And all the remains, they go down into the soil, the mycelium turns it into food and yeah, it gets spread around the whole forest. It's really, it's the way it's supposed to work, right? I love that. That's so great. What kind of things do you need to feel supported?

Brienna Smith  
Oh God, that's such a good question. You know, for me, the staff around me, the people who I spend more time with than my family, you know, these individuals, one thing I have to be really grateful to our CEO, Micah, for is he came from kind of a traditional business background. So he's not familiar with the nuance of what it means to be a funeral professional, i .e. we're pretty underpaid. We work really, really rigorous hours. We're kind of untouchable. Like people don't really talk about us. They don't really think about us. I don't know how many times in your life you've thought about the crematory operator in your life, but it's not an easy job. So he really brought to the forefront what was unfamiliar to me, which was fair wages for the job. And this very team oriented mentality where he's very open to feedback. And for me in the industry as a whole to have a leader in front of me instead of kind of behind me, but really letting us have a voice building this service. I mean, this service was built by myself and Katie Houston, who's our services manager now. And, you know, previously maybe we wouldn't, our thoughts wouldn't have been as considered and certainly they may have been considered, but would they have been implemented? And so what fills my cup is having a leadership that's really perceptive and a team that's highly motivated. We're a startup, so I don't know if that means anything to you, but it's ridiculously long hours. And so to be surrounded by people who you want to also spend time with socially has been a blessing. And I think that, and then also, like for instance, we just did May Day outreach on May 1. We went out and gave Gerber daisies to the, you know, assisted living facilities, hospice facilities. Doing this outreach now is really filling the cup too, because there's no ulterior motive. I just wanted to give you a daisy and see you smile. And being allowed to do that has been really enriching for sure.

Wakil  
Yeah. You spoke earlier about the challenges of being, you know, shoveling, shoveling people into the crematory over and over and over again. Um, do you find that there are practices that you have or things that you do to just settle yourself, to be present yourself? And I mean, now you don't have to do that work. So that's one, that's probably the biggest step right there as you've created a really, a much better work environment, you're working in a much better environment. But I just wonder if there's other practices that have helped you or help support you, carry you through that kind of thought, through that kind of challenge.

Brienna Smith 
You know, that's such a good question, Wakil. I think that music, it might sound strange, but really over the ear, sensory music that's, you know, certain, I forget what they call them, but like frequencies, you can find certain music that's certain frequencies that's really calming. I just listened to music that made me feel calm and like, you know, maybe even some like watery kind of music, just kind of like try to put myself in the right place. But you know, when you're in it, you're numb to it. I can only say that. And I didn't really know that it was as bothersome as I now know it is when I was in it. I just turned on my headphones and, you know, did the thing that I did three times a day for eight years straight or whatever. You know, it's just so part of my routine that I think that's one thing I would take away is slowing down on your off time to see if what you're doing really aligns with what you're able to handle in your spirit and in your heart. You know, for me, it was a bit much.

Wakil  
Yeah, thank you. So important.

Annalouiza  
And Brie, a follow up with that. Do you have other people who are in similar professions who you could just kind of talk to and just have some time to just,  just pull everything out that's on your heart so that you don't get too weighted down.

Brienna Smith  
Yeah, we have resources. So the National Funeral Directors Association, you know, they give you a phone number that you can call and there's people on the other end. Man, as a group, you know, I've got so many friends who are in this profession and it's this thing of we've all seen so much and we've all heard so deeply that sometimes it's a little hard to talk about because you don't want to feel like you're one upping each other, but when one person brings it up, the next person has another, and it kind of goes like that. But there's really not a support system, like, you know, maybe the same way first responders might expect resources and people to bring them nice things and do nice things for them. And, you know, that doesn't really happen with frequency in this industry. So we kind of have to build our own and like, that's kind of what we did here at return home, but I'm actually starting a monthly hour where basically I'm going to do like a game, you know, something on zoom, but where it's more of a community moment for our profession specifically where people can gather and vent. And, it's on an app called Slack and we are called the death darlings. And that's where we all go right now and just put all of our thoughts and angst and you know, anything that's happening, but it's hard to find a support system for this because it's so wide reaching and yeah, we don't get categorized with those first responders. So it's a little different.

Wakil  
Wow, yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, that's, uh, I'm going to hold space for that in my own heart because I feel like it is needed. It's needed in so many of these professions where we're occasionally brought into maybe a traumatic moment. And, you know, there's a lot of like HIPAA pieces. There's also like that, what you just mentioned was like, you don't want to up anybody else about this experience that I've just had, but I do think that it's, there needs to be a safe container for folks who are encountering all kinds of unspoken stories so that they can just, you can stay safe and well resourced.

Brienna Smith  
Yeah, yeah, there's definitely space for it in this, you know, mecca that we call the industry that is the funeral complex. There's a lot of corporate entities owning funeral homes and they have internal resources, which is really nice, but community resources are lacking.

Wakil  
Hmm, well, wonderful. Thank you. That's definitely something we're going to consider and hold on to.

Annalouiza  
Yeah. So I need to ask you what frightens you about the end of life?

Brienna Smith  
Hmm.

I think mostly just thinking about, you know, the vulnerability of it all, maybe like, I'm not really afraid of what happens next or what's to come. I feel really secure with where my spirit lands on whatever timeline we're on right now. You know, I just feel at peace with what's going to happen, whether it's good or bad. What I know is, is that I fear being manipulated. I fear being, quite frankly, like this is kind of a little bit, this might not be received well by every single person. I'm afraid to be autopsied. I'm afraid to have a donation take place that would mutilate my body where my husband might not be able to be with me. He's voiced that he wants to be physically with me, you know, touch me and kind of like what we do here at Return Home, be tangible.

So to have that happen and for him to not get that opportunity would be really hard for me. But I mean, all in all, I don't have a lot of fears. I could go out, you know, bungee jumping or doing something crazy or I could just die in bed old and I'd be at peace with pretty much all of it at this point. So.

Annalouiza  
Yeah. Let me back up a little bit though. You in your state, do you get to choose whether or not you are a donor? 

Brienna Smith  
You do. Yeah. So you can sign up, but they still call and ask the next of kin regardless. Like they're still gonna.

Annalouiza  
They do. I know. So that actually happened when my sister passed and I was kind of surprised that I thought I preempted that conversation. And I said, there's not going to be any donation at all. And we're doing natural care in this hospital room. And they still came and knocked. And I'm glad that I actually opened the door and said, no, leave. But the fact that that's being asked, I mean, in spite of, yeah, that's a little, that's a little tricky.

Brienna Smith  
I've had families get straight up traumatized because their loved one dies at 10 o 'clock at night and they get phone calls until 6 a .m. just like multiple and it, you know, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes they do a really good job, you know, sometimes it's seamless, sometimes it's set up ahead of time, but they will ask and it can be really a tough conversation and there can be guilt that comes along with it and there's, yeah, there's a lot that goes behind that, so.

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

That's interesting. All right. Well, that's good to know because I didn't, I thought I was like the only one that got asked after the fact. I was like, but, but because we don't talk about this, right? Because nobody is saying, Hey, did that happen to you? You know, and we're like, Hey, like put an end to this. This is not okay.

Wakil
Right. And does it help to have the advanced care directors specifically say, this isn't going to happen or does it still, do they still call anyway?

Brienna Smith  
I think if it's like they're in front of them in writing, they're probably not going to push the envelope, right? But otherwise it's kind of open up to interpretation and they just call because they want to make sure. They want to double check. Yeah.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I understand it's a big need and I can understand their need and their work to try to find the donors that they need, but still it's invasive and traumatic. And I think that's an important thing to note and maybe something for us all to consider as ways we could avoid that and how we could help others avoid it, right?

Brienna Smith  
And I think too, knowing which donation program it is, you know, there's a lot of nuance to the programs themselves. So, you know, making sure you know that if you are going to do that, that you're donating to a program that aligns with you, right? So like maybe the University of Washington here in Washington, they do amazing work, especially with like the brain and things like that. So that might be in line with, you know, something that you believe.

Whereas just like maybe a general donation might not be. So you might want to know the difference between what it means to be a full body donor, a cornea only donor. Yeah, there's a lot of nuance to donation.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, actually, this reminds me that I did talk to somebody maybe about 10 years ago and she was, she was traumatized and frustrated because her mother had wanted her to donate her body to science. And it was like a go, everything was in place, but then the university actually charged her for donating. And so for, you know, the whole, I don't even know the details of that. And she said, you know, it was like so strange to like lose your mom and still get a bill for donating. And so, I like that you just mentioned that you need to know what program you're actually signing up for. So if like an elder of ours, a loved one is saying, hey, I already signed up for body donation. Like maybe we should get a little more information.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talk about that in the class as well. And I always recommend you find out everything you can about that from the people who you're donating to, as well as one of the other things that's come up is what happens when they're done with you, right? You know, and really understanding what happens to your remains when they're done and making sure that's all understood and on paper because somebody I know just didn't ever hear back, you know, they'd like,

Or they got something, they got some ashes that they didn't know for sure were even their parents. So it's really hugely important. And actually you've answered the following question, which how do we support ourselves or how do you feel more supported in regard to that fear? And it sounds like it's really just about knowledge and education and sounds like your group is doing a great job and thanks for that. It's really good. So we can probably just jump right into the next one.

Brienna Smith  
Education's number one, you know, that's why we're on social media. That's why I just absolutely demolish my schedule by squeezing in videos every week. It's because I know what it means to feel uninformed and I've seen what it means on my families for them to feel uninformed. So we don't even do just teramation stuff. We do all sorts of death stuff because people deserve to be educated. And I think it's so great that you're out there doing that. Because it's also a need that we have is people just talking openly about it, but it's a tough conversation.

Wakil  
Yeah, it is. 

Annalouiza  
You did mention like music and your community of fellow, uh, the death, what'd you call it? The death, uh, death darlings. I like that. We're the death darlings along with you. How do, do you have more ways to resource yourself?

What I'm asking is on those really slogging days when it was a tough day at work, a lot of death, I don't want to name it trauma because not everything will be traumatic. It's just occasionally some things will be a little bit harder. So how do you go home and make sure that you're going to be ready for the next day when you have to go back to work?

Brienna Smith  
That's a really good question. Self-care has never been a strength of mine, but this year actually, what you don't know about me is that I had four surgeries from like 2020 to late 2022 to actually one year ago this month. I had four surgeries and so that was a result of me not taking good care of myself. And since what I do is usually when I go home, I first and foremost, I've got a phenomenal home life. My husband's incredibly supportive and he's a teacher. So he, he works really early in the day. So he takes care of me in the evenings a lot because he's already home and, and our dog's there and he's making dinner. So that's been really, you know, nice to have an actual steady home life. But personally, you know, I sit in the bath and I just listen to music and I have one of those like sensory like Aurora Borealis machines and I just like lay and look at this machine and just try to kind of calm down. But I mean, I don't even know what to say aside from the mental stuff just kind of goes away with time. Like I've definitely had days where there's something that I come into the office and I can't shake. I can still name like 10 names of individuals for the last 13 years that I've helped them and I can still see them when I close my eyes and I know how they died and I remember their next of kin. And so, I mean, sometimes you can't bath it away, you know, but taking a bath, kind of trying to do some yoga, like a little meditation, prayer. I surround myself with love and I really like gemstones. So I've got this like whole collection of like raw minerals that I get this like earthy vibe from. It just makes me feel really good. And I love to garden, of course. So my garden is usually where I go spend like 95 % of my time when I'm feeling angst up. There's nothing quite like just digging in the dirt. It just makes me feel better.

Annalouiza  
So true. And so, Brie, I am going to mirror back to you that you are doing a good job with self-care. You are in a very stable and grounded relationship at home and you're seen and met. You take baths and stare into the stars. And that's always exciting for me. You touch the ground and you play with stones and they are also lighting your way. So you are doing a really good job. You're you're taking care of yourself. And I see that.

Brienna Smith  
Thank you. Thank you. The best I ever have by far. Maturity helps. Yeah. You know your limitations, you know.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
100%. The older we get, the more it's like, oh no, this, this is actually really happening. I need help.

Wakil  
Yeah, this is really important. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, so true. 

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm. So good. Mm -hmm.

Brienna Smith  
Thank you for saying that. It really means a lot, actually.

Wakil 
Well, one last question in that is, is there anything you wish we had asked you about? And also, you know, while you're talking about this, you can talk a little more about the work you're doing, the news, the Terrapets, and anything else that you want to share, but specifically anything that you wish we had asked about.

Brienna Smith  
Yeah, you know, right now I'm just kind of in this new space, but I think any time you ask anybody about, you know, what it means to die and death is what their plan is, like, what are they gonna do with their body? And I would have told you green burial, had this been a couple of years ago, I was a green burial proponent. I also was interested in alkaline hydrolysis, because your girl's a water sign, you know, I'm looking at, you know.

But ultimately my husband and I really resonate with teramation because it's life -giving and that same feeling and sensation and serotonin release you get when you dig in the ground is what you get when you get your loved one back and they're composted. There's an energy there that's a transfer of this beautiful life that you've seen lived. And so I'm really excited to be teramated. I know that probably sounds kind of weird, but, but my family knows what I want and they know where I want to go. And, and now I'm so blessed to have Tara pets be, we haven't really advertised a lot. I got a call from California today. I don't know how people are finding us, but ultimately to be able to take what I've learned with the human side of this business and what I've developed as far as systems and transfer it over to a place that happens with so much more frequency, right? 

So I might meet with a family twice in my tenure for their family, whether it's a spouse or a parent or a child. But there's a good chance I'm going to meet with someone with their animal multiple times over the next couple of years, even potentially, because most people have multiple animals and animals don't live as long. And what I've already seen with tera pets is families who, like for instance, one family had to put their dog down that morning.

And that afternoon they're with me in our facility, taking paw prints on clay, taking nose prints, their hands are on their animal and they're interacting with their animal and their grief journey is so different. And I think about how I've had to lose my animals and, and, and maybe I'm the weird one, you know, because not everyone thinks like this about their animals, but to me, they're family. And, and so for me to be able to give people the ability to come and lay their hands on their animal and interact with them after they've passed. They're cold and they don't quite feel the same and they're not breathing. But the family's coming in devastated and leaving almost jovial in a way. They got to get these beautiful things. They took some whiskers. They did things. And so for me, it's just another stamp on the seal of I am doing the right thing by giving people power and by giving them a space to grieve. And I'm, as a professional, return home is probably the single greatest thing I've ever participated in. I'm so proud of our team. I'm so proud of our standard of care, of our website. Like I said, that resource center, we've just done so much to help others navigate this crazy, crazy thing we call death. And so to take that over from people to pets is really natural progression.

And I feel so humbled and grateful that people trust me with their animal as much as I felt humbled when they trust me with their human, because I know it's a really, really big deal in their heart. So just to be able to help people navigate their grief in a meaningful hands-on, really, really mindful way, that will be the reward for me for years to come. I know it.

Wakil  
Wow, thank you. So beautiful.

Annalouiza  
Thank you so much. Yeah.

Brienna Smith  
Thank you. Thank you for having me on. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Wakil  
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Hey, and do we have a poem?

Wakil  
Oh yeah, did you find a poem? I can't remember. 

Brienna Smith  
Oh, I do. Hold on. Let me pull it up here.

Annalouiza  
Do you want to read it?

Brienna Smith  
I can do that.

Brienna Smith  
It's called Song of Myself by Walt Whitman from the book Leaves of Grass. And it goes, 

I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yop over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me. It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any.

On the shadowed wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air. I shake my white locks at the runaway sun. I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in the lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood. Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stopped somewhere waiting for you.

Wakil  
Perfect.

Annalouiza  
Oh, that's so perfect. Oh.

Brienna Smith  
I love that poem and I wish I could recite it from memory because it's just so good. Oh, it's so good. A little wordy though. I hope I did okay. You might have to read it.

Wakil  
Ah, perfect.

Annalouiza (42:41.8)
You're fine. It's perfect.

Wakil  
Yeah, it was perfect. Yeah. And we'll put it in the podcast, in the transcript so people can read it. Yeah. So thank you again. Well, thank you, Briene. Bri, it's been great. Again, I love the group and your organization. When you do send links, be sure to include the next conference they're going to do. If you've got information about that, I think people might be interested in participating in that. So we have this unique audience that loves this stuff..

Brienna Smith  
I'll send it over to you.

Annalouiza  
Thank you.

Brienna Smith  
Oh, sure.

Annalouiza  
We're so curious.

Brienna Smith  
So cool too. Yeah, they call it, what is it, Death Curious? Yeah. Will do and then when you are going to go live, please let me know and we'll post it to our socials and everything.