Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You From how Supports
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline. And today on the show, since it
Speaker 1: is Halloween season, we have a very special guest on
Speaker 1: to talk to us about halloween ish topic. That's right.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking to Kate Sweeney, writer and esteemed radio
Speaker 1: producer here in Atlanta with us. I brought my roomstick,
Speaker 1: that's right. So as part of this Halloween centric episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about something that a lot of
Speaker 1: people find spooky and maybe unsettling and almost creepy until
Speaker 1: they learn more about it, and that is the topic
Speaker 1: of death and burial and our attitudes about both of
Speaker 1: these things in our society today. And Kate wrote an
Speaker 1: entire book about death and morning practices in American culture
Speaker 1: called American Afterlife. So since Kate literally has written the
Speaker 1: book on done in America, we wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: some questions, especially focused on women's roles in death and
Speaker 1: mourning rituals um for the past couple hundred years. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, Kate, thanks so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you so much for having me. I
Speaker 1: am a fan of this podcast, Well, we're a fan
Speaker 1: of yours, so it's mutual. Um. So, first off, Kate,
Speaker 1: could you just talk a little bit about what inspired
Speaker 1: you to write American After like, particularly since it is
Speaker 1: a topic like Caroline said that some people might be
Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable spending so much time with I would
Speaker 1: venture to say that most of us would be pretty uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Uh if if you just say, hey, let's write a
Speaker 1: book about death, like, that's not the way I want
Speaker 1: to spend my time. That's that sounds horrible and terrifying.
Speaker 1: But I think in large part that's what modied aided
Speaker 1: me actually to write the book is my own fear.
Speaker 1: So I was obsessed with the TV show six ft Under,
Speaker 1: which y'all may remember the HBO show about the funeral
Speaker 1: direct in family, And I mean I was. It was
Speaker 1: the first show I binged watched and would like think
Speaker 1: about the storylines of the different characters while I was
Speaker 1: out like walking my dog, I'd be like, oh that
Speaker 1: brenda um. And I would read anything I could get
Speaker 1: my hands on about six ft under. And I saw
Speaker 1: in an article in The New Yorker by Tad Friend
Speaker 1: about and and it mentioned like six ft under and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, well, I'm going to read this.
Speaker 1: And it was about a green burial cemetery in California
Speaker 1: and this idea of green burial, which is ecologically friendly
Speaker 1: burial burial without anything that doesn't decompose completely down to nothing.
Speaker 1: And it mentioned sort of almost as a footnote in
Speaker 1: this story that the nation's first green burial cemetery was
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, which was a short drive from where
Speaker 1: I was living at the time. So you know, I
Speaker 1: went over and um ended up writing a feature story
Speaker 1: about Ramsey Creek Preserve, the nation's first green burial cemetery,
Speaker 1: and that got published in Oxford American Magazine, and then
Speaker 1: I was just kind of off from there. It seems
Speaker 1: like everywhere I looked with fascinating stuff about memorialization and
Speaker 1: how we remember our how we remember are dead. And
Speaker 1: you know, hey, there's this company in Decatur, Georgia that
Speaker 1: will make your ashes into artificial coral reefs and page
Speaker 1: did you know all of the things that go into
Speaker 1: a traditional burial And here's what oh bit writers do
Speaker 1: and here's how they spend their time. And so it
Speaker 1: just ended up being this really sort of fascinating thing
Speaker 1: that snowballed. And as I said, you know, I think
Speaker 1: one reason that I sort of started this whole thing,
Speaker 1: even though the book isn't really it's it's not about me,
Speaker 1: was the fact that, like so many of us, this
Speaker 1: is something I know nothing for new, nothing about, but
Speaker 1: do now and um, you know, sort of have this
Speaker 1: great fear of it, like it's going to happen to
Speaker 1: all of us sooner or later. We're all going to
Speaker 1: lose our loved ones. And that terrifies me still. And
Speaker 1: so I think on some level one reason I wrote
Speaker 1: the book is that I wanted to know what to
Speaker 1: expect on some level when it did happen to me. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating parts of reading American Afterlife
Speaker 1: is just seeing how the culture of death has changed
Speaker 1: in America. I mean you're talking about it started off
Speaker 1: with a feature story about green burials, um, but in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the book you focus on more Victorian
Speaker 1: era death and mourning practices, and they were all about death.
Speaker 1: They didn't seem afraid of death at all. And in
Speaker 1: the book you write, since public grief was mainly the
Speaker 1: woman's province, it was toward her that rules of mourning
Speaker 1: were directed. So I was wondering if you could talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what some of those womanly rules
Speaker 1: for grieving where there were so many it was fascinating.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like, as you said, so we're talking about
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds here, and this was the generation that
Speaker 1: pretty much invented everything we think about when it comes
Speaker 1: to death and memorialization, from the deathbed scene to the
Speaker 1: modern day cemetery to what we think of sort of
Speaker 1: really when it comes to funerals. Still and back in
Speaker 1: those times, men and women both had certain rules of
Speaker 1: decorum to follow. Like this was like the the age
Speaker 1: of decorum and etiquettes and manners and so forth. So
Speaker 1: in etiquette books of the eighteen hundreds, the sections on
Speaker 1: death and grieving were often the thickest chunks because as
Speaker 1: you say, these people they kind of had a thing
Speaker 1: for for death. Um. But because this was the Victorian era. Also,
Speaker 1: as you say, um, a lot of this was directed
Speaker 1: toward women because the women and sphere was largely the
Speaker 1: private sphere right indoors. This was the era that romanticized
Speaker 1: the family, actually romanticized everything. It was the Romantic capital
Speaker 1: are romantic era. Um. But it romanticized motherhood as this
Speaker 1: sort of holy bastion, and this woman's sphere as being
Speaker 1: in the home and the woman making the home this
Speaker 1: this wonderful, warm place, and and that whole idea was
Speaker 1: kind of invented in eighteen hundreds, which is kind of
Speaker 1: wild to think about because it still is with us today.
Speaker 1: And the woman's realm was also the emotional realm, So
Speaker 1: I mean when you put all this together with mourning,
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, that's uh, it's everyone's territory, but
Speaker 1: especially it's it's for the ladies. Right. So one of
Speaker 1: my favorite deportment handbooks that I ran across has the
Speaker 1: most awesome title in the world, which I read about
Speaker 1: in the book, but I really want to just say
Speaker 1: it because it's great. So this is written in John H. Young.
Speaker 1: This book was called Our Deportment Whole, or the Manners, Conduct,
Speaker 1: and Dress of the most Refined Society, including forms for letters, invitations, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Also Valuable suggestions on home culture and training. That was
Speaker 1: one title with two ETCeteras to Etcetera's because you know,
Speaker 1: why stop at one? This is Victorian times exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: we like to accessorize, we like to you know, just
Speaker 1: add as many knickknacks and stuff so we can. So
Speaker 1: during this time, it was typical to prescribe to widows
Speaker 1: two years of mourning. Young's guide called for twelve months
Speaker 1: mourning for one's deceased child or parent, six months for
Speaker 1: a grandparent or a sibling, six months for a friend
Speaker 1: who leaves you an inheritance, and three months that's very polite,
Speaker 1: and three months for an uncle and nephew or niece. Uh.
Speaker 1: For for men, things were a little more curtailed than
Speaker 1: for women because men were indeed as so dated with
Speaker 1: the public sphere and they were out working, you know,
Speaker 1: in this sort of new industrial age. Um, they had
Speaker 1: rules as well, but it was a way bigger deal,
Speaker 1: as you say, for women, and there were specifics on
Speaker 1: what the woman could wear and where she could go
Speaker 1: during this time. And you've got to remember that in
Speaker 1: this era etiquette was king and there were specific rules
Speaker 1: for everything. Um, but you know, morning, as I said,
Speaker 1: really big deal. So one of these was fashion, right
Speaker 1: of course, So in the first stage of mourning, which
Speaker 1: was also called deep mourning, which would be one year
Speaker 1: for a widow, that first stage of mourning, women wore
Speaker 1: quote solid black woolen goods, collar and cuffs of folded
Speaker 1: untrimmed crepe, a simple crepe bonnet, and a long thick
Speaker 1: black crepe veil. And it was very important during this
Speaker 1: first period that none of these things that a woman
Speaker 1: wore even reflected light, well down right to not even
Speaker 1: being able to wear white petticoats in case that showed
Speaker 1: underneath here that reflected light, because that might like totally
Speaker 1: give off the wrong impression. You know what kind of
Speaker 1: harlot were you, right? So, I mean like fitted bonnets
Speaker 1: and veils and in our forbears love their jewelry too, right,
Speaker 1: But this affection was curtailed in the first stage of morning,
Speaker 1: uh you know that that one year period for widows.
Speaker 1: In the latter stages of half mourning, however, a woman
Speaker 1: could don a shorter veil and black silk which did
Speaker 1: reflect light, right, and also tons of morning jewelry and
Speaker 1: accessories like there were morning fans, morning handkerchiefs. The jewelry
Speaker 1: was often crafted of jet, which is actually a type
Speaker 1: of coal which is very very heavy, and women would
Speaker 1: like down long chains of this stuff. During one period
Speaker 1: it was really fashionable. And I just have to tell
Speaker 1: you about crape, and this is cr ape, not ep.
Speaker 1: Crepe is actually silk, but it's silk that has gone
Speaker 1: through this process so that it is dull and sort
Speaker 1: of wrinkled and frankly, very ugly. And this was intentional,
Speaker 1: and it was like they were making this beautiful fabric
Speaker 1: ugly on purpose, for the purpose of mourning. And I
Speaker 1: think there's actually something kind of lovely in that idea,
Speaker 1: because when you're in morning, it's like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: wear all the ugly things. Um, nobody was thinking that's
Speaker 1: totally like my twenty one century thing, like, but you know,
Speaker 1: they'd lug around these heavy jet chains and wear crepe
Speaker 1: and sort of announced I am in mourning and I
Speaker 1: am going through a very hard time right now. And
Speaker 1: companies actually made their fortunes on this morning crape. Like
Speaker 1: it was really really big business, and fashion magazines advertised
Speaker 1: all the latest styles in mourning fashion. And you know,
Speaker 1: course it was a bit easier to be a woman
Speaker 1: in mourning if you were a woman of certain means, right,
Speaker 1: because you could afford all this stuff, you could really
Speaker 1: go by all these rules of etiquette. It was a
Speaker 1: lot easier. But women of every class it got to
Speaker 1: be so that women of just about every class would
Speaker 1: spend a fortune on their mourning at coutrement, because the
Speaker 1: ability to mourn and to do it right was understood
Speaker 1: to be sort of a high society thing, and so
Speaker 1: you know, everybody aspired to that, and this idea of
Speaker 1: moving through classes and having that class mobility was kind
Speaker 1: of this new idea. There was a new emerging middle
Speaker 1: class during the eighteen hundreds, So stores and catalogs sold
Speaker 1: sort of less expensive versions of all of this stuff
Speaker 1: to everyone. Um. And then I just have to say
Speaker 1: that I would be remiss if I didn't mention, um,
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite material for a mourning in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and that's human hair. And so you know, this was
Speaker 1: the era in which you know, you would be cording
Speaker 1: with your sweetheart and you'd exchange a lock of hair,
Speaker 1: or you get a lock of hair from your mother,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of romantic, and you make a
Speaker 1: piece of jewelry. And then when that person died, as
Speaker 1: you know, they would of influenza or childbirth or tuberculosis
Speaker 1: or then even then we had the Civil War, there
Speaker 1: were tons and tons of deaths. Um at that point,
Speaker 1: you would have this death memento, and people would do
Speaker 1: everything with human hair that you can possibly imagine. They
Speaker 1: would be brooches, necklaces made from human hair, uh, bracelets, uh,
Speaker 1: your rings. I even saw a few tiaras, so you
Speaker 1: would be wearing somebody's hair on top of your own hair.
Speaker 1: So wreaths like these giant I was in the Museum
Speaker 1: of Funeral Customs in Springfield, Illinois, and there was this
Speaker 1: giant funeral wreath that I was sort of gazing at
Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes, and then I realized reading
Speaker 1: the placard, it was like material human hair, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my god, wow, And like, all
Speaker 1: this stuff is really uncomfortable to our twenty one century perspective,
Speaker 1: right because it's sort of it's it's really visceral um.
Speaker 1: This was also the era when people would take memorial
Speaker 1: photography of their dead, and that was extremely popular. People
Speaker 1: still do that today actually, but this was like the
Speaker 1: golden age of people taking photographs of their dead and
Speaker 1: displaying them for all to see in in lockett's or
Speaker 1: in their houses, and all of this stuff. The sort
Speaker 1: of visceral, very close connection with death tends to make
Speaker 1: us very uncomfortable today it makes me uncomfortable, but to
Speaker 1: me it also in a way kind of underscores our
Speaker 1: own distance from death. Well, it's also fascinating to how
Speaker 1: you're talking about these visceral displays of death and the
Speaker 1: Victorian obsession with even taking memorial photographs that we would
Speaker 1: not think of doing today, and yet they're complete discomfort
Speaker 1: with visceral things such as sex. You know, it's so
Speaker 1: it's so strange. Yeah, And and there are even some
Speaker 1: social scientists who posit that there's been a switch because
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, you know this, that was the
Speaker 1: time when they would like cover legs of furniture, you know,
Speaker 1: like material, because it might remind you of a human
Speaker 1: of like a lady's leg and you might get too
Speaker 1: worked wooden lady legs, you know, your wooden lady legs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and people were really uncomfortable with the idea of sex.
Speaker 1: Um And there have been social scientists that have positive
Speaker 1: that today um, sex and death of sort of swapped places,
Speaker 1: as you may know, um And like we can talk
Speaker 1: about sex all day long, and like it's everywhere in
Speaker 1: popular culture, but death is the thing that we apologize
Speaker 1: for bringing up because it's uncomfortable and it's unseemly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like today you would never see someone
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, you would probably never see someone in
Speaker 1: a Victorian or Edwardian black morning gown today typically, but
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it is interesting to think about how
Speaker 1: it was so not only h accepted but expected that
Speaker 1: you would see someone publicly mourning for that long of
Speaker 1: a period, whereas today I almost feel like people would
Speaker 1: be just fed up with it and just say, oh,
Speaker 1: get on with it, because they would make them uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: or they would just think, why are you still even
Speaker 1: in this right? Yeah, I mean, if you think back
Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds, death was all around in a
Speaker 1: way that it isn't today. Um, besides the fact that
Speaker 1: you had people sort of dropping left and right from
Speaker 1: all sorts of disease and farming accidents and the Civil War,
Speaker 1: et cetera, dying in death of place in the house
Speaker 1: and again was very much something that women spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time around. Um, but everyone saw a lot
Speaker 1: of and because it's something that we all experienced all
Speaker 1: the time, it was sort of a phase that you
Speaker 1: would go into and then go out of and go
Speaker 1: into again. And it was sort of part of American
Speaker 1: life rather than today. It seems like it's something you know,
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of people for this this book.
Speaker 1: You to obviously experienced loss, and there was the sense
Speaker 1: of for a lot of folks not only loss and
Speaker 1: sadness and grieving, but surprise and the sense of betrayal
Speaker 1: that this had happened to them, like, oh, this wasn't
Speaker 1: supposed to be part of my life. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: part of the expectation of what happens to us. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so talking more about death related industries, you you brought
Speaker 1: up the fashion industry is one of them. But so
Speaker 1: did the development of death related industries in the eighteenth
Speaker 1: and nineteenth centuries, like the formalization of the funeral industry
Speaker 1: and the rise of hospitals impact women's roles in dying
Speaker 1: in mourning. Yes, yes it did, and I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. In the seventeen hundreds, if you look
Speaker 1: at town directories, you'll often see a position called layer
Speaker 1: out of bodies. Is exactly what it sounds like, and
Speaker 1: this was a role often held by women. Um, these
Speaker 1: same women were often midwives, So the same women who
Speaker 1: brought life into the world sort of shepherded it out
Speaker 1: and through the eighteen hundreds and and in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, in many places in this country, small towns
Speaker 1: and in the American South, death and dying took place
Speaker 1: at home, or you would hope that it would take
Speaker 1: place to home because you knew that it was going
Speaker 1: to happen to you. You saw it all the time.
Speaker 1: You just hope that when it did happen, you'd be
Speaker 1: at home. You know, often doctors would pay house calls,
Speaker 1: they would visit, and they were men, so they were
Speaker 1: definitely in the mix too. But the home was the
Speaker 1: woman's space and caregiving was her role and so and so, yeah,
Speaker 1: she you know, women sort of helped to sort of
Speaker 1: shepherd this whole process. There was this cultural notion of
Speaker 1: the good death, and that was death at home, surrounded
Speaker 1: by loved ones, and it actually stemmed from Evangelical Christianity,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, ideally it was also like being
Speaker 1: saved before you died. But it became such a huge
Speaker 1: cultural idea and of import to just about everyone, whether
Speaker 1: or not you were Christian. You would hope for a
Speaker 1: good death, and women definitely helped to create this homy
Speaker 1: picture because with our our nurturing and our caregiving ways, um.
Speaker 1: But all of this sort of began to erode actually
Speaker 1: with the Civil War because people were dying places far
Speaker 1: from home, um, and people didn't know how their loved
Speaker 1: ones were dying, and it was really sort of this
Speaker 1: cataclysmic um effect besides the death you had, you know,
Speaker 1: beside the fact that so and so had died, they
Speaker 1: were dying far away and under circumstances that that you
Speaker 1: you didn't know, and people wanted their loved ones back
Speaker 1: in order to have funerals. And so you saw the
Speaker 1: rise of embolming right for the first time, which before
Speaker 1: then had been considered to be really kind of this
Speaker 1: bizarre practice. And so people would embalm soldiers so that
Speaker 1: they could be shipped home and they could have you know,
Speaker 1: proper funerals for them. And most notably actually with the
Speaker 1: death of Abraham Lincoln. You know, after his assassination, his
Speaker 1: body went on this tour of the country, um via train,
Speaker 1: and during that train trip his body was embalmed and
Speaker 1: re embalmed and re embalmed. Actually because uh, it went
Speaker 1: on for so long, and but you know, people gathered
Speaker 1: in crowds and they saw Abe Lincoln after his death,
Speaker 1: and this also helped to uh spur on the acceptance
Speaker 1: of embalming um and make it acceptable. So we see
Speaker 1: the rise of this new funeral industry at the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds sort of um based on this
Speaker 1: practice of embalming and and the funeral industry. You know,
Speaker 1: funeral directors were mostly men. Actually they were men at
Speaker 1: this time. They were men because men public sphere, women
Speaker 1: private sphere. And then around the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: you see the rise of germ theory, and death and
Speaker 1: dying um just weren't happening as willy nilly and like
Speaker 1: all the time as they had to, like, death rates plummeted,
Speaker 1: and death and dying were also moved out of the home,
Speaker 1: which is something that I just found to be so
Speaker 1: fascinating researching this book. I remember like these were these
Speaker 1: moments when I would be in libraries and like reading
Speaker 1: about the stuff and like look up and be like,
Speaker 1: no way, I want to tell somebody about this stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: So you see the rise of hospitals, you see the
Speaker 1: rise of funeral homes, and both of these institutions were
Speaker 1: actually made to look homelike at first in order to
Speaker 1: attract people. Um, hospitals were actually made to look like
Speaker 1: these sort of spas to attract upper classes who thought
Speaker 1: of them as places for the destitute. Up until this point,
Speaker 1: the first standalone funeral businesses, many of them were called
Speaker 1: funeral parlors, the parlor being the room in the house
Speaker 1: in which, you know, we traditionally would uh court with
Speaker 1: our sweethearts and maybe get married and then expect to
Speaker 1: have our funerals, you know. So they're like, so these
Speaker 1: funeral directors were like, you can trust us. We've got
Speaker 1: funeral parlors just like you do at your home. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I just made that weird place,
Speaker 1: my imaginary funeral director. Um so yeah yeah. And like
Speaker 1: fashions were changing, and all these Victorian accessories and heavy
Speaker 1: curtain rooms filled with knick knacks just became seemed really quickly,
Speaker 1: really unfashionable and sort of associated with this gloomy idea
Speaker 1: of that those Victorians who were death obsessed and had
Speaker 1: that they were obsessed with having death in their homes,
Speaker 1: And that became a weirder and weirder idea really quickly
Speaker 1: as the twentieth century progressed, and in fact it was
Speaker 1: a woman's magazine. I don't remember which one it says
Speaker 1: in the book, but I don't remember now that actually
Speaker 1: made this decision, um to rename the parlor in in
Speaker 1: in the in the family home, uh, instead of calling
Speaker 1: it the parlor, which was you know, you think of parlor,
Speaker 1: and you think of these dark rooms with tons of
Speaker 1: nick knacks and heavy curtains, not much sunlight, to call
Speaker 1: it the living room. Ah well, and I mean so
Speaker 1: significant to the living room, I know, what, so wild like.
Speaker 1: And there was this idea around that time that that
Speaker 1: sort of rose up, and I think it's still with
Speaker 1: us to some extent, that that we would through germ
Speaker 1: theory and medicine, conquer all disease and that death was
Speaker 1: sort of this ultimate malady and we would conquer that too. Well.
Speaker 1: I'm really curious from the research that you did looking
Speaker 1: at the different kinds of death industries today, whether you
Speaker 1: noticed any gendered patterns, like for instance, you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the day, funeral directors were men, but um
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people you talked to in
Speaker 1: the book are women, So clearly we have a role
Speaker 1: in this. But I was just wondering if there were
Speaker 1: any kind of like pockets where women tend to dominate.
Speaker 1: So the funeral industry, yeah, is sort of traditionally male dominated,
Speaker 1: and not only male male dominated, but sort of old
Speaker 1: men dominated traditionally. Um, but now women are moving in
Speaker 1: and something like of United States mortuary school graduates today
Speaker 1: are women, and that's up from something like five percent
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy And I got those figures from a
Speaker 1: Slate article. And we see the rise of groups like
Speaker 1: the Association of Women Funeral Professionals, And there's actually a
Speaker 1: social group I'm not sure if they're around anymore, but
Speaker 1: they were a few years ago called Funeral Divas and
Speaker 1: it was actually like this, the social networking group for
Speaker 1: you know, ladies in in the industry. And we see
Speaker 1: the rise of groups like the Order of the Good Death,
Speaker 1: which spearheaded by this amazing mortician in California named Caitlin Doughty,
Speaker 1: and she and sort of her ILK are all about
Speaker 1: bringing back actually holistic feel to death and dying, promoting
Speaker 1: things like home funerals and green burial, which is really
Speaker 1: interesting because if you think about it, like you might
Speaker 1: look at it and say, well, that's that's sort of
Speaker 1: new age, and that's this new wave of doing the
Speaker 1: way of doing things, but actually harkens back to the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, right, and then the way things used to be.
Speaker 1: UM and I interviewed actually ended up interviewing a lot
Speaker 1: of women for the book, which I didn't set out
Speaker 1: to do but just happened. I interviewed men too, but
Speaker 1: UM a lot of ladies. And the book includes chapters
Speaker 1: about a number of really dynamic women involved in death
Speaker 1: and dying in one way or another. UM and they
Speaker 1: were really some of the most vivid interviews I did.
Speaker 1: There was the co owner of a green burial cemetery,
Speaker 1: a funeral chaplain, a memorial tattoo artist, and a current
Speaker 1: day memorial photographer, and also a no bit writer who
Speaker 1: can forget Kay Powell, retired obituary writer for the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Journal Constitution. And she was amazing. She's just this fourth
Speaker 1: uh So, as I said, there are plenty of men
Speaker 1: in the book as well, but these women, we're just
Speaker 1: incredible to talk to and for me just sort of
Speaker 1: personally really inspiring. Well, and it was interesting to reading
Speaker 1: the profiles of those women because in for instance, the
Speaker 1: cases of uh, the memorial tattoo artist and the chaplain
Speaker 1: in particular. I was waiting to read about a guy
Speaker 1: who's doing these kinds of things, and it seems like
Speaker 1: these women are also, in their own way, kind of
Speaker 1: paving their way via death and two more what we
Speaker 1: would kind of consider to be more male dominated spheres.
Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting as well. Um And
Speaker 1: one of the women who whose story made the biggest
Speaker 1: impact and I think would resonate a lot too with
Speaker 1: um our audience is a memorial photographer, Wanna Oh Grief.
Speaker 1: That's right. Could you talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: Wanna does and whether it's maybe an extension of the
Speaker 1: traditional Victorian women as gatekeeper role in public grieving. Well,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because Wanna one as a photographer, and
Speaker 1: what she does on the side is she worked as
Speaker 1: a DULA and that's a non medical birthing assistant. And
Speaker 1: it was actually during a training session as ADULA that
Speaker 1: somebody mentioned, you know, we're looking for volunteers to join
Speaker 1: this organization to take memorial photographs, and that's something that
Speaker 1: want To already had done in her personal life. She
Speaker 1: had photographed her father sort of in his decline and
Speaker 1: that was sort of her artistic response to her experiences
Speaker 1: in the world, and so sort of natural for her
Speaker 1: to sign up to do it. But I think you're right, um,
Speaker 1: that it does hearken back to this these roles that
Speaker 1: that women used to sort of traditionally have in um,
Speaker 1: the eighteenth nineteenth century and probably on back of um,
Speaker 1: you know, shepherding life both into and out of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, being midwives and she's not a midwife, she's
Speaker 1: a duelab but being midwives and um meaning folks who
Speaker 1: care for the dead, you know, like washing the body
Speaker 1: and all of that kind of thing. Well, and the
Speaker 1: fact too that she tends to take photographs of uh babies,
Speaker 1: like newborns that have died with something so like I
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine, not to say that men couldn't take those
Speaker 1: photographs and they couldn't be as equally powerful, But in
Speaker 1: those moments where she's in the hospital room with these
Speaker 1: parents holding they're deceased newborn or almost deceased newborn, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine almost a guy in that position, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And maybe that's me just like being too
Speaker 1: gender really about it, but um, that made a big
Speaker 1: impression on me. Yeah, she actually volunteers for this organization
Speaker 1: called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, which is
Speaker 1: specifically UM centered around newborns and infants who are who
Speaker 1: are dying and for parents who want those photographs. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think you're right. I mean, she's comfortable in
Speaker 1: the role as adula. And I think women in these
Speaker 1: sort of experiences of childbirth, you know, we might expect
Speaker 1: to see another woman as a professional in the room, UM,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily an extra man necessarily UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really interesting. Before I met her, and
Speaker 1: even when I first met her, I didn't understand why
Speaker 1: anybody would want these pictures, Like I I didn't understand
Speaker 1: why anybody who would want photographs of they're dead frankly.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you think about it, these are
Speaker 1: often the only photos that these people will have of uh,
Speaker 1: of their infant children, and the only evidence that this
Speaker 1: relationship ever existed, and sort of you know, I think,
Speaker 1: especially in our are fairly death phobic society in which
Speaker 1: we exists today, in which we live, UM, there might
Speaker 1: be a tendency to downplay those relationships UM or that
Speaker 1: loss as being as meaningful as a loss of an
Speaker 1: older child or the loss of a peer, um. Because
Speaker 1: you know you might think, well, you know it was
Speaker 1: only a short time, um, and you know people might
Speaker 1: want to downplay it. But I think it's precisely even
Speaker 1: maybe even because of that impulse of our society, that
Speaker 1: having these photographs is so meaningful for people, or can be.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously not everybody wants them or or needs them.
Speaker 1: They're not useful for everybody who goes through this experience,
Speaker 1: but um, for for those for whom it is useful, UM,
Speaker 1: I think it can be really cathartic. I mean you
Speaker 1: might have an experience of you're an older sibling, um,
Speaker 1: and you know this story, but now you have sort
Speaker 1: of this evidence of like, oh, there we were in
Speaker 1: a photograph together, you know, my twin in me or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, they are very very sad circumstances, um,
Speaker 1: but just serving as evidence that Okay, this this life
Speaker 1: existed and this death really happened. Yeah, I can imagine
Speaker 1: that it would possibly help serve as a form of
Speaker 1: closure in a way if there can never be a
Speaker 1: closure with something like that, but certainly help the grieving process. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it is, really it is really fat. So
Speaker 1: you have a great chapter on obituaries. And this is
Speaker 1: a personal interest to me, just because I am super
Speaker 1: family history genealogy obsessed, and people who research family history
Speaker 1: relized so much on obituaries to get those little details.
Speaker 1: Who did they leave behind, who preceded them in death,
Speaker 1: where did they live, where were they buried, was there
Speaker 1: any sort of funeral, where was the funeral? All of
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And so what also comes that
Speaker 1: when you're doing family history is the realization that you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people just didn't have oh bits, and there was
Speaker 1: this societal perception of like, well, did you matter enough
Speaker 1: for you important enough in society to have an obituary?
Speaker 1: And you know, I have a lot of family members
Speaker 1: who I'll never find one for them because they didn't
Speaker 1: have enough money, or simply because they were female. And
Speaker 1: so um. That leads me to the question of your
Speaker 1: discussion in the book about nineteenth century obituaries being largely
Speaker 1: dedicated to white men and so basically what was up
Speaker 1: with that? Did that have a lot to do with
Speaker 1: just social standing? Yeah? I think it had everything to
Speaker 1: do with social standing. And often when you would see
Speaker 1: obituaries written for um, minority groups. I guess, for want
Speaker 1: of a better term, groups like women a Native Americans,
Speaker 1: African Americans, they would play up the qualities that society
Speaker 1: valorized in them. So if there were, um, an obituary
Speaker 1: written about a woman, it would you know, play up
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, uh, you know how she was
Speaker 1: such a great homemaker, etcetera, etcetera loving wife, which you
Speaker 1: know does sound too unfamiliar today. Um, not that these
Speaker 1: are bad things, but um, but you know, for you know,
Speaker 1: for obituaries of Native Americans, and it might be the um,
Speaker 1: the guy who helped the army to win some battle,
Speaker 1: like you know actually like you know, joined the Union
Speaker 1: army and you know, in the fight against the Confederacy
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. So yeah, I mean people
Speaker 1: were remembered, but if they sort of exemplified the values
Speaker 1: of the time. Well, And the thing is that this
Speaker 1: is still a conversation that's going on in terms of
Speaker 1: gender representation in obituary theories, because it was either earlier
Speaker 1: this year or in when The New York Times featured
Speaker 1: this prominent obituary of this leading female scientists whose name
Speaker 1: is escaping me at the moment. But the lead was
Speaker 1: all about this beef strong enough that and it brought
Speaker 1: up this entire conversation, and some people started actually doing
Speaker 1: some digging looking at who the Times continues to dedicate
Speaker 1: their obituaries to. And it's still is very much the
Speaker 1: realm of white men. So especially because you interviewed um
Speaker 1: Ka Powell, this well known obituary writer, and you even
Speaker 1: mentioned too that um they're trying to, you know, pay
Speaker 1: more attention to people who in addition to white men.
Speaker 1: Um So does does gender parity matter? Though? Because I
Speaker 1: remember reading about this whole obituary gender gap and thinking, well,
Speaker 1: that's such a big deal, like this big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it matters o bit serve as records of
Speaker 1: the lives that we wish to remember, As you know,
Speaker 1: you said a few moments ago, Caroline, and and and so,
Speaker 1: who gets remembered matters. Uh. I got some figures from
Speaker 1: Mother Jones magazine. Two thousand twelve, The Washington Post published
Speaker 1: obituaries for eighteen women and forty eight men, The l
Speaker 1: A Times thirty six women and a hundred fourteen men,
Speaker 1: and of course the New York Times, about which this
Speaker 1: whole around which, this whole kerfuffle kind of began one
Speaker 1: d eight men to twenty nine women. And you could
Speaker 1: look at the and the argument has been made that
Speaker 1: the men who died and who were covered had all
Speaker 1: these great accomplishments in like the nineteen fifties through nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: which was a time when men were largely the ones
Speaker 1: making waves in the world. So it's like, well, of
Speaker 1: course we're going to cover them. But then you could
Speaker 1: also look at the definition of making waves, I think, right,
Speaker 1: so like in what sphere and what of those women
Speaker 1: who received little recognition in their time for their work
Speaker 1: in politics and literature, in the arts or wherever, but
Speaker 1: still made a big difference. And uh, you know, shouldn't
Speaker 1: we recognize them too well? And at least there be
Speaker 1: strong enough, you know, at the very least. I mean,
Speaker 1: might be a scientist, but um, but she can cook
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. And then there's the whole question of
Speaker 1: whether or not this this idea is even important anymore
Speaker 1: because newspapers are dying out right. But while we're seeing
Speaker 1: a transition from print to sort of the online world
Speaker 1: in many ways, or you know, we don't really know
Speaker 1: where things are going. It's kind of an exciting time. Um,
Speaker 1: the O bit isn't going anywhere. I think about a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago when one of my favorite writers
Speaker 1: was actually David Rakoff died. Uh. I wasn't even thinking
Speaker 1: consciously when I went to my computer and like found
Speaker 1: everything I could find that was written about him, every
Speaker 1: single thing. And I wasn't thinking I am looking for obituaries,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to find every single piece that
Speaker 1: was written on him. Um. And that was sort of like,
Speaker 1: and I think that we all do that for our
Speaker 1: heroes or for people that were fascinated by. And while
Speaker 1: family written obituaries are great in their own way, like
Speaker 1: if you're if you're doing some research and you want
Speaker 1: to find out certain you know you can you can
Speaker 1: find out certain piece of information, there's also something about
Speaker 1: the journalist written obituary story crafted by a professional writer
Speaker 1: who had no stake in what was going on in
Speaker 1: these people's lives. Who could, you know, write a story
Speaker 1: with a beginning, a middle, and an end and what
Speaker 1: details that person chooses to include. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: different from a Facebook page. It's different from somebody's website
Speaker 1: that they leave behind. Um, it's you know, a story
Speaker 1: written by a third person. And I think that in
Speaker 1: some ways we're always going to be interested in finding
Speaker 1: those stories, whatever form they take. Well. And how many
Speaker 1: times have we referenced women's obituaries in our podcast research.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's where we've found so many details about
Speaker 1: people's lives that you aren't going to find just on
Speaker 1: a timeline of their accomplishments or a basic professional bio
Speaker 1: or like you said, some kind of family eulogy. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it's definitely been useful for for us with
Speaker 1: stuff I've never told you as well. So it seems
Speaker 1: like death itself has become increasingly private and for families,
Speaker 1: for individuals. And so why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: Are we more afraid of death and dying than we
Speaker 1: used to be? Are we just do we just feel
Speaker 1: weird about it? I think it is simply due to
Speaker 1: lack of familiarity. Uh, if we go back again to
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, you know, people experienced death a lot
Speaker 1: more frequently. Um, you know, I could expect you know,
Speaker 1: by the age of thirty or so, two have had
Speaker 1: twelve children and then like you know, four of them
Speaker 1: had lived, and that kind of thing pre germ theory
Speaker 1: sort of the bad old days, and I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to go back to the times. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: death was a part of life. It was a part
Speaker 1: of what you expected to happen to you. Nowadays, I
Speaker 1: really think that it's not what we expect to happen
Speaker 1: to us. It's not part of what we talk about
Speaker 1: when we talk about the experience of our lifetimes. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, American values are of uh, you know, ambition
Speaker 1: and winning and youth and just sort of this this
Speaker 1: this pursuit of success and and death isn't a part
Speaker 1: of that. And it's interesting. So I talked about an
Speaker 1: etiquette manual from the eighteen hundreds which had this very
Speaker 1: thick section on what to do when death happened to
Speaker 1: you and how to treat other people who were going
Speaker 1: through this phase. You can compare that with another etiquette
Speaker 1: manual that I found from the early nineteen twenties written
Speaker 1: by this woman named Lillian Eichler, and the emphasis throughout
Speaker 1: her chapter and her etiquette manual on death and grieving
Speaker 1: is how to make sure, basically that you don't embarrass
Speaker 1: other people with your displays of grief. Um, she even goes,
Speaker 1: and she goes so far as to talk about like
Speaker 1: these out outmoded Victorian ways of outrageous displays of grief
Speaker 1: are are you know, they're unfashionable and they're unseemly for
Speaker 1: people of certain classes. And she also says that you know,
Speaker 1: if you are planning to go to a funeral but
Speaker 1: you don't think you're going to be able to quote
Speaker 1: control your grief, you should consider not going. And although
Speaker 1: I read that and I was just like, WHOA, you're
Speaker 1: extreme woman, I think to some extent those ideas are
Speaker 1: still with us. Grief belongs in certain places but not
Speaker 1: in others. It belongs in funeral homes and cemeteries, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't belong in the roadside memorial on my drive
Speaker 1: to Smoothie King. I shouldn't have to see that on
Speaker 1: the on my drive to my children's birthday party, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. And I think it's something that were
Speaker 1: we all kind of struggle with. Uh, you know, back
Speaker 1: in the day, when somebody died, you knew how to
Speaker 1: treat them because it's something that you had been through
Speaker 1: many times yourself, and it's something you had been taught. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: when we experience lost, what do we do? We take
Speaker 1: a few months or a few weeks off of work
Speaker 1: and then we return. Not when people don't know how
Speaker 1: to talk to us, it's kind of awkward and weird,
Speaker 1: and then you're expected to behave just as if everything
Speaker 1: is fine, and and yeah, so yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: think it is more private, and it's simply because it's
Speaker 1: it's something we may go to the age of thirty
Speaker 1: forty five, or we experience sort of significant catastrophic loss ourselves,
Speaker 1: and that's not the way it used to be. And
Speaker 1: I don't think we need to just like keep lots
Speaker 1: of blame upon ourselves. It's just the way it is now.
Speaker 1: But it's it's good that we're starting to I think
Speaker 1: we're starting to have more conversations about death and and grieving.
Speaker 1: We're seeing a lot more conversations out in in media,
Speaker 1: in UM, in American culture, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. Well, And what comes to mind in
Speaker 1: terms of those, like you said, talking about UM seeing
Speaker 1: more of these conversations out The first thing that came
Speaker 1: to my mind was the fact that usually now I
Speaker 1: first learned about a public figure dying on Twitter. I've
Speaker 1: learned about friends deaths from Facebook, and now it's like
Speaker 1: we're almost having to relearn this new morning etiquette. And
Speaker 1: it is a public thing of like, well, do I tweet?
Speaker 1: Do I do the hashtag? R I P? Do I
Speaker 1: write a thoughtful Facebook posts? How do I do this?
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, maybe it is opening up
Speaker 1: more conversations about it, but also sort of forcing us to,
Speaker 1: um learn how to mourn in a new way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the whole social the whole social media
Speaker 1: thing is kind of opening up this brave new world. UM.
Speaker 1: I think though to a large extent, we also have
Speaker 1: our baby boomer brethren to think for the opening up
Speaker 1: of this conversation. Uh. You know, this is the generation
Speaker 1: that reinvented doing birth at home, that reinvented the way
Speaker 1: that you could get married, like we're gonna get married
Speaker 1: on a beach instead of in a church. And now
Speaker 1: that many of them have experienced the loss of their
Speaker 1: own parents, for example, and seeing how that went down,
Speaker 1: they were looking ahead at their own deaths and wanting
Speaker 1: to plan for those in the same way that they
Speaker 1: planned for these other major rites of passage. And I
Speaker 1: think that's one big reason that we're seeing the opening
Speaker 1: up of this conversation. Yeah, it's funny. Preparing for this episode,
Speaker 1: I was actually talking to my mother about this very topic,
Speaker 1: and I mean, death and dying is not something that
Speaker 1: I've talked to my parents about it all um, even
Speaker 1: though they both have lost both of their parents. And
Speaker 1: my mother whose age you you can't talk about in public.
Speaker 1: I remember that, that's right, cannot reveal Sally's age. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she was just joking about it and said that she
Speaker 1: wants an open casket, and she not only wants an
Speaker 1: open casket, but she wants to be sitting up with
Speaker 1: her arms casually out to the sides, like she's sitting
Speaker 1: in a hot tub in her bathrobe with a wine
Speaker 1: glass in one hand. So I like Sally style, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna honor her wishes and you can do that. Yeah
Speaker 1: I've seen Yeah, yeah you can. Uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen articles like you can have. You can
Speaker 1: decide that you want to be embalmed and posed your
Speaker 1: funeral in a way that you would have been in life.
Speaker 1: Perfect bathrobes. You and me in this podcast studio, Caroline,
Speaker 1: let me know, now, just seal us up like we're
Speaker 1: in an Egyptian tomb. Their headphones on smashing burying me
Speaker 1: in my headphones. Well, Kate, I'm really curious to know
Speaker 1: whether writing American Afterlife as altered your perception of death
Speaker 1: and how you wish to be mourned in many ways.
Speaker 1: I am still figuring it out because it's like the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that we can conceive of. And I know
Speaker 1: that I wrote this book partly out of neurotic fear
Speaker 1: of losing the people I love, and I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: over that. I haven't reached like this kind of zen
Speaker 1: state that a lot of people, funeral professionals and people
Speaker 1: who work in areas of death and dying seemed to
Speaker 1: have reached. Um, haven't reached that state. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I'm in my thirties and I think if
Speaker 1: I hadn't gone on this adventure, there's no way I
Speaker 1: would have done any planning for my own inevitable demise.
Speaker 1: But I have. And it's because of all these stories
Speaker 1: that I've heard from people about people who didn't you know,
Speaker 1: and people who didn't talk about what they on it
Speaker 1: or tell people where important documents were. And that's a
Speaker 1: really rough thing for people to be left not only
Speaker 1: with uh their mourning and grief and whatever complicated feelings
Speaker 1: may arise there, but also with tons of work to
Speaker 1: do and uh sort of you know, hunting down of
Speaker 1: documents and that kind of thing and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what so and so wanted in these moments. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I have made those plans, and along with
Speaker 1: my husband, and not that I think that I'm also
Speaker 1: such an important figure in this in this world, but
Speaker 1: I've actually because I've talked to so many people, um
Speaker 1: who have gone sort of every different route in terms
Speaker 1: of memorialization, from traditional funerals to direct cremation to green
Speaker 1: burial to having ashes made into LPs or I haven't
Speaker 1: talked to those people because they're dead, but they're talked
Speaker 1: to their loved ones who have survived. UM. And for
Speaker 1: every single one of those decisions, people have told me
Speaker 1: stories about like how they were horrible and how they
Speaker 1: were just you know, really like UM scarring, and they
Speaker 1: wish they hadn't done it that way. And then I've
Speaker 1: talked to other people who have done the same thing,
Speaker 1: who said, like this so cathartic and this is what
Speaker 1: our family needed. Um. And so I went into this
Speaker 1: project with sort of opinions and really judge the opinions
Speaker 1: as we all have about different methods of memorialization. I
Speaker 1: thought certain things were weird and certain things were cool. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel that way anymore because for every option,
Speaker 1: much as anybody may want to judge them, it's it's
Speaker 1: right for somebody out there. And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: although I'm not I don't want to elevate my own
Speaker 1: sense of importance in this whole realm. I've actually decided
Speaker 1: not to really be public about what our own choices
Speaker 1: have been, um, just because I don't even want to
Speaker 1: even begin to take on any kind of appearance of bias.
Speaker 1: But um, it is definitely like a brave new world
Speaker 1: of pctions out there, and if you want to be
Speaker 1: set up with your microphone and headphones, you can do it. Excellent.
Speaker 1: I'll tell Sally that the whole propt up drinking our
Speaker 1: wine into eternity can happen. It's an option. Well, Kate Sweet,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. Um,
Speaker 1: can you just let folks know where they can find
Speaker 1: out more about American afterlife encounters and the customs of morning,
Speaker 1: which I do highly recommend. It's a great read. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: um My website. Folks can certainly go to my website,
Speaker 1: which is American Afterlife Book dot com. It's published by
Speaker 1: University of Georgia Press, so you can head on over there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've got a few more like speaking engagements
Speaker 1: and things like that this fall, and I would love
Speaker 1: to say, hey, well, now we want to hear from
Speaker 1: our listeners about their experiences with death rituals as well,
Speaker 1: particularly since it is the Halloween season. Send us an email.
Speaker 1: It can be spooky if you wanted to be mom
Speaker 1: Stuff at how Stuff Works dot com is our email address.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast. Our
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. So I've got a
Speaker 1: Facebook message here from Mina. She writes, I love your podcast.
Speaker 1: Can't get enough writing to you about the grandmother hypothesis.
Speaker 1: I'm a single mom, mid thirties and relies significantly on
Speaker 1: support from my dad. He lives out of state, but
Speaker 1: it has designed his life in such a way that
Speaker 1: he travels to Seattle to visit or stay with us
Speaker 1: for a week out of every month. He works as
Speaker 1: a musician, playing at assisted living in memory care facilities.
Speaker 1: I feel so incredibly fortunate that he does this for
Speaker 1: us every month. As a grandparent, my dad helps in
Speaker 1: so many ways with my son. He provides a playful
Speaker 1: and intelligent male role model and never leaves a question unanswered.
Speaker 1: He helps with homework, helps him get to his extracurriculus
Speaker 1: while he's in town, plays music at his school and
Speaker 1: scouting events, cooks and cleans, and helps me with anything
Speaker 1: extra that I need done around the house but don't
Speaker 1: have time for. He also allows me the ability to
Speaker 1: schedule dates while he's in town, with no need to
Speaker 1: worry about a sitter. As a single mom who works
Speaker 1: at a large tech company, the support my dad gives
Speaker 1: me is so incredibly valuable. I don't think I could
Speaker 1: attach a price to what it's worth to feel the
Speaker 1: type of love and commitment I have from him. As
Speaker 1: my son grows older, he and my Dad's here many
Speaker 1: an inside joke now, and when my dad isn't around,
Speaker 1: I often feel his presence from my son. Many of
Speaker 1: my friends would say he is a fourty year old
Speaker 1: with a ten year old body. He is basically a young,
Speaker 1: ginger version of my dad. Thank you for your amazing
Speaker 1: podcast and Thank you, Lena. Well, I have a letter
Speaker 1: here from Rachel about an episode that was published a
Speaker 1: while back, but she is just now getting to it
Speaker 1: and she wanted to talk about it. Um it's our
Speaker 1: podcast on endometriosis. Uh. She says, I was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: stage three indometrius this last year, two weeks before my
Speaker 1: twenty four birthday. I count myself super lucky was discovered
Speaker 1: when it was. I had gone to several doctors with
Speaker 1: pain issues years prior, but I was always told it
Speaker 1: was in my head or that I had constipation. In May, though,
Speaker 1: they found a cyst and finally agreed to remove it
Speaker 1: in October because it's consistent growth made them think it
Speaker 1: was a tumor. I won't go into all the glory
Speaker 1: details of what they found during surgery, but it was
Speaker 1: really ugly. They weren't able to safely remove all the lesions.
Speaker 1: My husband and I have been given about two years
Speaker 1: in which they think maybe I have a chance to
Speaker 1: become pregnant, but I've been told to expect and early
Speaker 1: hysterectomy and other radical treatments at the end of it.
Speaker 1: But while this disease is alarming, what I find most
Speaker 1: disturbing is how people in my generation don't know about it.
Speaker 1: I had no clue the condition even existed until I
Speaker 1: was diagnosed. I would have never thought to ask about
Speaker 1: it or suggested to earlier doctors. My only friends who
Speaker 1: had heard about it were either one studying medicine or
Speaker 1: the ones who personally knew someone who had it, But
Speaker 1: most of them had no idea what the condition actually was.
Speaker 1: I can't believe Indometrius this wasn't covered insects ed and
Speaker 1: people aren't made more publicly aware. Sometimes I feel like
Speaker 1: this diagnosis made me a member of a secret society.
Speaker 1: So seriously, thank you for doing a podcast on this
Speaker 1: awful disease and getting the word out. The more girls
Speaker 1: who hear about it, the more who can ask questions
Speaker 1: about it to their doctors, and maybe hopefully, the more
Speaker 1: who can start getting treatment earlier versus later. So thank you, Rachel,
Speaker 1: and best of luck, and thanks to everybody who's written
Speaker 1: into us. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: is our email address and for links to all of
Speaker 1: our social media, as well as all of our blogs,
Speaker 1: videos and podcasts, including this one with more info about
Speaker 1: Kate Sweeney. So you can check out her book American Afterlife.
Speaker 1: Head on over to Stuff Mom Never told You dot
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Speaker 1: Is It how stuff Works dot com, Fox,