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Six Feet Under Pressure: A Legacy's Burden in the Funeral Industry
6 Plays10 months ago
In this part 1 episode of the Glam Reaper podcast, Jennifer Muldowney welcomes Caleb Wilde, a prominent funeral director, author and early adopter on social media and as a 'death-influencer’.
Caleb is a sixth-generation funeral director and the conversation delves into cultural sensitivity in America, funeral planning and he discusses his upbringing and familial influences that propelled him into this profession.
Through candid exchanges, Jennifer and Caleb offer listeners a glimpse into the complex tapestry of funeral directing, navigating personal convictions, familial legacies, and industry dynamics with empathy and insight.
Tune in to hear first hand from the man himself some confessions of a funeral director!
Key Topics:
-Funeral directing with a sixth-generation expert
-Reality in Growing up in a family funeral home
-Transparency and authenticity in the funeral industry
-Generational differences in funeral practices
-Navigating tradition and change in funeral world
Quotes From The Episode:
We're being changed and molded by the Internet and by globalization.
- Caleb Wilde
I sort of started this podcast because I wanted to have these really interesting conversations with people.
- Jennifer Muldowney
Timestamp:
[00:00] Podcast Intro
[03:08] Caleb discussed growing up in a family of funeral directors.
[08:18] Caleb started "Confessions of a Funeral Director" to find their own voice and self-expression amid the challenges of working in a family-run funeral business.
[12:24] Caleb shares how he transitioned from writing about theology to focusing on death and the funeral industry.
[17:26] Jennifer delves into her motivations for starting the podcast.
[21:38] Caleb reviewed the generational gap within the funeral industry.
[27:02] Outro
Connect with Caleb Wilde:
Facebook - /ConfessionsofaFuneralDirector
Website - book.calebwilde.com
Instagram - @confessions_of_a_funeral_dir
Twitter - @CalebWilde
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper on socials at:
Facebook Page - Memorials
https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials
Email us - glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
Listen to The Glam Reaper Podcast on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-glam-reaper-podcast/id1572382989?i=1000525524145
You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWe3sNoPny6UsMGYoYDeXfw
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Jennifer and Caleb
00:00:00
Speaker
It's very difficult to not lose yourself in other people's grief and the grief work that you see going on around you.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm your host Jennifer Muldowney who is very not glam today because I am suffering with cold, allergies, one of the above, we don't know.
00:00:33
Speaker
Ever since I got to this country like nine years ago I've discovered that allergies are a whole thing.
00:00:38
Speaker
So yeah, so we're not feeling so glam, not feeling so hot but I have my Irish lemsip here which is keeping me going and I am really excited about today's guest.
00:00:47
Speaker
I have to tell you I've followed him for years, not in the weird stalker sense but
00:00:51
Speaker
Kind of, maybe.
00:00:52
Speaker
I don't know how far you pushed that.
00:00:54
Speaker
But I'm super, super, super excited to have the very famous, very, and I'm hoping we'll have some confessions from a funeral director.
00:01:02
Speaker
Welcome, Caleb Wilde.
00:01:04
Speaker
Well, thank you for having me.
00:01:06
Speaker
And I do not have what you're drinking.
00:01:08
Speaker
I just have water.
00:01:11
Speaker
I should put something in it.
00:01:13
Speaker
It might help me be a little bit more, you know, as we were talking about, I'm not a morning person, so it takes me a long time to wake up.
Cultural Reflections on Ireland
00:01:21
Speaker
to get going well that's a lot of cobwebs yeah listen i hear you i'm not a morning person myself and i i have a tendency to send emails at like one and two in the morning because i'm a night owl right but i'm not i just want to clarify well this is an irish drink it's 11 a.m that we're filming this it is not i'm not going to be the stereotypical irish there is no whiskey in this okay everybody just wants to clarify maybe at some point later in the day yeah well if my whiskey was close to me i would grab it right now
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, you're talking to an Irish person.
00:01:52
Speaker
And to be fair, when we're recording this, we've just come out of St.
00:01:55
Speaker
Patrick's weekend.
00:01:56
Speaker
So that would be allowed, I feel.
00:01:59
Speaker
Like an Irish.
00:01:59
Speaker
It'd fall on a Sunday, which is almost the ideal day.
00:02:04
Speaker
Exactly.
00:02:04
Speaker
Well, thank you for saying that, because I don't understand why the parade, the parade in New York City.
00:02:09
Speaker
Well, I do understand why it was on the Saturday because the New York half marathon or something was on the Sunday.
00:02:13
Speaker
I'm like, sorry, the New York half marathon needs to move for the Irish, not the other way.
00:02:18
Speaker
No, that doesn't make sense at all.
00:02:20
Speaker
No, and it crossed over with the Irish rugby game.
00:02:24
Speaker
Like, a huge, the final of the Six Nations, a huge sporting event in Ireland.
00:02:30
Speaker
So most actual Irish people were watching the game instead of being at the parade.
00:02:34
Speaker
Anyway, I could rant for a while about that.
00:02:37
Speaker
But anyway, Caleb.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's very culturally insensitive.
00:02:41
Speaker
Yes!
00:02:41
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:44
Speaker
We're very good at that, though.
00:02:45
Speaker
You've been here nine years.
00:02:46
Speaker
LAUGHTER
00:02:48
Speaker
Well, we just impose culture if we don't listen to culture.
00:02:53
Speaker
I like that.
00:02:54
Speaker
Actually, I like that.
00:02:55
Speaker
That's funny.
00:02:56
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:02:57
Speaker
Anyway, so, Caleb, welcome to the Glamour Reaper podcast.
00:03:01
Speaker
Tell me, and it is, it's a very large question, and I'm hoping I can take some breathing space to drink my Lemsip here and maybe blow
Caleb's Funeral Director Legacy
00:03:09
Speaker
my nose.
00:03:09
Speaker
Who knows?
00:03:09
Speaker
Apologies.
00:03:10
Speaker
I won't.
00:03:11
Speaker
But tell us, how did Confessions of a Funeral Director come about?
00:03:14
Speaker
How did you, your sixth generation funeral director, do you want to maybe take us through the family stuff first up to how, I guess, family,
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, I am a thoroughbred.
00:03:24
Speaker
So on both sides of my family, paternal side, I'm a sixth generation, maternal side, I'm a fifth generation.
00:03:30
Speaker
Wow.
00:03:32
Speaker
And I was constantly manipulated is the word that I use now.
00:03:38
Speaker
Encouraged was the word that I would have used previously to enter the funeral business.
00:03:44
Speaker
And yeah, so both sides of the family, thoroughbred, undertaker.
00:03:50
Speaker
So far, no superpowers, which I'm disappointed in.
00:03:55
Speaker
You would think that all the formaldehyde over the years would perhaps have given me some type of x-ray vision or maybe laser eyes.
00:04:03
Speaker
It'll probably just give me cancer, which is disappointing.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
Well, another 10 years, 20.
00:04:12
Speaker
So you were born into the funeral space.
00:04:15
Speaker
Do you have siblings?
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:17
Speaker
Two younger sisters.
00:04:19
Speaker
And of course, none of the females.
00:04:22
Speaker
And I say, of course, because we know this industry is misogynistic.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so the only people or children who have been encouraged on both sides of my family have been the men.
00:04:35
Speaker
And I was the eldest born and I happened to be a male.
00:04:41
Speaker
So the weight of the heritage fell upon me.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:47
Speaker
So two younger sisters.
00:04:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:49
Speaker
And they're not in the funeral space at all?
00:04:51
Speaker
No interest.
00:04:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:52
Speaker
In fact, yeah, they probably have distaste towards it.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:04:58
Speaker
And so, okay, so you were born into this.
00:05:02
Speaker
Were you given any option that there would be anything else that you would do or no?
00:05:09
Speaker
Patronistically, yes.
00:05:12
Speaker
They would say that I could do what I wanted to do.
00:05:16
Speaker
When I talked about doing other things that I wanted to do, I wasn't met with the same encouragement.
00:05:22
Speaker
So yes and no.
00:05:25
Speaker
Verbally...
00:05:26
Speaker
You can be anything that you want to be, but when I talked about anything that I want to be, it wasn't met with the same type of enthusiasm.
00:05:34
Speaker
Okay, so it was more of a lip service than anything.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker
And for those who grew up in a family business, specifically a funeral family business, there is a lot of, there's a lot of pressure.
00:05:47
Speaker
There's a lot of pressure to carry on the legacy, the community pressure.
00:05:52
Speaker
I mean, I remember I started working when I was 15, 16, and even the community would come in and, you know, they'd pinch my cheeks because I've never grown out of the baby fat.
00:06:03
Speaker
It's still here.
00:06:04
Speaker
And they'd say, well, I'm so glad I can die now knowing that a wild is going to take care of me.
00:06:10
Speaker
And things like that as an impressionable 16-year-old was like, okay, well, do I really have a choice?
00:06:16
Speaker
I thought I had a choice.
00:06:18
Speaker
I tried doing other things.
00:06:19
Speaker
I was very much evangelical growing up.
00:06:23
Speaker
because that's another part of an established family funeral home in a community is that religion is not just an option, it's a necessity.
00:06:32
Speaker
And that evangelicalism led me into doing mission work for two years.
00:06:38
Speaker
But mission work doesn't pay and the food sucks.
00:06:43
Speaker
So I, you know,
00:06:45
Speaker
fell back into what I was predestined to do from the very beginning, which is take on the mantle of the sixth generation funeral director, the wild funeral home.
00:06:55
Speaker
Are your parents still alive?
00:06:56
Speaker
My dad is going to retire next year because he'll get his full benefits from Social Security.
00:07:03
Speaker
And my mom works there as well as a secretary, and she will retire.
00:07:10
Speaker
retire when my dad does okay um so and i of course left the funeral home yes which we will get to okay so we so okay so you've you're thrown into this funeral space or growing up in it really i guess you're not thrown into it's a jungle that grew around you it's like forest that grew around you and you just sort of had to navigate your way around it
00:07:34
Speaker
Were there, as you were growing up in it, and I guess leading up to the start of you starting the moniker, Confessions of a Funeral Director, and writing, and we want to get to all that, were there parts that you felt drawn to most and there were other parts that you were most allergic to, like parts that you enjoyed and parts that you really just hated?
Passion for Helping in Funeral Care
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, the core of who I am, and perhaps this is my inheritance, the core of who I am, something that I am naturally is I care for people.
00:08:08
Speaker
I genuinely want to help people.
00:08:12
Speaker
And so that aspect of death care was something that drew me in naturally.
00:08:19
Speaker
And there's so many opportunities for that part of who I am to come out.
00:08:25
Speaker
in death care.
00:08:27
Speaker
And the other parts, you know, family dynamics, of course, I didn't see it in the beginning.
00:08:33
Speaker
There's, I think, an assumption within the funeral industry in the United States that if you grew up in a family business, the red carpet's been laid before you, you get great pay, you can go take off whenever you want, and the red carpet's been laid out.
00:08:51
Speaker
I don't know if I already said that, I may have.
00:08:53
Speaker
But it's the silver spoon idea.
00:08:56
Speaker
And that was not the case for me.
00:08:58
Speaker
Family businesses can be a cluster.
00:09:00
Speaker
Since we're allowed to cuss, it can be a clusterfuck.
00:09:04
Speaker
I was just going to say, you can do that.
00:09:06
Speaker
Okay, good.
00:09:07
Speaker
And yeah, it's
00:09:09
Speaker
So I didn't have a day off for the first two years that I worked there, and the pay was not easy, and the dynamics were difficult.
00:09:20
Speaker
It's not easy working with your grandfather, your father, and then my second cousin and my great uncle, which is what it was when I started out.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's just different views.
00:09:32
Speaker
And as everybody's family, it's rare that there's an appointed leader because nobody wants to say, well, you're leadership material, but you not so much because it's your child.
00:09:44
Speaker
It's your it's your son.
00:09:45
Speaker
And that's.
00:09:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:47
Speaker
Part of a dynamic of a family business is appointing leadership is difficult because it means one's more qualified than the other and you're playing favorite.
00:09:55
Speaker
So it doesn't happen much.
00:09:56
Speaker
And so there's my grandfather used to say, everybody's a chief and nobody's an Indian.
00:10:02
Speaker
And I, while I don't really like the, some of the sentiments there, the idea is true.
00:10:09
Speaker
There was no leadership.
00:10:11
Speaker
And so there's a lot of posturing.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
But yeah, so I like the serving part and the family dynamics part had its good points and also its drawbacks.
00:10:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:27
Speaker
And so what inspired you?
00:10:30
Speaker
Was there a moment or how did Confessions of a Funeral Director
Creation of 'Confessions of a Funeral Director'
00:10:34
Speaker
come about?
00:10:34
Speaker
What made you start that?
00:10:36
Speaker
I think I just, I needed my own voice.
00:10:39
Speaker
I needed a place where I could be somebody other than Caleb Wild, the sceneal director.
00:10:45
Speaker
I could be somebody who writes, somebody who's able to use words for power, somebody who's able to be self-expressive and have their own thoughts and own opinions, because there's a vast shadow that a family business casts.
00:11:01
Speaker
And losing your identity in the funeral industry is something, losing self-expression is something that happens a lot.
00:11:09
Speaker
And it's something that I talk about a lot.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's very difficult to not lose yourself in other people's grief, in the grief work that you see going on around you.
00:11:22
Speaker
And that coupled with being in a family business where everybody assumed that was a certain way.
00:11:27
Speaker
I needed my own space.
00:11:29
Speaker
And thank you, Internet.
00:11:30
Speaker
Because that was, I just saw some other friends writing and carving out a space for themselves and decided to do the same thing.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, and you and I mean, I'm sure I'm possibly leaving one or two people out, but you and we just interviewed Little Miss Funeral there a couple of weeks ago, Lauren.
00:11:50
Speaker
You and her, I believe, were sort of two of the first influencers in the space, so to speak, who, I guess, pull back the curtain on the funeral space and sort of what happens behind that final curtain.
00:12:06
Speaker
Did you, because you were the first and we talked about it with Lauren, because you guys were the first, did you feel sort of a weight to give the public the truth or to defend funeral directors or sort of what, where did you land on that or how did you, or did you just sort of write whatever?
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a good question.
00:12:29
Speaker
I started out writing about theology.
00:12:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:12:33
Speaker
So theology, I have a master's degree in theology, and that was something that I gave a lot of my energy towards.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then I realized that nobody's really interested in reading theology.
00:12:47
Speaker
So I started to shift.
00:12:49
Speaker
But yeah, that's how things started.
00:12:51
Speaker
I started writing pieces for Christian magazines, kind of got in that whole conversation.
00:12:59
Speaker
from a progressive standpoint, because I was always pretty progressive when it came to my religious persuasions.
00:13:07
Speaker
And then it started to shift.
00:13:09
Speaker
I think my faith changed.
00:13:13
Speaker
I didn't feel as strongly about the things that I had once felt so strongly about.
00:13:18
Speaker
And then I just started writing about death more.
00:13:20
Speaker
And once I started in, the main pushback that I received
00:13:25
Speaker
Because I was an early adapter.
00:13:29
Speaker
There wasn't too many people sharing publicly.
00:13:34
Speaker
And now I feel old.
00:13:35
Speaker
Like I don't have a TikTok account.
00:13:38
Speaker
And so it's like I see people doing TikToks and going into the prep room.
00:13:44
Speaker
And I think to myself, wow, if I had done that, I might have gotten hard and feathered by the by the funeral industry.
00:13:51
Speaker
So part of me feels good because I feel like I carved the path in some sense that other people are going way ahead of me.
00:14:00
Speaker
And yeah, that's great.
00:14:02
Speaker
Like, I think that's what should be happening because I'm an elder millennial.
00:14:07
Speaker
So.
00:14:08
Speaker
I'm not Gen Z. And this transition from boomers to millennials to Gen Z in the funeral industry is another cluster.
00:14:17
Speaker
So the fact that Gen Z is finding space within the industry and being accepted for what they're sharing for the most part is fantastic.
00:14:26
Speaker
But yeah, most of the pushback that I got was from within the funeral industry.
00:14:30
Speaker
So
00:14:31
Speaker
I did not feel any need to defend the industry.
00:14:35
Speaker
I felt a need to be transparent and to be honest and vulnerable and just me.
Transparency in the Funeral Industry
00:14:45
Speaker
So yeah, and I think I got to the place where I realized I'd rather inform the public because the industry at that point, when things first started, the pushback was so strong that I just kind of like, fuck it.
00:14:59
Speaker
I'm not really interested in spending my energy.
00:15:03
Speaker
with a group of people who have these views on death care that I saw as not only detrimental to the business aspect, but detrimental to public perception.
00:15:19
Speaker
We're in a place now where everything is available.
00:15:22
Speaker
And instead of attempting to hide what we're doing, that's only going to create more secrecy.
00:15:27
Speaker
It's only going to create more doubt and criticism.
00:15:31
Speaker
These stereotypes that funeral directors have of being exploitive and super secretive.
00:15:39
Speaker
So the public deserved to see a part of what we are and not just the Hollywood stereotype that's so often portrayed in movies and TV shows, et cetera, et cetera.
00:15:55
Speaker
So yeah, transparency was a huge thing, a huge motivating part, as well as self-expression when I started.
00:16:03
Speaker
And do you feel that because that's one of the reasons why I sort of started this podcast is I'm not a funeral director, I'm not a licensed funeral director.
00:16:12
Speaker
And I work with funeral directors and I work with some incredible funeral directors.
00:16:17
Speaker
And my background is sort of marketing PR, PR, as you guys say.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:25
Speaker
The accent sometimes kills me.
00:16:26
Speaker
But that's my background is sort of that coming from that.
00:16:29
Speaker
And then I was a wedding planner and came to the dark side, as I like to say.
00:16:35
Speaker
But I it always really made me sad how like I knew so many incredible and really caring funeral directors and all that was in the media was it was always on price.
00:16:47
Speaker
It always seemed to get they seemed to get nailed to the cross on price.
00:16:50
Speaker
And then if there was something like a pandemic,
00:16:52
Speaker
there would be, oh my God, there's bodies everywhere and there's, you know, and they pick one person like the guy in Colorado who's stocking up, you know, bodies and stuff.
00:17:01
Speaker
And of course that should be in the media.
00:17:03
Speaker
Of course that should be.
00:17:04
Speaker
But where's the feel good stories?
00:17:06
Speaker
Where's the, you know, amazing stories of the funeral directors that work 24 seven through the coronavirus, you know, in order to help all these people who reduce their prices in order to help families who are struggling?
00:17:19
Speaker
And
00:17:20
Speaker
All of these different stories, like none of them make the media.
00:17:23
Speaker
So for me, I sort of started this A, because I wanted to have these really interesting conversations with people like yourself.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I had questions because I'm not a funeral director.
00:17:32
Speaker
So, you know, people were asking me things like, do you fart after you die?
00:17:35
Speaker
You're right.
00:17:37
Speaker
I'm like, well, it's a valid question.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, people have questions and they're like, wait, Jen, you're in the funeral business.
00:17:44
Speaker
What to answer me this?
00:17:45
Speaker
And like some of them I haven't thought of, like the first thing.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:49
Speaker
Like a man having an erection.
00:17:50
Speaker
Like I never thought of that.
00:17:52
Speaker
So I think that's called a prietism.
00:17:55
Speaker
I think that's just a technical term.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's rare and usually only happens when the death is by asphyxiation.
00:18:04
Speaker
OK, well, there you go.
00:18:05
Speaker
You heard it here first, guys.
00:18:08
Speaker
So I sort of started the podcast because I wanted answers to these questions that Joe Bloggs, as I call them, or Joe Public had.
00:18:17
Speaker
Like they have these questions ruminating around in their head.
00:18:21
Speaker
And so, you know, I was like, OK, well, I'm Joe Public.
00:18:24
Speaker
I'm Joe Bloggs, really.
00:18:25
Speaker
So let me sort of bring in these experts and ask them.
00:18:28
Speaker
So that's kind of what it sort of started to become.
00:18:31
Speaker
But it's, I guess, in a roundabout way, what I'm asking you is, you know, in all the pushback that you got, did you ever feel the need that sort of, were almost the funeral directors proving the point that you were almost making to the public?
00:18:49
Speaker
You know, because you were sharing and trying to be transparent and all this sort of stuff, but then you had these
00:18:55
Speaker
a-holes um I'm sure um because I've also seen here's the thing like I'm not a funeral director but I have a business in the funeral space and then I also know some incredible people who are innovating in the space and I've seen on social media the comments people get that you've gotten that my friends have gotten and a lot of females have gotten the level of abuse of oh well you're not this and you're not that I mean it's actually hysterical so I can't but call them a-holes because listen assholes
00:19:21
Speaker
But so, yeah, even when I came out with my first book and it was it was I picked the nichest market in the smallest country in the world.
00:19:28
Speaker
How to plan a funeral in Ireland.
00:19:30
Speaker
Right.
00:19:30
Speaker
Basically, it was called Stay For A While You're Away.
00:19:32
Speaker
And the only the only comeback I got from the funeral space was the chapter on price.
00:19:39
Speaker
I was like, guys, you're literally proving money.
00:19:44
Speaker
Right.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
So my question to you is, do you, did you feel that was there a little bit of validation in the comments that were maybe coming in that you were like, yeah, this is why I've got to keep going.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
Generational Differences and Industry Pushback
00:19:55
Speaker
There's vast generational differences.
00:19:59
Speaker
This is something that people have heard me talk before.
00:20:03
Speaker
I talk about this quite often.
00:20:07
Speaker
The industry has no prodigies.
00:20:12
Speaker
There's nobody who comes out of funeral school at 25 years old and is all of a sudden
00:20:17
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pulling in a massive amount of business unless they've inherited it.
00:20:21
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The capital in this business is purely social capital.
00:20:26
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So the more you're invested, the more you can connect with the people coming through the doors, the more you're involved in the community, the
00:20:36
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etc, etc.
00:20:38
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That's how you gain business.
00:20:41
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And so generally, funeral directors hit their prime in their 50s, 60s and 70s.
00:20:47
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Because at that point, they're connecting with the people that are coming through the door who are generally older,
00:20:52
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or the children of those people who are in their 50s or 60s.
00:20:56
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They're starting to bury their friends that they went to school with and the people that they know on a generational level.
00:21:03
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So leadership in this business is always 20 to 30 years behind everybody else because the leadership is 20 to 30 years behind everybody else.
00:21:14
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they are on the other end of the bell curve.
00:21:19
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And what that does, especially when we have globalization from the internet, the generational difference from one to the next is massive.
00:21:28
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Whereas before, generations would take up these huge swaths of time where the boomers were 50, 30, 40 years.
00:21:34
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And even before that, in the agrarian culture, the
00:21:43
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Before the industrial age, and I know I'm getting nerdy here, but before that, you know, generations were huge time-wise.
00:21:52
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But now it's like every 10 years because the internet is changing our cultural values and the way that we perceive the world so quickly.
00:22:01
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that we have millennials, Gen Z, and then already there's another generation that's being defined by sociologists and anthropologists.
00:22:10
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So the change from, like, so let's say that the person in charge of a funeral home is 50 or 60 years old, they're coming out of a more industrial mindset where their family grew up in the industrial age,
00:22:26
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And we are very much post-industrial and we're being changed and molded by the Internet and by globalization.
00:22:35
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There's this vast difference.
00:22:37
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And so, which is the reason why penal homes are so toxic oftentimes for millennials and Gen Z.
00:22:44
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because they're being run by boomers, have not just different but opposite perspectives on vulnerability.
00:22:55
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Talking about your problems is just not something that you do.
00:23:01
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Or transparency, sharing private stuff in a public setting is just not something that you do.
00:23:10
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So by nature, this industry is generally going to be 10, 10 is good, but 20 to 30 years behind other industries, uh, the, the public sentiments and, um,
00:23:25
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Yeah, so I started to see that.
00:23:27
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I started to see that, hey, this isn't just, this is much bigger than some Karen writing nasty comments on my Facebook post.
00:23:39
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You know, this is that the industry leaders did not have any mental space or any ability to understand that.
00:23:48
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how somebody could publicly share things that they perceived.
00:23:53
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Because for them, keeping things private was almost religious.
00:23:58
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It's almost sacred.
00:24:00
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So it's something that they protected like it was sacred.
00:24:04
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And so somebody like me coming along, it was like I was going into a church and tearing everything down.
00:24:11
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Yeah.
00:24:11
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Not knocking everything over, treating all these things that they saw as sacred as as not.
00:24:18
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So an iconoclast.
00:24:20
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And I think that's, you know, that's that's what I came to see.
00:24:24
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And it took me a while to be able to see that took me a lot of feeling butthurt at at the way that people would treat me.
00:24:34
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But instead of me reacting vengefully, I became curious.
00:24:38
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Now, why is it like this?
00:24:39
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Why is there such pushback towards me writing a blog as a funeral director?