Transcript
Speaker: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host Jennifer Muldowney aka the Glam Reaper herself.
Speaker: On today's episode I meet another fabulously named woman, the Grave Woman and as quiet in some ways as that name sounds, Joelle is anything...
Speaker: but quiet.
Speaker: And today we're talking diversity, culture within the funeral community and getting women seen on stage.
Speaker: Let's take it away.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I am very excited.
Speaker: I love when I get somebody on my podcast that has a kind of a nickname like I do.
Speaker: So while I'm known as the Glam Reaper, I have as my guest today, the Grave Woman.
Speaker: So now I have a question.
Speaker: Is it Joelle or Joel or tell me about your name.
Speaker: Tell me about yourself, but tell me about your name.
Speaker: It's Joelle.
Speaker: Thank you for asking.
Speaker: Joelle.
Speaker: Lovely.
Speaker: No problem.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So, Joelle, you are the grave woman.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: I want to know where you got your name and what do you do?
Speaker: Tell us about you and your fabulousness.
Speaker: OK, so I'll start with a story.
Speaker: The name is actually a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker: I drew a picture when I was eight years old in this very house that I'm in right now, which is my grandmother's house.
Speaker: She and my grandfather built this house 50 years ago.
Speaker: And we used to have what we call nonny day camp.
Speaker: During the summer, you know, you're out of school, you go play, watch TV, sleep all day.
Speaker: Not us.
Speaker: We were in nonny day camp.
Speaker: My grandmother was an educator.
Speaker: So she believed in feeding our minds, even though we weren't in school.
Speaker: So we'd go outside and do art projects.
Speaker: And I love to draw.
Speaker: So I draw.
Speaker: And I drew a picture of myself standing in a cemetery in front of a microphone with these bold red lips.
Speaker: And on the side, it said, I am the grave woman.
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: I have no recollection of drawing this picture, none whatsoever.
Speaker: And it wasn't until I was about to graduate mortuary school in 2012 that my sister found a scrapbook that my grandmother had made for my high school graduation.
Speaker: And the second page was this picture of myself saying I'm the grave woman, but the craziest part is, Jennifer, I had started a blog in mortuary school as a way to vent.
Speaker: called the grave woman.
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I need no recollection of this.
Speaker: I have no recollection.
Speaker: The picture's actually on my Instagram.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the freakiest thing.
Speaker: And it was dated September 11th, 1994, right?
Speaker: Prior to going to mortuary school, I worked in a cemetery and I started seeing the date 9-11 or the number 9-11.
Speaker: That was my first introduction to numerology.
Speaker: I started seeing 9-11.
Speaker: I started mortuary school in September 2011, which was 9-11.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: The same number from the photo.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: It's not nearly as clear of a fortune telling story.
Speaker: Like, that's amazing.
Speaker: Mine is, I mean, the glamour was totally given to me by the media, but I actually, I'm convinced I was destined for this my whole entire life because even as a child, when I used to practice my handwriting and then calligraphy and stuff, I practiced an epitaph.
Speaker: from a headstone.
Speaker: And I like I still remember to this day.
Speaker: It's like a beautiful little poem about.
Speaker: Well, actually, very tragically, like, I mean, I kind of wonder if it was about dead children.
Speaker: It's a beautiful piece.
Speaker: And obviously, it's very heartbreaking and sad.
Speaker: But yeah, that's what I used to practice.
Speaker: And and then even like and I joke about this so much, but like then even as a teenager, as most Irish people do, we went to work.
Speaker: You work quite young, I guess here, but like 14, 15 years old.
Speaker: And I went to work in a bar and the bar was called The Morgue.
Speaker: I know not quite the same but like when I started adding it all up I was like wait a second this is kind of adding up a little bit um so that's amazing and so what um if it wasn't that what drew you into this business definitely definitely so um
Speaker: I had an uncle that was a mortician and he would come home for holidays and I would go visit him in Florida for like spring breaks and the weekends and things like that.
Speaker: And he'd answer all my questions.
Speaker: I've always been morbidly curious.
Speaker: Like you, you probably get it.
Speaker: Like there is this energy that's in the death care arena that just draws me.
Speaker: My culture is very centered on death and ancestors and the connection that we have to the afterlife.
Speaker: But my uncle was really, really, really instrumental because he not only answered my questions, but he also took me into the funeral home, took me into the embalming room, took me into the arrangement conferences with him and let me basically shadow and learn from him.
Speaker: And my first...
Speaker: acquaintance with death was through my great grandmother.
Speaker: I would, I remember being a very little child and asking everyone around her or us, us at the funeral, why is she laying in this bed box?
Speaker: Who put her in there?
Speaker: Who did her makeup?
Speaker: Why are we watching her sleep?
Speaker: If she's asleep, why is she going to, why are we putting her in the ground?
Speaker: Why are we covering her with dirt?
Speaker: So I've always had that curiosity.
Speaker: And then tragically a friend, my first best friend died accidentally.
Speaker: And I,
Speaker: It's just always been fascinating to me.
Speaker: And so that curiosity and that fascination turned into research, turned into shadowing my uncle, that turned into, hey, I want to go to the funeral home.
Speaker: Where I grew up, Beaufort, South Carolina, where I live now, my family spent a lot of time
Speaker: in the church, right?
Speaker: And a big part of the mission service that my mother and my grandmothers and aunts did was taking care of people when they were passing away, basically doulaship.
Speaker: But there wasn't, they didn't call it that and taking care of their families.
Speaker: So, I mean, it's just been all around me my entire life.
Speaker: My dad used to take us to the graveyard to spend time, like have picnics with our ancestors that it passed on.
Speaker: So it's like, I don't know
Speaker: if it's a draw or if it's just a level of existence.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It definitely, you, you, you hit the nail on the head or the nail in the coffin.
Speaker: And as they say that in death care, it is, there is kind of something just innate in us.
Speaker: And what, what,
Speaker: don't want to say irritates me, but what does irritate me a little bit is this idea that we're all goths or that we're all sort of, you know, wear black all the time.
Speaker: And we're this kind of, you know, and yeah, sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: There are some of us that are morbid, curious in that way.
Speaker: And that's, you know, we wear it and that's our identity and stuff like that.
Speaker: But there's also, as you know, I met you at the NFDA and
Speaker: There's also those of us in pink suits and red lips and, you know, and bright colors and we're just different.
Speaker: And it's one of the things I get, I absolutely know from meeting you that you get it, is that people kind of look at you and go, but you're not sad and morbid all the time.
Speaker: You don't whisper.
Speaker: What's going on here?
Speaker: And so, yeah, it is.
Speaker: There's definitely there is that draw within all of us, but we are all so different.
Speaker: And I kind of I want to shed more light like I've infamously on my Instagram picture of.
Speaker: lurch from the Adams family I think it is and me in a red dress roaring laughing you know and it's just the difference you know because that's the lurch in the Adams family and oh god there's a new series now I think I call Wednesday or whatever but the Adams family are back and cool but like that's what people historically sort of think of when they think of anybody from the funeral community now what is it that you do and what does the grave woman you know do you do and you know your business what is it that you provide to people
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: So I am a licensed mortician, funeral director, and bomber, all of those things.
Speaker: But my practice now is more so on education.
Speaker: I create continuing education courses for funeral directors.
Speaker: I create what I call grief alchemy sessions and courses and workshops for the public.
Speaker: And my mission is really to have open and honest conversation about death and grief.
Speaker: And I refer to myself as a sacred grief practitioner.
Speaker: So it's twofold.
Speaker: I educate the death care community about inclusion, diversity, the spiritual aspect of the work that we do and about cultural competence.
Speaker: But on the other side, for the families, for the general public, for those that are experiencing loss or just curious about life and death and how to navigate grief in between, I help alchemize loss and grief and turn it into purpose.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And and you've I you know, on your website, you've so many courses and resources, ebooks and things like that, that people should definitely check it out.
Speaker: Thegravewoman.com.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I always have to double check.
Speaker: My memory is terrible.
Speaker: And yeah, there's lots of really great resources on there.
Speaker: But talk to me a little bit more.
Speaker: Obviously, as a female anyway, it's fascinating and was fascinating coming into this industry, I call it funeral community, whatever.
Speaker: How do you feel like diversity wise?
Speaker: Like, what's your experience?
Speaker: I'm obviously from Ireland, so I'm fresh if ish to it in the United States.
Speaker: But what are your thoughts and what?
Speaker: teachings do you have to kind of bring to educate people on on the funeral community and diversity within us because it is typically antiquated white male.
Speaker: It's definitely antiquated white male.
Speaker: I mean, it is what it is.
Speaker: In mortuary school here, we don't learn anything but how to care for white people that
Speaker: celebrate life and funeralize and memorialize their loved ones in a very Eurocentric way.
Speaker: So for me as a black woman coming into this industry, I didn't really have a lot of people to look up to online that look like me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so believe it or not, Caitlin was actually the one that encouraged me to make my YouTube channel, turn my blog into a YouTube channel.
Speaker: And I did that and I realized that there were more people like me.
Speaker: And what I also realized going to mortuary school is that they don't talk about us.
Speaker: They don't talk about our culture.
Speaker: And when I say us, I don't want to place
Speaker: BIPOC individuals into one box because we're so individual.
Speaker: We're so nuanced.
Speaker: There's so many caveats to who we are as people, right?
Speaker: But there's no care, no educational care for our hair, our makeup, our culture at the end of life.
Speaker: And that's what I bring to the table.
Speaker: I don't know everything, but because of the experience I've had working in the industry for almost 15 years and because of
Speaker: My experience as a Black woman, I feel like I have the right to speak on those things and shed light on the lack of diversity in the industry.
Speaker: Also, as a woman, it's let's just take being a Black woman out of it.
Speaker: Being a woman in this industry was a total culture shock for me.
Speaker: Because remember, I used to go to the funeral home with my uncle, who was a protector, who loved me, who cared about me.
Speaker: Experiencing things like sexism, sexual advances, unwanted sexual advances from men, or just being told that I couldn't perform this job because I was a woman was, it pissed me off.
Speaker: Frankly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know that fire.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: It's wild to me.
Speaker: And it's wild on so many levels.
Speaker: You know, I can only speak from like we all can only speak from our own experiences and our own cultural.
Speaker: But it's fascinating to me because originally, originally women were the caretakers of the dead.
Speaker: You know, and that's so fascinating, but it's like money came into it and suddenly we were shimmied back to the kitchen stove and business.
Speaker: And now from what I'm hearing, we're taking it back.
Speaker: I believe 70 percent of more Tereskill students are women winning.
Speaker: But even like to your to your point, like.
Speaker: it's mind boggling that in 2022, that in mortuary school, like medical school, like it's still a part of medicine.
Speaker: As far as I'm concerned, it's just the final part.
Speaker: Um, that, that care and that cultural, exactly as you said, hair alone.
Speaker: Um, I have, you know, uh, uh,
Speaker: it's makeup like most funeral homes that I have visited.
Speaker: You know, I know that they only have the white, ridiculously pale, pasty makeup.
Speaker: And I mean, oh, it's just it should never have been the case, to be honest.
Speaker: It should never have been that this is all that we have because
Speaker: you know, the world is and it always fascinates me in America because it's so it's so made up of immigrants that it's it has honed into this sort of white male very so
Speaker: And it, you know, I am learning of I've never gone through mortuary school because I'm not a funeral director, I'm not a licensed funeral director, nor do I want to be.
Speaker: And even though I've had people say, oh, you know, you should do it to try and understand or.
Speaker: And I'm like, no, that's that's.
Speaker: thank you but no that's not my forte and that's not where I see my skills or whatever um so I've never been through it um I've obviously read all the books and done all that but I've never had to sit down and do somebody's makeup and do somebody's hair and exactly that I mean it's just it's crazy to me so um I'm delighted that you're standing up and that so many others are standing up um
Speaker: Because even, you know, and we kind of touched on it, but like even sexuality in the workplace, homosexuality, I mean, of all types.
Speaker: But, you know, I'm just going to speak on that because I have experience with friends in that.
Speaker: You know, we've got cultural differences and we've got sexual preferences and stuff.
Speaker: And it's just.
Speaker: I need to nearly start saying it's such an antiquated white male, white straight male business, because that's really what it is.
Speaker: And everyone else is sort of made to feel like you're on the periphery and you don't get to vote.
Speaker: You don't get a say.
Speaker: So I think absolutely, you know, the community needs more voices like you.
Speaker: Now on that, do you find you?
Speaker: in sort of the national conventions where we met and, you know, the very those various different conventions and the annual conventions.
Speaker: Do you get a stage and do you find your your your they're open to that or are they still pushing back on things?
Speaker: You know, what's interesting, this was actually the first year that I attended any conventions.
Speaker: I've been licensed since 2018 in the funeral industry since 2010.
Speaker: But
Speaker: This was my first year attending convention and I actually attended a workshop, I guess, an open mic session that was hosted by the American Board of Funeral Service Education and the conference exam, which is the exam we have to take here in the States in order to be recognized as a licensee, right?
Speaker: We have to take and pass.
Speaker: And I brought up the fact that their curriculum is basically failing students and failing families.
Speaker: because it's non-inclusive of culture, race, diversity of any kind.
Speaker: Even Melissa, the modern mortician, spoke up about there not being any green education in mortuary schools.
Speaker: And we were literally shrugged off by both the American Board of Funeral Service Education and the conference exam.
Speaker: We were shrugged off, literally shrugged off.
Speaker: So do I receive recognition or a stage of
Speaker: There, no.
Speaker: However, professionals, students, the online community, that's who cares about this message and that's who this message is impacting.
Speaker: And to me, that's really all I care about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To be honest, because the students want more.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: It does sadden me.
Speaker: As in, it's great that you're getting those words anyway, but it saddened me that these national associations aren't kind of giving the stage to people.
Speaker: I don't want to be like, because I actually hate these words that are coming out of my mouth, but like the people that look like you.
Speaker: I hate even saying that, like I kind of want to vomit, but like, it's just like, to me, like, I don't want to...
Speaker: I try and kind of keep diplomacy whenever I'm talking to guests, but I do get a bit annoyed.
Speaker: And I've spoken to several attendees at the conventions and stuff where I'm like, it just needs to be a bit more diverse.
Speaker: Like there needs to be younger people up there, younger people with more energy.
Speaker: Like I've gone to so many workshops where I'm half falling asleep because it's
Speaker: you know, not to again using, and I really do, I'm allergic to kind of any of these boxing types, but like the Karens, like, you know, up on stage and I'm just like, oh my God, Snoresville, like, boss, there's nothing new with what you're saying.
Speaker: I'm going to sleep.
Speaker: Or the guy who's like profusely sweating and, you know, just should not be up there at all.
Speaker: Really frustrating when there's new people and, you know, like,
Speaker: yeah i don't want to name kind of names to to drag them into this conversation because it's not their you know they're not saying words i've literally been sitting beside people where i know who have hello podcasts and i'm just we're all like what there's nothing new in what you're saying here this is not revolutionary there's nothing changing so um that kind of angers me i have to say um
Speaker: That was a great, if not be it short, episode of the Glamoury podcast.
Speaker: We ran into a few technical difficulties, but we are definitely hoping to get the Grave Woman on again and maybe even in person.
Speaker: We would love to see her on stage.
Speaker: I definitely think diversity is a huge issue within the funeral community.
Speaker: as it is worldwide as we know and we are here for it we are here to support and do what we can uh we would love to hear any thoughts and comments you have in the box below or just generally contact us or joelle on social media we'll leave all the links below we'll talk to you next time
