#30: Grief.

Begin with the end in mind.

When Karen reached out to introduce herself and her work as a death expert I was equally awed and a little taken aback. To proclaim oneself as a death expert feels immensely brave, as we live in a society that often avoids death and the associated grief at all costs. I was curious where this conversation would take us and it did not disappoint.

Karen quickly mentioned that she had watched my business come and go, she validated my loss while at the same time challenging my perspective on ‘working’ versus ‘staying home.’ She said, ‘it has been interesting to watch your space and the people that responded to it, the conversations that happened there because I had really wanted to be a stay-at-home parent although this option was never available for me.’

I immediately knew this conversation would take us somewhere prior conversations hadn’t, as I worked to bring Karen’s story to life without my own internal bias, without my own grief around giving up the life I had built while she would’ve liked to have had that same choice.

There is so much to be learned through Karen’s work and through her words, I hope her story gives you permission to evaluate the grief you may be carrying and to view your life in the same forward thinking way Karen views her own, beginning with the end in mind.

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Karen Karnatz has spent the past 25 years devoted and dedicated to death and dying. She is a certified Celebrant, certified Grief Support Specialist, and certified End-of-Life Doula. She has paved a path for herself in an industry that celebrates the thing we, as a society, try to ignore and found a way to infuse her natural gifts and talents to make her work and her impact even more meaningful; with a resume like hers, you might imagine that immersing herself fully in death work was her chosen path but she admitted she always imagined herself eventually able to leave her career to be a stay-at-home parent especially for the early years, although this version of her life never came to pass.

When she married her husband at the age of 22, he was 20 years older than her with two kids. Karen was adamant about adding one more child, but it would be another 8 years before the motherhood puzzle piece fell into place. She remembered telling her husband, years before eventually becoming a mother, that she wanted to stay home to raise their child. His response was ‘people don't stay home in California, everybody works.’ But she held firm to this desire for herself while working to build a solid foundation for the child they hoped to one day welcome into the world.

Prior to having kids, Karen and her husband bought a bed and breakfast in Lakeport, CA to be closer to family and to build something of their very own. She continued to work at a nearby funeral home while helping to run the bed and breakfast before eventually losing that business to foreclosure. She said that losing their first business left her devastated and almost killed her emotionally, as she thought she would die from the embarrassment and pain.

They walked away with some hard earned lessons, but landed back on their feet due in part to her career. Karen and her husband ultimately realized that they couldn’t have had a baby while running a bed and breakfast and closing that business created space for their child to ultimately arrive. Despite her own well-spoken desire to stay home, she said that being a stay at home parent wasn't ultimately what was most important to her, to them, at that time.

With the bed and breakfast closed and her managing the funeral home, it was her husband who became the stay at home parent, by default. She said that it was the lack of choice coupled with her own expectations about what her life might look like that ultimately hurt her the most. It was difficult for her personally because she had wanted to stay home so badly and then a parent was staying home within her family and it wasn't her. She went on to explain that didn't feel like she had control over that situation, as they had to do what worked for their family at the time.

While staying home wasn’t available to her, the fact that her husband was staying home allowed her to grow her career and she spent years climbing the corporate ladder before unlocking her own purpose. She described her experience working as the district manager for a funeral corporation and how she was always driven to do the next thing, to take the next job, to keep climbing. Karen comes from a long line of headstrong women and said that it is in her nature to be in charge, in many ways she feels that she is fulfilling that nature by providing for her family and running the household while her husband takes care of their son, even though it wasn’t her first choice.

She added that she is grateful for her husband who is supportive of everything that she does and who has been available for her son all these years. She noted that she is relieved that her son has always had someone at home, even though it hasn’t been her. She described her family as a solid trio, six legs on the ground at all times. She said she feels good about the piece that they all play in their family unit and is proud of how far they have all come.

She went on to share that she was a foster mom of a teenager at one point, and it caused her to do research on childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACES). She found a book called The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, which highlighted the importance of community. The book tells several stories of kids who experienced trauma and how that manifested into their lives, but the one that hit the hardest was a story of a boy with no moral compass. A boy who was completely broken, despite having a brother who functioned normally. The story explained how the first brother was raised by a mother who had support and a community, so as a baby he was always nurtured. When the family moved away from their support network and a second son was born, his mother did not have the help she needed to raise a healthy baby. He was left alone, often crying for hours at a time. Without proper nurturing, the second baby boy broke. She said this story always reminds her that we can't and we shouldn't do it alone, we are meant to be supported by others and we need to figure out what our support system looks like. She said the biggest cup filler is community.

She added that she always felt called towards foster and adoption. She met her foster through a shared extracurricular activity and went from weekend visits to in-home foster care for over a year. He is on his own now but they are still close and she still supports him. She added that it is difficult work but it helps you understand people, and the trauma response better. She added that she thinks experiences that help you broaden your perspective are beneficial and that she is open to the adoption of a toddler in the future and believe’s it will happen if it is meant to be.

Karen lives by the motto, begin with the end in mind. This idea that we should always be asking ourselves ‘what do we want people to say at our funerals’ and ‘how do we want to show up at the end of our lives?’ These questions helped her to ultimately realize what was most important to her, which is taking her varied experience in death work and applying it to educating people about death and dying. She said she has seen varying levels of emotions when someone arrives at the funeral home and has a strong desire to help people feel empowered in that space. To help people reclaim the process, know their options, understand the laws, and ultimately make the process easier.

She started truly unlocking her natural gifts and talents when her company sent her to train to become a Celebrant, an officiant for funerals. Her training gave her a taste of what it really means to help people, to serve in a bigger way. She realized that while the other stuff is valuable, the thing that she does really well is storytelling - sitting down, listening and hearing stories, then weaving it together to create a 360 view of the person she is celebrating, complete with all the nuances.

While she has fulfilled many roles during her time in funeral service, it is her work creating and executing celebrations of life that ultimately unlocked her purpose and helped her to recognize her own desire to serve in a bigger way. To stand at the front of the room at a celebration of life and have people truly riveted. To take them up and down and ultimately on a really satisfying journey. Her goal is to always have someone come up to her at the end of a service and say how long did you know him when in reality they never met.

She likens it to a faceted diamond, with the family giving her the big picture and the friends filling in the gaps. An opportunity for everyone in attendance to feel like she spoke directly to their relationships with the deceased. She wants people to have that experience, that ritual and explains that it is such a powerful experience. She went on to say that this work is incredibly fulfilling, that if she could do it everyday, she would. She added that everyones lives are so interesting. Everyone has a story worth telling and people want to feel the significance of their person, the person they have lost.

The flip side of this is that celebrant services are not part of her ‘real job,’ rather only done when she can find the time. This work is also extremely labor intensive as she spends hours on the phone with family members and friends who are grieving the one they lost, coupled with hours of writing the service, before driving to and from the location to offer her service.

She noted that her work shifted in the midst of the pandemic, not only were most funeral services shut down, but everywhere she looked she witnessed grief. She went on to explain that we, as a society, we were already bad at grieving dead people pre-pandemic, and the more she witnessed people yelling at each other on facebook or out in the world, the more she recognized the collective grief we were all carrying, as anger is a manifestation of grief. She ultimately realized that we were all going to be carrying pandemic grief for years to come and that she wanted to be equipped to help in some small way. To help people honor the residual damage, without sweeping it under the rug, helping people to figure out a way to use it or at least acknowledge it.

She said, “the pandemic leveled everyone,” everyone had to look at their life and she was encouraged to see people examine their life and make changes. When she asked herself what she would need in this moment to feel good if she died, it was educating people and being a resource around death and dying. To put herself and her work out there, to serve people and live in alignment with her true self, using what god gave her. She went on to add that it doesn't need to be grand thing or make a lot of money, but that we must lean into it. Finding the balance between offering her unique gifts, being in service, finding personal fulfillment, and paying the bills.

When Karen asked herself what she would need in this moment to feel good if she died, it was educating people and being a resource around death and dying. To put herself and her work out there, to serve people and live in alignment with her true self, using what god gave her.

For her that looked like taking courses, putting up a new website, and writing on Substack

The Field Guide to Living Well and Dying Better

while continuing to manage her corporate responsibilities. In 2020, she studied to receive a Grief Support Specialist certification from the University of Wisconsin and her End of Life Doula certification from the University of Vermont.

She launched Mourning Space as a safe place to be sad about anything, a place where you can take whatever grief you have and feel honored in where you are in the moment. She quoted Bruce Goddard stating that her ultimate goal is to “Give others the gift of significance.” If we gave people the gift of significance, if we can recognize the humanity in others, the world would be a better place.

When asked where she saw that piece of your business taking her, her first response was, I don’t know. And then I reminded her that she did know, because ‘we’ always know deep down but don't give ourselves permission to bridge the gap between where we are and where our dreams might take us. I also reminded her that she told me she ‘begins with the end in mind’ and then she replied that she has big plans for herself and for Mourning Space and that she is currently working with a book coach to bring the first part of that vision to life.

Karen is often regarded as a resource for death and dying, but she wrote Fire Under the Night Sky as a resource to create space to process our prior versions of ourselves, to grieve and recognize the death and dying that happens within ourselves within our lifetime. Karen married her background in funeral services with her own experience grieving parts and pieces of herself. Expanding on her own death and dying expertise to help people mourn and grieve both the living and the dead.

Fire Under the Night Sky is available for purchase on here.

She went on to explain that Fire Under the Night Sky may not be applicable in all situations of loss, but it is incredibly powerful in addressing habits that you do repeatedly, by giving them a name to honoring the grief you have for losing them. She explained that she had a long history of food problems and thanks to the help of her therapist she identified that she was an emotional eater, she had tried to cope by doing hard things like running marathons instead of tackling the issue head on.

Once she recognized there was grief involved, she knew she needed an opportunity to mourn. An expert in creating funeral ceremonies, Karen set out to create a similar ritual to mourn with intention the loss of her emotional crutch. She wrote Fire Under the Night Sky as a tool to help others let go of things that no longer serve them.

When asked what advice would you give to your younger self? Karen responded by saying, “It doesn't stop at 40, you have to keep going…” She recommends women pace themselves, and noted that she slogged so hard through her 20-30s to get to a place where she wanted to be, only to realize it was just a ledge. She pointed upward and said, “the real work is way up there,” adding that she mistakenly thought it would've paid off in a different way by now.

She went on to say that she is happy where she is so far, but it is far from over. Every moment she checks in to ask herself if she is doing the thing that would make her happy with herself and with what she has done. Her answer today is yes, because she is making sure she is fulfilled.

Karen’s story gives us permission to grieve. I walked away with a deeper understanding about the importance of grieving, both for others and within ourselves. You are allowed to grieve the life you left behind and the versions of yourself you may or may not have been or become.

Karen also highlights the importance of making the most of your journey, she easily could’ve held on to her frustration and grief when staying home wasn’t available to her, but instead she challenged herself to find more fulfillment and grew her work in a direction that ultimately pushed her and her purpose forward, helping countless others along the way.

I find myself repeatedly asked myself the questions Karen reflects on in her own life:

• What do you want people to say at your funeral?

• How do you want to show up at the end of your life?

• What do I need to do today to die without regrets?

Before our conversation ended, Karen told me that by capturing and sharing women’s stories, I am actually validating or tacking disenfranchised grief. She went on to explain that she was really bummed that she couldn’t be a stay at home parent, the same way one might grieve the life they used to have pre-kids. Disenfranchised grief is the grief that you feel that is not validated by other people, grief that not everyone will understand.

As someone who recently grieved the death of my business and has grieved the loss of my own identity time and time again, I was inspired by Karen’s work and her perspective in honoring our individual grief and creating space for more of these conversations to happen. By sharing stories that allow people to acknowledge the grief they are feeling and giving people a voice to their grief that they may not feel like they are able to share, collectively we will be stronger and hopefully a bit more understanding of each other.

I am immensely grateful to Karen for her time, her perspective, and her words. To support Karen and her work visit her website Mourning Space, purchase her book Fire Under the Night Sky, and follow her along with her writing here on Substack

The Field Guide to Living Well and Dying Better

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