After the death of my Uncle Paul at age five, I became curious and intrigued with grief and healing. My dad and I would go to the mortuary on Saturdays to learn more from John Meis, owner and funeral director at Paramount Mortuary. Mr. Meis taught me that grief work requires heart, not just logistics.

Ten years later, my dad took a leave of absence from the ministry and managed a mortuary. Living above the mortuary with my parents, death wasn't abstract to me. It was the business downstairs. It was the families who came through our doors. It was my education in what society validates as "real" grief.

I spent over 30 years working in the funeral industry and became a licensed funeral director. Through the years, I have received loved ones at homes and hospitals, dressing them, caring for them, guiding families from the moment we received their loved one into our care through to final burial or cremation. I held space for over 1,000 families through the grief that gets obituaries, casseroles, condolences, and sympathy cards.

But I also carried my own invisible grief.

MICHELE'S STORY

At age 9, my best friend Michele Parker was murdered, just two weeks before her 9th birthday. For 56 years, I held that loss in silence. Who talks about a childhood friend's death decades later? Who validates that kind of carried grief?

In 2025, at age 66, I finally visited Michele's grave in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was marked: "Our Little Rosebud." That moment changed everything.

I realized: Every loss deserves to be seen. Not just the deaths that get funerals. Not just the losses that society deems "worthy" of grief. Every. Single. Loss.