Friday love to you, my darling Vizzy D's! Writing to you from an Aussie Friday morning - and because I am an avid devotee to creating and protecting JOY as a crucial part of this work, I'm happy to report I'm running out the door for a gals' weekend away with my whole soccer team. Yup. Mums on the loose. Lock up your karaoke machines, they're about to take a pounding. 🎤😂 It's so important in this work that we counterweight the hard with the joyful. The heavy with the hilarious. The giving with the receiving. We can't pour from an empty cup, and we certainly can't make a whole career out of holding space for other people's grief without making room for our own joy. So, my darlings, what joyful thing are you going to make happen this weekend? Not what you should do. Not what needs ticking off the list. What are you going to do purely because it brings you joy? Tell me in the comments. Lets keep each other joyfully accountable. 🎶 YOU'RE INVITED: TO MY FUNERAL... My podcast episode of 'Play This At My Funeral' has dropped, and it's a pretty fun hour! We bang on for a bit at the beginning, but we eventually get into my actual funeral plan. I talk through, in DETAIL, how the soundtrack I've chosen will hold my beloveds from pre-arrival, through the ceremony, right through to the end and beyond. This was such a joyous exercise and conversation - I hope it inspires you to give your own ceremony plans, and especially your playlists, this level of thought. As we know, music can do so much heavy lifting in a funeral. It can hold what words can't. It can bring people together. It can even make people laugh when they least expect it... and it can absolutely send everyone out singing (or twerking.) 🎧 Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts: YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/WrUh6pGmUq4?si=D4nyNNH7GQKAfoFf&t=1446 APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funeral-director-amy-firth-helps-us-turn-death-into/id1849928558?i=1000797412637

9 MONTHS OF CREATIVE PRACTICE FOR FUNERAL MAKERS People so often ask me what funeral training I recommend. And for a long time, I’ve wished I could point them towards something that explores not just the practicalities of arranging a funeral, but the nuance, the complexity and the extraordinary responsibility of this work. Something that makes room for the creative possibilities. Something that challenges the cookie-cutter approach to funeral ceremony and invites us to imagine what else might be possible… Because no two lives are the same. No two griefs are the same. And how we hold this work should reflect that. A sudden death asks something different of us than a death anticipated for years. A family divided by faith, a complicated relationship, the death of a child or a person who died by suicide all bring their own questions, complexities and possibilities. I wanted to create a place to think deeply about this work, develop our creative judgement and learn from the possibilities others can see that we might not… We so rarely get to practise this work without a bereaved family sitting in front of us. But crafting ceremony is a creative practice and creative practice needs… well… practice. The Ceremony Exchange is my new online creative funeral studio, launching in November with monthly classes starting January 2027. Each month, we’ll explore a different fictional funeral scenario, designed to stretch our thinking and explore a particular nuance of grief, bereavement, family dynamics or the circumstances surrounding a death. Whether you're new to death care and want a place to practice, or you're a seasoned "Deathie" seeking new ideas and inspiration - The Ceremony Exchange is for those who want to go deeper into the creative practice of ceremony making. Exploring how we design bespoke, meaningful experiences that reflect the nuance of death & grief. How different lives, deaths, circumstances and family dynamics call for different approaches. It’s ALSO a place to literally EXCHANGE ceremony scripts & ideas. Together, we’re building a growing library of inspiration, language and imagination. A resource shaped not by one person’s expertise, but by the collective creativity of ceremony makers around the globe. In a world where AI is taking our language, The Ceremony Exchange is a place to return to each other and share in the quiet wisdom of this work.

Here we are. Weekly prompt #26. Which means we've been doing this dance together for SIX WHOLE MONTHS. 🎉 Half a year of showing up, putting ourselves out there, trying things, sharing our work, getting a little uncomfortable and making ourselves visible in a world that doesn't always make it easy. And my darling Vizzy D's, we're just getting started... I've got some BIG things VERY close to birthing, and I am SO excited to start sharing them with you. The very first sneak peek will be revealed in my newsletter this weekend, so if you're not signed up to that, what are you doing?! SIGN UP HERE: https://www.amyfirth.com/sign-up Otherwise, stay tuned. That's all I'm saying for now, but to keep it interesting I will give you a hint using these 7 emojis: 💐 ⚰️ 🎨 💭 ✍️ 🎓 🔄 (That was deceptively hard to choose - why do I do this to myself?! 😂) 🐦‍⬛ NOW. THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: I'm sharing a video short snippet from our 'Holding Families Through Assisted Dying' call a few weeks back. The full recording is now available in the Vizzy D Classroom and is absolutely worth a watch if you haven't caught up yet. But this particular clip? I hope it stirs something up in you. An idea. A question. A little spark of possibility. I'd genuinely LOVE to hear your thoughts, reflections and ideas in the comments below. And there's something else that's come out of this conversation that I'm particularly excited to share with you. I've been working on a resource I haven't been able to find in an Australian context: a guide to explaining voluntary assisted dying to children. How do we talk with children about VAD? What language can we use? How do we answer their questions honestly and safely? It's a resource I've wished existed, so I've had a crack at creating it myself. I'm still tinkering with it but you can read the current version here: https://www.amyfirth.com/blog-builder/explain-vad-to-children

If you work in death care - as a funeral celebrant, death doula, funeral director, interfaith minister or end of life carer - and you want to build your presence so the families who need you can actually find you, you're in exactly the right place. The community is free to join. With free & paid classes added all the time. And this is very much a living, growing thing - built for a global community of death workers doing things differently. Start by watching the welcome video here. Then have a look around, introduce yourself in the community feed, and let me know what you most want to learn... Welcome to The Visible Death Worker 👋 Really glad you're here. 🖤

Darling Vizzy D’s, Gather round friends, quick story time: I’m visiting my uncle and aunt at the moment and whilst taking a work call in the office, I spotted something on their desk. A name plate. My grandfather's. Feels like such a relic now, doesn't it? In these days of agile hot-desking and working from the kitchen table, who has a desk name plate anymore? But it was the line above his name that stopped me. ACCIDENT PREVENTION IS MY RESPONSIBILITY. He worked for Telecom Australia (which later became Telstra - a big telecommunications company). We don't actually know much about what he did there. But that little slogan got me thinking. If this was a thing that existed in our work - what would mine be? If I was sitting at a desk in the 60s with my name on a plate, what would sit above it? And what would yours be? Even if this was a corporate initiative to remind workers of their duties or priorities - what’s our version? I’d love to have asked him more about what it meant to him & how he spent his days… My Papa died in his early 60s, after a cancer that moved fast. I was 11. It was my first funeral. What I remember most about that whole time isn't actually the funeral itself. It's my Grandma. They were school sweethearts. They'd spent their whole lives together. A rare, true, deep love. And even as a kid, I watched the grief unravel her. Raw and up close. After my Papa died, she was still the grandma who showed up for everything. Our dance concerts. Our soccer games. She still hosted the big family Christmas. But she did it all choked with tears. It was clear she was loving us for both of them now. But his absence was unbearable, especially right up against the joy of their grandkids. He was missing all of it. I feel like it drowned her, in a way. She only lived a few more years. The medical certificates say she died from heart failure, but I have a vivid memory of a kind-faced doctor pulling the grandkids aside and explaining that Grandma had died of a broken heart. Whether he meant it in the medical or romantic sense I’m not sure - but it certainly planted a new truth in my young body - grief can kill you.