All Up in It with coach SB Rawz

tending the fires of grief & legacy with Sarah Hines

Episode Summary

After an adulthood of gathering firewood in places as diverse as death care to the corporate world, Sarah Hines has kindled the fire in her business, Grief Advocacy. In this AUII conversation, Sarah shares how she sees grief as a reminder of what is important to us, and legacy as a natural consequence of our way of being in the world.

Episode Notes

About Sarah Hines | Firekeeper, grief advocate, parent, friend

Sarah has spent 25 years serving those that end of life. She has learned so much from the people she has served and has determined that it's not grief we need to heal but our relationship to it, that community care is self-care and that death belongs in the hands of love. you can find her work at www.griefadvocacy.com

Sarah highlighted The National Home Funeral Alliance. They support people in creating funerals and burials that are more personal, intimate, ecologically-sound, and financially accessible where legal.

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Key moments in the conversation include…

…how Sarah describes herself as a human:

• She’s a firekeeper, in a lodge, stirring a pot, a little inward, waiting for people to come to sit down by the fire and have some soup and have a conversation about whatever comes up
• Someone who has the ability to hold onto the space where others are supposed to be
• Until recently, she’s felt like a gatherer of wood. About a year ago, she started feeling a sense that it’s time to stop gathering and make the fire
• Who sees other people as integral to her self-discover process, that it’s in interacting with others that have guided her to what wood to gather and fire to start

…what Sarah is all up in:

• Her company, Grief Advocacy, is about building a relationship with grief such that we can see it as a reminder of what is importance to us
• Writing her love letter – her legacy – to all of the things that are super important to her and that grief has taught her. This is the fire she’s building
• Legacy, to Sarah, is how we be in the world, how we interact with others and that we don’t always know what it’s going to be. She shares a moving story of her best friend, who died unexpectedly in 2015, and how her legacy in Sarah’s life shows up
• How going to the edge of our knowledge, understanding, comfort is where we find the next learning, the next experiment
• Sarah distinguishes between the discomfort of Wrong Direction! and the discomfort of Something New through intuition

…her tools include:

• Community for the external processing including networking
• Writing
• Spending time in the past, even if it slips into rumination, including with the legacy of her ancestors
• A light touch on the future, holding onto what’s most important to her
• An expansive definition of grief
• Surrounding herself with people and ideas that are wildly diverse to create healthy adversity, focusing on having really great conversations rather than changing minds

…the non-profit he chose to highlight was:

The National Home Funeral Alliance. They support people in creating funerals and buriers that are more personal, intimate, ecologically-sound, and financially accessible where legal.