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The Top Death Curious Moments of 2023

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s nice to look back and reflect on the growth and accomplishments achieved in death care this year. I’ve always been a fan of a “tabula rasa” or a blank slate fresh start, and a new year is a great time to reflect, learn, and carry ourselves forward. 2023 was the first year for Death Curious. While our education platform has accomplished a lot in our goal to create healthy and honest conversations around death, there have also been a few major “death curious” moments in our wider society in the past year that are worth celebrating. This is my list of the top 4 Death Curious moments of 2023.

January 4, 2024 No Comments

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Grieving During the Holidays

For some of us, as the holiday season approaches each year things can often seem a bit heavier than usual despite the sentiments of “merry and bright” and “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”. Many people struggle with the holidays for a multitude of reasons: estrangement from family, financial struggles, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and grief. Believe it or not, many studies show that more deaths happen between late November and early January than any other time of year. This means more people than usual might be experiencing grief from a recent loss or marking a death anniversary as the holidays approach.

However, there are some helpful things you can do to help move through grief during the holiday season. Grief rituals are a wonderful and accessible way to acknowlege and integrate grieving, especially during this time of year. As we find ourselves in the thick of the Holiday Season of 2023, let’s take a moment to learn about winter death rates, and how to better understand and support those of us who are grieving during the holidays.

December 20, 2023 No Comments

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The Real Environmental Impact of Funeral Options, Part 5: Natural Organic Reduction

One of the newest options for body disposition to become legal in the US with an incredibly low environmental impact is Natural Organic Reduction, or NOR (also known as “body composting”). NOR was first developed for humans by Katrina Spade of Recompose, and began as a way for people living in urban areas to have access to more natural and eco-friendly disposition options. It allows city dwellers a greener option than traditional burial or flame cremation, without having to transport a body miles outside of a city to a conservation or green burial cemetery.

First legalized in the US in Washington State in 2019, NOR is now available in Oregon, Vermont, and Colorado, and legislation is currently in the works to make it a legal disposition method in other states as well. Though this disposition method is still an outlier in the disposition arena, it is quickly gaining traction and popularity. The incredibly low environmental impact of Natural Organic Reduction is directly meeting the needs of death planners today and tomorrow, as we see more people are consistently searching for eco-friendly alternatives in death planning.

November 30, 2023 No Comments

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Getting Death Curious About Halloween

Across subcultures and generations, “spooky season” is a highly anticipated time of year. The entire month of October allows many people to publicly display a fascination with the morbid through enjoying horror movies, decorations, costumes and more. However, it is curious to me that, for a society that has a hard time having healthy conversations about death and grief, we seem to have no problem getting excited about Halloween.
Perhaps the paradigm of our cultural obsession with Halloween can be linked to our wider societal death avoidance, and thus our growing need for connection to human mortality. Halloween might be so appealing to us–especially younger generations– because it offers an approachable way to process fear around death and dying. This means that getting death curious about Halloween could have positive repercussions for our society’s tenuous relationship with death.

October 30, 2023 No Comments

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Colorado and the Complicated History of Funeral Regulations

By now everyone who watches the news or looks at social media is aware that Colorado is a state with more lenient funeral industry regulations and certification requirements than any other in the country. This knowledge comes in the context of a horrific funeral home scandal in Penrose Colorado, in which the smell of over 180 decaying bodies at Return to Nature Funeral Home prompted neighbors of the business to call local police to investigate. However, before this scandal, Colorado had a reputation of being on the cutting edge of death care, as one of the first states to adopt both natural organic reduction and alkaline hydrolysis, and the only state to have a city that allows open-air cremation. Now, the question is one of correlation, Do more funeral home scandals happen in Colorado, where there are fewer funeral director regulations, and are these scandals directly caused by the lack of required licensure? Or does the benefit of allowing more people access to the funeral profession lead to better death care services and happier families? Are these questions mutually exclusive or is this a “both/and” scenario? Let’s look a bit closer at the history of funeral regulations and licenses to better understand how tragedies like the one at Return to Nature Funeral Home occur.

October 24, 2023 No Comments

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The Real Environmental Impact of Funeral Options Part 4: Green Burial

A previously cited study by IBM Institute breaks down what is driving consumer choices today and reveals that 40% of consumers across all sectors and industries are purpose driven- i.e. making purchases based on ethics, beliefs, and personal values like eco-consciousness. Nowhere is this fact more apparent in death care than in the rapidly rising interest and enthusiasm for green burial in recent years. Let’s dive into the real environmental impact of green burial and how it compares to other disposition methods.

Since green burial typically means no body bag, no embalming, the most ecologically friendly biodegradable body covering possible, as well as no use of an elevator, graves dug by hand, only natural monuments and markers, only biologically degradable clothing, no jewels, no maintenance of burial grounds, and more people buried per graveyard, it has a significantly lower environmental impact than traditional burial, and even cremation. According to data from NFDA, 60% of funeral planners are interested in green burial as of 2022, up from 55.7% in 2021. However, there are other studies that cite even higher interest in green funeral services. A 2021 study by Kates Boylston Publications found that a whopping 84% of those surveyed said that they would consider green burial if those services were offered at a funeral home.

September 28, 2023 No Comments

get to know alexandra jo, the voice behind death curious

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Get to Know Alexandra Jo, the Voice Behind Death Curious!

It’s hard to believe that the Death Curious website turns 6 months old in September! It’s serendipitously appropriate that last week, Parting Stone’s Marketing Manager interviewed me for the company’s monthly newsletter. I thought that Death Curious readers would be interested in learning a bit more about me and my perspectives as a death curious person and educator. So, here are my answers to the interview questions, so you can get to know me, Alexandra Jo– the voice behind death curious– a little better…

August 31, 2023 No Comments

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Death Queerious: Everything You Need to Know About Queer Death Care

Death isn’t easy to talk about, and our current death care and end of life systems and laws, like many other institutions in the US, don’t protect the rights of queer and trans folx. It’s important for everyone to think ahead about end of life decisions, make a plan, and make it legal, so we can protect ourselves and the people we love. Since entering the death care profession, I’ve seen a real lack of resources specifically designed for queer death care in the US. That’s why I decided to create Death Queerious.

Death Queerious is a free ebook resource to help the 2SLGBTQIA+ community plan for a good death. Death Queerious explains what legal preparations can be made to protect your identity, choose your own funeral executor, and what new options are available in death care today that many funeral homes may not tell you about. The ebook also covers how these laws and regulations differ state-by-state, and provides resources for planning a good death where you live. The 2SLGBTQIA+ community deserves accessible, specifically queer death care resources, which is exactly what Death Queerious offers.

August 17, 2023 No Comments

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The Real Environmental Impact of Funeral Options, Part 3: Alkaline Hydrolysis

Alkaline Hydrolysis, also known as water cremation, is an extremely eco-friendly disposition method with little impact on the environment. Understanding the environmental impact of alkaline hydrolysis can help you make more eco-friendly funeral choices for yourself and your family.
According to research by Aquamation, alkaline hydrolysis offers over 90% energy savings when compared to flame-based cremation. As more people in the US are seeking out eco-friendly disposition methods and funeral practices, it stands to reason that aquamation will continue to grow in popularity.

August 9, 2023 No Comments

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How Marijuana Use Could Impact the Death Care Profession

It’s an unfortunate fact that many people in the death care space don’t have the time or resources to seek out professional help for their own mental health, and until recently, things like therapy were still highly stigmatized in wider society. For this reason, employee retention is a real problem in many funeral homes and death care jobs. Recent research shows that marijuana use could actually improve mental health for some people, and improved mental health could help with death care employee retention long term. We dove into this research to discover how marijuana could impact the death care profession.

July 13, 2023 No Comments

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The Real Environmental Impact of Funeral Options, Part 2: Flame Cremation

It’s important to know the carbon footprint of the most popular disposition method in the US today when comparing the environmental impact of funeral options. In part 1 of this series, we looked at the eco friendliness (or lack thereof) of traditional burial practices, and this week, we take a deep dive into the environmental impact of flame cremation. Flame cremation was the disposition method of choice for 59% of all deaths in the US in 2022 according to CANA, and 57.5% of all deaths in 2021, according to both CANA’s 2022 Annual Statistics Report and NFDA’s 2021 Cremation and Burial Report. Understanding the eco-impact of flame cremation can help your family make more environmentally friendly funeral choices.

June 5, 2023 No Comments

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The Real Environmental Impact of Funeral Options, Part 1: Traditional Burial

Have you ever wondered about the environmental impact of traditional burial and embalming? Research shows that consumers across generations want eco-conscious options, and over 65% of consumers are willing to change their purchasing habits to be more “green.” With new and greener disposition options gaining popularity each year, we did some research to figure out exactly how eco-friendly each disposition method (currently available in the US) is, and what you need to know about the environmental impact of traditional burial in order to make choices that are right for your beliefs and needs.

May 26, 2023 No Comments

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