Annalouiza  
On today's episode, we are looking forward to a wonderful conversation with Isabel Knight. Isabelle is the founder of the Death Designer, a company that provides end of life planning services including funeral and vigil planning, digital account password management, advanced directives and assistance with reconciling fears of mortality. She takes a human -centered design approach with a focus on promoting individual autonomy, sustainability, and home death care options. Her goal is to create a more humane and equitable end -of -life experience for all.

Wakil  
Wonderful, we're looking forward to this. Isabel is also the president of the National Home Funeral Alliance, a board member of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Pennsylvania, and the program director for the Jewish Association for Death Education. She helps doulas and death positive businesses create a more inclusive and accessible experience for their clients through home centered design workshops.

And also creates online courses and offers freelance graphic design work. You can find her on Instagram at the death designer, all one word, and we'll have all these links in the podcast notes for you so that you can find out more about her and her work. So great to have you.

Isabel Knight  
Thank you so much for having me.

Wakil  
So we like to start out with the question of when did you first become aware of death and how does it affect this story?

Isabel Knight  
I don't know if I can say that this is quite the first time, but I will say one of my earlier life experiences with death is I had a friend in high school, actually even before that, I had a friend when I was in eighth grade who actually died in a dirt bike accident the day after our eighth grade graduation. And it was quite tragic. He had a friend that he played with next door of his neighbor who was basically just trying to play a practical joke on him and tied a rope across the path that they would both go dirt biking. And he really unfortunately closelined himself on that row. And the kid who tied the rope was like,I want to say 13 years old. And so that was, I think, my first sort of major experience with someone I actually knew dying. And it was quite unfortunate because then later the parents tried to basically wait for the kid to turn 18 to sort of adjudicate that as a manslaughter case, which I don't really know why you are allowed to do that in our legal system, but it was, yeah.

We're definitely starting off on a downer on that one. Yeah.

Wakil  
Wow, yeah.

Annalouiza  
But, well, wait a second, it's a real lived experience and that's what, it's okay, so not to worry.

Isabel Knight  
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Wakil  
Yeah, exactly. Thank you for that. It's amazing. Well, many things in our culture are amazing. But it's amazing to reflect back on where these things first made an impression on us. So I appreciate you being willing to share that story.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, and even you were young, so these are stories that I think generally kids don't get to tell, right? At that time of your life when that was actually happening, it made an impact on you no matter what. So, well, from that point, how does death continue to impact your story and your day -to -day and your life?

Isabel Knight  
I would say that overall it has made me really feel like I can live in a much more intentional way given that I work in a space where I think so many of the people who surround me are also very much experiencing these like intense experiences because like when you work in death care, like, you know, you have to show up for people, like it's not even, it's not like on a timeline, right? 

And I feel very, very appreciative that I sort of came to this work. There's a lot of people who kind of come into death care because they kind of experienced a personal crisis in their life and they're like, oh, I really need to, like, this is sort of what's calling me. I just had a friend be like, Isabel, uh, you should start a casket business. Because I was just like trying to start a business and they were like, you know, my uncle just died and we were trying to get a casket and they couldn't really find an affordable one. So they made one for themselves and they're like, oh, this is just, this should be the thing that you go into. So I was just very much in that, you know, general phase of life where I was like, yes. And in it, you know, that improv concept. So, so that's exactly what I did and it totally worked out. Yeah.

Annalouiza  
I love that!

Isabel Knight  
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I just feel very grateful that I get to work with people on a daily basis who are sort of like, I might not respond to your email, you know, like I have a person I work with in Hawaii who's like, if the waves are good, you know, that's where I'm going to be. Right. And like, I think that there's quite a number of people...  A few years ago, I worked on a medical aid and dying training for this nonprofit in Seattle called End of Life Washington. And I got to interview a lot of their volunteers and just so many of them say like, yeah, I'm retired, but this is like the real work of my life.

Wakil  
Yeah, we interviewed one of those volunteers on one of our episodes. 

Isabel Knight
Oh, who was it?

Wakil
Do you remember what her name was, Annalouiza? 

Annalouiza  
Yeah, it was Yanna Johnson was our guest.

Wakil
Hansen, Yanna Hansen. Yeah.

Isabel Knight
I don't think I actually spoke with that person. I spoke to a lot of them but not her.

Annalouiza  
Uh, yeah, I was going back, you know, it's funny how that still was a death experience. Like not your lived experience, but your friends in the casket. So I want to make caskets as well, but because my ex husband left all of our woodworking tools in the garage. So I'm like, I should just make caskets and coffins. Like, why not? Cause it's there.

Isabel Knight  
It's a, it's, yeah, I had a casket made when I was trying to start my casket business. And it's just sitting in my house. Like every time I move, I have to schlep it around with me. So yeah, I mean, it is, it really makes sense. Like he was like, why is this so expensive? It's just a box!

Wakil  
Yeah, we wanted to just kind of go from there and to talk to you more about what's your current work or what your role is. Tell us more about that. And then of course, we'll post things so people can reach you later if they're interested. But please tell us a little more about what you do day to day and how this has evolved.

Isabel Knight  
Yeah, totally. So yeah, like I did for a few months try to work on this casket business. I used to live in DC, so I had it made in DC and then I was moving to Philly. So I was like, oh, when I go to Philly, there's a lot of artists in Philly. So I can like maybe try to find people who are artists who can help me find, you know, when people are pre -planning, use the casket to be a legacy project and turn it into a piece of art that's really personalized for the person who's pre -planning. So that was my idea originally. 

And then basically, it really is difficult to break into the casket industry in particular because there's like one main company that has a huge monopoly and they have these contracts with funeral homes that are like, if you want to buy our products, you can only do business with one vendor and that's us. So basically that ended up being too difficult. I was thinking of doing direct to consumer, but then you're kind of competing with Walmart and Costco and people like that. 

But the thing that I kept hearing from people as I was doing this market research was just that they wanted some, like they didn't know what to do, right? Someone dies. Similar to, I think like a lot of experiences that you have in life where you kind of come upon them and you're like, wow, no one prepared me for this whatsoever. Like being a parent, like figuring out how to pay your taxes, like all these things that like, we teach you a lot of things, but like, I feel like we often neglect the most important ones. And I think death is one of those really key, you know, topics that applies to. 

And so then like everyone else on this side, I did a doula training and from there I was sort of like well, I already do human centered design as my day job. I used to work at Fannie Mae in mortgages. And so it's just very funny going from the mortgage space to the death care space because, you know, nobody's doing mortgages because they just love mortgages. They feel passionately about it. You know, so it was been, it's been really nice being able to get to work with people who feel really passionate about what they do. And I didn't sort of have to pay the trauma toll to be able to do that.

Wakil  
Mmm.
Yeah, nice.

Annalouiza  
There's a gentleman here in Colorado who also makes caskets. And he had the exact same thing that he talked about with regard to that monopoly. And they're big, they're really big. And what he ended up doing is just working with the funeral home. Just like one funeral home and he just does the work for them. And he's like, I don't need to be doing it any bigger because it's too much of a racket out there to get into it. So you're not the only one who's had this experience.

Wakil  
Yeah, and our friend Bodhi, who is one of our first interviews and episodes, has a nonprofit funeral home on Maui. And they do all of their own design and creation of urns and different kinds of baskets and shrouds and, and they have some great pictures. You can go to his website doorway into light. I think it's called and you can see the pictures of, you know, kids pounding, you know, pounding the nails into grandpa's casket or drawing on it or painting it or, you know, it's just, it's really beautiful. And so, but again, it's a one-on one-off kind of thing. He doesn't try to make a business out of just doing the caskets. He has to... he has a whole funeral home service there for green funerals.

Isabel Knight  
Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. I really feel like it makes you think about your relationship to making things too, right?

Wakil  
Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Well, and the relationship not only to the making, but the thought behind what you're making, right? Like as you're making your casket or as you're creating something to hold your loved one, you're imbuing it with memories and you're getting tired. When I worked with my mentor for natural funerals, she said, you know, people get tired. Like when somebody dies and they have to make a casket and they have to prepare food and they have to like set up the space in the house to keep this person. And it used to be three days and somebody asked like, why is it three days? And she's like, because by the end of those three days, they're exhausted. And that's when they finally, their body understands like there has been a loved one who has passed and I am ready to, you know, inter them or whatever, but I'm done. And I just love that idea. Yeah, like creating something is physically taxing. It's emotionally taxing. It could be spiritually taxing, but that's the way they get to that grief process in the end.

Wakil  
Sounds like that's the work you're doing. That's really being support, being that support for them. So that's great as well.

Annalouiza  
Yes, so what are your challenges these days with the work that you do?

Isabel Knight  
Hmm, it's really interesting over time. At the beginning of building my business, the main challenge was really just how do you do something and not be lonely every day? That was really my main challenge. But then I kind of addressed that by getting involved with the National Home Funeral Alliance. I was really, I actually had quit my previous job three separate times because it just didn't stick the first two times I was just like spinning my wheels a lot and I was like, I need to be around people during the day. And you know, if you're just kind of cranking away on your own, it's really difficult to do that. And so I was like, okay, let me at least get involved in a volunteer basis then. And I don't even remember how I found the National Home Funeral Alliance originally, but now, I think over time it has evolved into trying to understand, I mean, I still don't quite understand the full, like how to crack the nut of getting to the real people who need the help. And I know that that's something that is, I think, very pervasive across the death care space generally, is that there's so many gatekeepers in the form of hospitals or home care agencies or hospices or whatever it may be.

And I think that that is something, like it's one of those phenomenons where it's like when you host, especially death -focused conversations, it's often like the same 10 people who will be in the room at any given time. But I'm very lucky because like the medium-term problem of needing to figure out how to build community in a way with my other death care professionals in Philadelphia has been solved.

Like I really have a very robust community of end of life professionals that I meet with on a regular basis. And so that part is really great because it feels like you're in it together with people. I don't understand how people do any of the solo practitioner stuff by themselves. I think that that can be really draining and exhausting for people.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. Good point. And good that you found that. And it's a good thing for our audience to understand if they're thinking about doing this work or helping this, you know, supporting this work. I love what you brought up about the gatekeepers. And that's a whole group of people we should probably be talking to about, here's something that you should be allowing through your gate.

You should be encouraging, you should be supporting. So that's great. Glad you brought that up. What do you need to feel supported in your work? What other things do you call on or take, bring in to support yourself?

Isabel Knight  
Mm -hmm.

I think so much of it is about trying to understand where people are coming from. I mean, the main thing that I need to feel supported is just social. But like, I am really explicit about what I'm talking about, right? Like, I used to do tabling a lot more, like where I would just set up a table and be like, oh yeah, this is my end of life planning business.

Last year I did one at the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia, which is one of the biggest 10 mile runs in the country apparently. And there would be people who would see my table and see the death designer and just like actively run away. And it's funny, because I'm just so surrounded by, you know, death care people all the time that I am just like, oh yeah, this is like totally normal. Like, you know, people will love this.

And it is often quite surprising to me how far, how much of a bubble that I'm in, basically, far away from maybe like the mainstream and the norm it is for people, despite the fact that like there is so much media, there's so much like other avenues that people have as entry points into thinking about mortality, basically that I really think that it's, you know, we're in a watershed moment right now. 

So like the thing that makes me feel really motivated every day is feeling like I am part of some like very dynamic movement that's happening. I was just speaking to Sam Perry, who's the head of the Green Burial Council, one of the arms of the Green Burial Council, if you're familiar with them.

And he was like, he's a professor at a mortuary school and he's he and it's a four year program. He said that his outgoing class is nine funeral directors, but his incoming class is like 75 people. So that really highlighted for me that like, wow, there's a lot of people who've been like, especially I think during the pandemic, sitting down and really having this moment of introspection of like, what do I really need to be doing?

And that's really, really exciting to see this energy. And for me, I really enjoy grappling with those high level challenges of like, okay, how do we, on this macro level industry perspective, take that energy and really harness it? Especially because a lot of these people going into mortuary schools in particular are, it's 72 % women right now. They're younger, more progressive. There's a major basically changing of the guard that's happening. And...

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm. Cool.

Isabel Knight  
That I think is really, really exciting. And I think that this is the time to be figuring out how to have this conversation of what is the future of death care gonna look like. And it feels so cool to feel like I'm a part of designing that.

Wakil  
Yeah, very good.

Annalouiza
I do think that you're right about it's coming right after that pandemic where we watched like very viscerally loaded images of people mourning the death of some folks, right? Their families, the fear around death. And now my daughter just always is like, people always want to talk to you about death. I don't think they're comfortable openly discussing death, but if you sidle up to somebody, you know, on an airplane or whatever, they're like ready to talk about death and dying, like all the time. And I'm like, pay me for my services.

Wakil  
Right!

Isabel Knight  
People will often assume that like, oh, it's really hard and people are really, and it's like, well, I also think that perhaps it's like a lot of the people who are my peers, it may be, I haven't quite tapped into the groups of people who are quite sort of death phobic. I think a lot of the people who I surround myself with are feeling like it's such a far thing that doesn't feel quite real in their lives, that they're actually okay with talking about it. But at the same time, it's like, I open my phone every day and see death and destruction in my feed, right? I've been at these, you know, encampments for the last few weeks and it's just like, you know, this is not... I don't think that there's anything that... We're not like ginger about this anymore. You know?

Annalouiza  
That's right.

Well, we shouldn't be right it's like we're openly talking especially the youth I keep saying the youth are talking about it they're screaming it in all these boomers faces and the boomers are like you know no no no like so it's like yeah you got to talk about this.

Isabel Knight  
Absolutely.

Wakil  
Yeah, I love that the trend is toward younger and women and probably people of color as well. The people who have generally in the past been excluded from the work. I mean, I'm sure the history, if we looked at it, is pretty white and pretty upper class or at least middle class people that have been funeral directors.

And I think at least I don't know that for sure, but I would guess if it's like other in our culture, other things in our culture that it's been monopolized for a long time. And it's great to hear that 75 people signing up and majority women. That's awesome. I love that. 

Isabel Knight  
Totally. And queer as fuck. Like death care is really like, really, really, I mean, I don't know if this is a disproportion number, but I also just think that there's so many people who are realizing like, we die earlier, right? Like one of the things that I talk about a lot in human centered design is basically this concept of inclusive design.
right? Designing for the most vulnerable as opposed to designing for what you think quote unquote the average is, right? And, um, you know, that's something that comes out of tech basically is like this notion of like, you know, don't just design, there's this idea that often when you're designing in tech, your incentives are to scale as quickly as possible and fail fast. And how do you do that by designing for like the average user, right? Which often ends up being cis white men when actually...

So are you familiar with the brand Oxo that does kitchen implements? Like, yeah, they design all of their products for people with arthritis and mobility, conditions, and that actually produces a better product for everybody, right? And so if you are able to create a system that works for the most vulnerable people, then that's actually a system that's going to work better for everyone and that's like a really fundamental principle within human centered design. And it's also the case that often the thing that happens when you're at the most vulnerable point in your life is you die.

Right? So it's like, we're not designing for some hypothetical other person. Like we have to really think of ourselves as like these dynamic beings instead of just one static person with one static identity. Like, you know, we're going to be so many different people over the course of our lives and you're not necessarily designing for the one that you are right now.

Annalouiza  
Right. So Isabel, with that though, we're designing for the most vulnerable moment of our lives, which is dying. Okay. How about designing for the people who are left behind and their perceived trauma around your dying, right? 

Isabel Knight  
Totally.

Annalouiza  
Like also talking about those, because part of this designing of funeral homes with very little attention to... creating a space where people can actually see their loved ones or touch their loved ones or go in and help clean the bodies. That's also creating a trauma for down the road when they're just like, their grief is like stunted. So designing for those gatekeepers to step aside so that we can actually be in process at the end of life with our loved one would be a really great design. And it's an ancient one. It's an ancient and original thought, right? Like, here we go.

Isabel Knight  
Totally. Yeah, I mean, that's why home funerals are so cool is that you can just control all of that yourself and you don't have to be beholden to what someone else has designed for you. Obviously it takes more work, but it's really intentional work that I think a lot of people get an immense amount of gratification from in terms of helping their grieving process, in terms of just, there's so many people who feel like, you know, I just wish there was something that I could do, like it satisfies that need to do something.

There's just, there's so many ways in which I think that it can be really, really helpful and powerful to curate that and put some intentional thought into that for yourself. And for myself, I have really been able to learn a lot from the people that I help with funeral planning. And that has informed you know, how I go about celebrating my own life. Like I'm throwing a ginormous birthday party for myself this summer where I'm inviting everyone in my entire life and it's gonna be like a wedding level celebration because, you know, I've just been really thinking really deeply about what do I care about and like, what should I be spending my money on and what do I, you know, I don't think that it should be the case that a wedding, for example, should be like the one time in your life where all of the people in your life get to meet each other. So I'm like, okay, well, if I believe that theory, I should just go make that happen. You know? Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yay, I love it.

Wakil  
I love that.

Yeah. And we've been in a lot of the work I do with End of Life, we're finding people doing their own memorials before they die, right? You know, I'm getting older, I might do that myself actually, or if you're doing M.A.I.D, you know, that you know when you're going to do it, to have a memorial service before you die and invite all the people and be able to be present. You know, you'd probably be present in some fashion, but to actually be physically present at your own memorial is a wonderful gift to yourself and to everybody.

So that's great, I love that, that you're doing a big hoopla birthday party, congratulations.

Annalouiza  
Yay, congratulations. 

Isabel Knight  
Thank you, and it's not just for me. It's also like, I really, really appreciate that I get to really formally recognize all of my friends and all of the people in my life who have been able to contribute to my life and do that in front of all the other people who have done that for me, right? To me, it's sort of like, this is such a missed opportunity if you're not doing that, because I think that...

I was so, I think in earlier parts of my life, so beholden to these sort of externally created benchmarks of success in terms of like, I wanted to do like the 30 under 30. I wanted to do these like, you know, I just spoke at South by Southwest and I was like, exciting, but it was also like, oh, you know, it's like not the thing that I think you make it up to be in terms of, in your head, right? Of like, this is what success looks like or whatever.

Because for me, in reality, like the only thing that really matters to me at this point is like this party. And like being able to say all the things that I feel like I need to say to the people I need to say that to.

Annalouiza  
Ha ha!

Wakil  
Nice, nice.

Annalouiza  
Well, I think it's delightful because, you know, I've been to funerals where people start meeting each other for the first time. They've all had this one person that they've loved and adored for a hundred years and nobody's known each other because they've all been in these little separate circles and not knowing how much they share in common with, you know, like this love of this person. I kind of like that. I'm going to have to like put that in my little ideas book.

Isabel Knight  
Yeah.
  
It makes me so, like, I feel like often people, part of the reason why people don't do this is because they see it as being this narcissistic thing. Like, I do think we have this thing in the culture where we're like, oh, but you know, like that would be too, you know, it seems either like selfish or something to people. And I so vehemently disagree with that because we love celebrating people. Like, that's why we have celebrities. We love being able to sort of like fangirl over someone and like, you know, that's just something that we find so unifying. And I think that giving people the opportunity to do that for each other and for yourself is a gift to everyone, right?

Wakil  
Absolutely. Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, okay, second level to that is like, I think moms do that for other people, for kids, for parents, for spouses or whatever. I want to do that. I'm a single mom and I'm like, I need to have a celebration for me because I have done a lot of cool shit.

Isabel Knight  
Yes.

Yeah, totally. And I also think that there's this, like, I think especially as you're doing, as more and more people I think are thinking of doing these celebrations of life earlier and earlier, I also think that it really gives a lot of legitimacy to this idea that, like, there are so many people who are raising you right now. We're all raising each other and being like, you know, how do we legitimize and appreciate those ways in which, you know, like,

Annalouiza  
Right, right.

Isabel Knight  
my best friend has raised me, you know?

Annalouiza  
I love this, Isabel. You're the coolest. So cool. Yes. Ugh.

Wakil  
That is great. That is really great. I love that idea. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's see. Do we have any questions we want to ask? 

Annalouiza  
I mean, yeah, but I could talk to Isabel all afternoon. That'd be so great. I love this. And I wanted to actually just note that we're on a podcast to hold a conversation about the end of life and how difficult it is. But there's so many different aspects of living that are difficult for people to actually have a conversation about, right? I want to have a party to celebrate my life and how you've all raised me. That's not really done, right? We just have this like trope that a birthday party should be like you know, cake, some balloons, maybe cocktails, and then you're done, right? You know, a playlist from Spotify. 

But the reality is like, you end up inviting those people into your life. You see, you have a toast for, you know, those who birthed you and those who birth little aspects of you, who birth stories about you. I mean, it's, it's, it's living and it's dying. It's living and it's dying over and over and over. And we celebrate all those little tiny moments.

Isabel Knight  
Right, and I do think that it actually de -centers the notion of individuality because it is such a, I think even the way that we conceive of birthdays now is like, oh, it's all about what you have done as you, a single individual. And trying to break that apart and say, no, we've all co -created who I am and I've co -created who you are. It's all one thing. 

I mean, that's actually really the central premise of my business too is that you can't have a good hospital, if you didn't co -create that hospital with someone who's eventually gonna be a patient in that hospital or a doctor in that hospital, right? And that so rarely ever happens when we design things, right? Like this notion of how do we co-create and intentionally think about the fact that we are trying to make an effort to co-create everything that we build with everyone else, right? Because we think of things as this very lone wolf genius person sitting in their office and like, you know, having the strike and it's like, that's not how things work, right?

Annalouiza  
Right. I know. I think about that all the time because even, uh, uh, who's our famous physicist, Albert Einstein, he had his cousin who cooked and cleaned for him for his entire life. Like that's who gave him the space to like think these thoughts, right? And all these other, so yeah, celebrate her.

Isabel Knight  
Right, it's ridiculous how we only uphold people as individuals as if they are just by themselves in our narrative of history and our narrative of ourselves. Right? And it's just like, that's ridiculous. Right?

Annalouiza  
Okay, well, let's also talk about death and dying in terms of co -creation, right? So somebody loses a loved one and then they're left alone, right? They have to make all the decisions around how they will have a funeral for, like, that's, I mean, I guess I hear this a lot when people come out of a death. They're like, it was the hardest thing. I had to pick a casket. I had to figure out where to have it. I had to have food. I had cousins. I had where to put people when they came into town.

There should be a community of people who just show up and be like, I'm going to take care of this. Let's do this. Or preplan it. Have you? Right? 


Isabel Knight  
Yeah, totally. That's exactly it, yeah.

Annalouiza
But designing, it's like, it's a lot of work for the individual. But community -wise, if we all shoulder a piece of this, it creates more life. It's its own life -affirming event.

Isabel Knight  
Totally, totally. I mean, like, that is, in my opinion, the way to do it, right? Like, you know, instead of just putting everything on one person, giving them no direction, and then they're super stressed out, which I think is happening majority, maybe 90 plus percent of the time, right? Sitting down and being like, okay, this doesn't have to be morbid, this doesn't have to be terrible, like, we don't have to stress about this, let's do this, and you're just, make it really fun, right? Like,

Who are all of the people? And I really think that once you sit down and really think about it, there's actually so many people who are supporting you that's not just your one child, that's not just your spouse, that's not just the nuclear family that we're really conditioned to believe is everything. And that makes things so much easier. Like, for the month of April, I was just in DC caretaking for my friend who just had a major surgery and they had an entire meal train planned out in advance. I didn't have to cook once basically. And that would have been so much more difficult for me. 

And like basically doing that exact type of thing for your funeral. I mean like, no, like I don't need to have one person do literally everything. I can have, I can spread the wealth. There's so many people who would probably love to be given a task. People love being given tasks. You know, like just tell me what to do.

Annalouiza  
Well, it's not just I want to do a task. It's that this is how I can show love. This is how I can connect with you. This is how I can support you. And people, when they say, oh, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, they are really losing the benefit not only of being supported, but of giving that person a chance to show their love and to give a gift of what they can do. Cook a meal, show up and babysit, whatever.

Isabel Knight  
Right, right. It's really hard for us. We don't have a lot of graceful language to even talk about that dynamic, because it is, it can be very fraught to like, you know, really ask people for help. I mean, we know we all have, you know, this is like such a thing that, that, you know, in America people are just quite bad at. And I do think that a lot of that is couched in this  question of how do we conceive of our value as human beings? Especially once you're dying, you're often retired, you're often feeling like you are a burden or are worthless because you're not contributing or whatever it may be. And that had so many layers of difficulty to being able to accept help.

Wakil  
And I love that what we're talking about here is changing that paradigm, changing that in a way that we start talking about this ahead of time. We start making plans ahead of time. We start working with people. All the work that you're doing, Isabelle, and that we're talking about on this podcast is just to try to change that so that people can come into it with that new perspective of that we are all here to share, to give love to each other, and that we're not alone, that we are connected in so many ways that we don't even think about.

But to start thinking about it and start sharing that. I think that's such a great step forward.

Annalouiza  
It is. And one last thing, I'm going to put a plug in here. If you're listening and you have somebody who's going through a grief cycle with a death of a loved one, don't say, what can I do? Because in that moment, that person doesn't really know what to ask for. And there's a conditioning that we shouldn't ask for much. You say, I'm going to show up on Tuesday night with a covered dish. I'll leave it on the porch. You take it, just eat it and have, you know, move forward because we forget that we can also just show up and gift something.

Wakil  
Or just show up. Yeah. 


Annalouiza  
Or just show up, right? Like, mow the lawn.

Isabel Knight  
Absolutely.

Wakil
Yeah, great conversation. Thank you, Isabelle. This has been really good. There's a lot of other things, but I think we've kind of gone over most of them. Maybe something would be interesting to hear and is always interesting for me anyways, the kinds of practices or tools that you have for resourcing yourself, for holding, you know, holding these spaces for people when you're doing when it gets hard, what kind of things do you use to keep yourself resourced and be able to get up every day and feel ready to go?

Isabel Knight  
I just have a short list of friends who I know will always pick up the phone. That's really the number one thing for me. I also think it really, really helps to live with other people. I don't like the fact that our society is really like all about as soon as you can, you should be wanting to sort of like live by yourself and be your own sort of like tower of one. And so like, I feel just very appreciative that I have two roommates that I support and who can support me. And that's something that I think is integral to being able to do a lot of this work. But also, like, in my opinion, it's not a draining thing. I think it's really like all conversations about death are conversations about life. And that's really life affirming in my opinion. And so it's such an amazing fun and also just interesting, like mentally stimulating thing to be doing, I think. And it really makes me think about the broader, like, you know, what is this going to look like in the future? Because...

The reason why it's so important to me to figure out how to get this model to work now is because I think a lot about the AI revolution, basically. I do think we're about to have mass waves of unemployment and figuring out how we can create a society in which we are able to truly value emotional labor, labor that is historically coded as feminine labor. 

You know, all of these things are things that we have not figured out how to appropriately price out in the market. And that's something we seriously need to figure out how to do. And I think it's extremely possible to do that because we have seen that happen with therapy, for example, in the last like 20 years. In the grand scheme of things, not that long a time period, right? But I feel like one, two generations ago, it was such a taboo to talk about therapy at all, right? Like to even say the word therapy. And now if you go on like Tinder, people will be like, don't even bother swiping if you're not in therapy. Like God forbid you're not in therapy. You know what I mean? Like, and so like that happened in a relatively short period of time. You know, like I totally think that that could happen for doulas. I think that can happen for death work and have it just be considered a norm that over time people are just like, well, of course someone's gonna help me with this. How would I possibly do this without support? You know.

Wakil  
Well, may it be so.

Isabelle Knight
That would be absurd, you know? I really think that that's gonna happen. I don't think it's even that far away.

Annalouiza  
Right. Well, it's having more of these conversations and alerting people that, yes, ask for help. We're here.

Wakil  
Mm -hmm.

Isabel Knight  
Yeah, totally.

Wakil  
Yeah, so cool. Great. Well, this is awesome. Thank you so much. Is there anything you wish we had asked we had asked you that we didn't cover in this wonderful conversation so far?

Isabel Knight  
That's a good question.

Yeah, I mean, I really think that we've covered a lot of the things I wanted to talk about. My main message to people is really just to start thinking actively about how all of this stuff applies to your own life. I think often death care people, as they're doing the work, I think it is sort of, like you see a lot of death care people who don't even necessarily have their own funeral plans and stuff like that because they're like, we're obviously all, plagued by the same things as everyone else who were just like, oh, you know, like whatever, but it's so fun. 

Like have a party, an advanced directive party, just sit down with your friends, make it happen. Because like you, you, you, you literally never know. Like even just having emergency, emergency contacts for like my roommates, for example, I didn't realize that I didn't have that until like yesterday. And like my roommate was in the hospital and I was like, oh shit, I really need to like make sure I have his like, parents' numbers and stuff like that. And that was just a wake -up call for me, because I was like, I'm the person who's always telling people to do this, and I need to do it too. So that's something that I've just been thinking about today in particular.

Annalouiza  
Yes. Yeah. And actually to go with that a couple of hours ago, I wrote down a list of my little list of things to do for parents with 18 year olds, kids who have just come out of high school. They don't have, if they don't have an advanced care directive plan, suddenly if they're in a hospital, it's really hard for parents to be...

Isabel Knight  
Right, they're not necessarily gonna tell you what's going on with your kid, because they're an adult.

Annalouiza
No. So it's, it behooves us to have a party for families with seniors, with kids, whatever, like 20 year olds, like we still...

It's time. The time is now. Yeah.

Wakil  
That's such a great important thing, yeah. The class that I do on end of life planning, we always, we say you should have an advanced care director if you're over 15 years old, right? And I think that's what you're getting at as well is that nobody's too young to start thinking about, you know, who are their emergency contacts? What do they want to have happen? And then also sharing it, I love the party you said, you know, have a party with your extended family with whoever's going to be doing this work with you and say and do it regularly. You know, it should be like your birthday party only your death party, you know, like what do you really want me to... what parts of this are you going to play with me and how do you want to participate? And yeah, I think that's so important.

Isabel Knight  
Right, and I think that the key to everything, to making everything easier, is to make it social. Like every possible thing that we tell people to do, like exercise more or whatever, it's like, okay, well how do you do that? You have to do it with your friends. Like you can't just expect that people will just wake up and like do it by themselves and like just grind and it's like this thing that like we don't wanna do, but we have to force ourselves to do. I really believe that if you just do it with other people, it just... It turns it from being this chore to being something that's actually a joy to do. Like that's true for almost everything. 

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Wakil  
Right? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. So true. Thank you so much. This is great.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, Isabel, thank you so much. Your a delight.

Isabel Knight  
Yeah, of course, no problem. 

Annalouiza  
As usual, we like to end with a poem. Today's poem comes from the poet Nezawa Coyle. Nezawa Coyle. Let's start again right there. This poet was a 15th century poet, warrior, and a ruler of the Aztec city state, Dezcoco.

Could it be true we live on earth? 
On earth forever? 
Just one brief instant here. 
Even the finest stones begin to split. 
Even gold is tarnished. 
Even precious bird plumes shrivel like a cough. 
Just one brief instant here.

Wakil  
Hmm, yeah, so real. I'll read it again. 

Could it be true we live on earth, 
on earth forever? 
Just one brief instant here. 
Even the finest stones begin to split. 
Even gold is tarnished. 
Even precious bird blooms shrivel like a cough. 
Just one brief instant here.

Annalouiza  
Mm. So good.

Wakil  
Yeah, so here forever but only for an instant at the same time. It's beautiful, beautiful. Well, thank you and thank you all for being here. Thank you, Isabelle.

Annalouiza  
Yes, thank you. Adios.