I've been sitting here this week beaming like a proud mama hen. So many of you have started putting your face and voice out there in new ways, on camera, in your own words, and I just want to say I see it. It's not a small thing. So this week I'm gifting you a snippet from the Social Reels Masterclass. Eight minutes, deep dive, all about Your Profile, Your Platforms, Your Sound. Watch for free below and you can find the full course in the Classroom tab. I'm also dreaming into something bigger. A Vizzy D Video series where I challenge us all with different prompts and questions to speak to camera and share it in here first, encouraging each other across that vulnerable threshold together. Still shaping what this looks like, but I wanted to say it out loud before it's fully formed, because that's kind of the whole point isn't it... Would this be something you'd want to be part of? Curious what a prompt might look like for you, something silly, something serious, something that scares you a bit to say out loud. What is stopping you from putting your face and voice out there? What are the blocks? How can we help each other? Only love, Amy 🐦‍⬛

This week's prompt isn't about your clients. It's about you. What's sitting in your own death admin pile? Maybe it's the will you've been meaning to update. The Advance Care Directive that's still only half finished. The conversation you've been meaning to have with your family. The funeral wishes you've helped other people think about… but haven't quite written down for yourself. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. How constantly looking “out there” for ideas can become an endless hustle - when actually if we pause and find the time to harvest from what we already have done (or haven’t done) - it can be a treasure trove of ideas that demands less from us energetically. e.g. I recently recorded a podcast episode for ‘Play This At My Funeral’ & the conversation resulted in me talking through planning my own funeral ceremony, moment by moment, song by song - and it gifted me a new perspective, an embodied perspective - of how I truly want my funeral to feel for the people I leave behind. This dovetailed effortlessly into an existing content pillar for me around helping people approach funerals not a formality they have to get through, but a creative act of love they get to create. One last generous gesture. (Here's the short clip I've chosen to share on socials.) That shift, from funeral as "burden" to funeral as "gift", has opened up a whole new way for me to talk about this work. And I only truly arrived there because I did my own admin first. Harvested from within from my own wants and wishes. And that's just funerals. As we know, there's so much more across the entire end of life / death / dying / ceremony / grief / remembrance spectrum. The Dead Good sisters - @Katy Vigurs + @Lindsey Vigurs - put this into practice beautifully in a reel recently - really naming all that they want for their moments following death. It’s poignant and visceral and beautiful - (as is everything they do!) It's on Instagram here.

This week I’m gifting y'all a lil snippet from the 'Visibility Foundations' course where we delve into TRUST SIGNALS. Start by watching the video below - it’s only 6 minutes. 🐦‍⬛ Trust Signal 1: Website Copy 🐦‍⬛ Trust Signal 2: Your Lovely Face 🐦‍⬛ Trust Signal 3: Description of your Services 🐦‍⬛ Trust Signal 4: Visible Pricing 🐦‍⬛ Trust Signal 5: Community Presence There's a full mapping exercise inside the 'Visibility Foundations: Trust Signals' lesson that walks you through where to start with these once you've scored yourself, but I hope this is food for thought in the meantime. These Trust Signals are always adapting and evolving, that's the nature of the work, and we should keep checking in on them. 🐦‍⬛ I'll go first with a couple of updates on my to-do list: - I know I need a more recent headshot, and photos that demonstrate HOW I show up in this work.  I'm dreaming into a mock funeral photoshoot in the Spring here in the Blue Mountains. I plan on making this a community building event, where I invite Death Café regulars to come and be the ‘guests’ and will have a cardboard coffin for us to paint & decorate together. I'm partnering with a local florist & venue, so we can all share in more imagery to 'advertise' what the non-traditional funeral ceremony can look like. - I'm also updating my sliding scale ballpark pricing. Here's my latest model which I need to add to my website: ‘CELEBRANT FEES: My fee for a memorial or funeral ceremony works on a sliding scale, because I believe every family should have access to bespoke, meaningful ceremony regardless of their financial situation. I trust families to choose the tier that honestly reflects what they can afford: Supported ($650) - for those experiencing financial hardship or limited resources. Comfortable ($1100) - for those in regular employment, meeting day-to-day needs without difficulty. Abundance ($1550) - for those with means to pay in full, which helps make the supported rate possible for others.

Vizzy D Darlings, This week we're jumping into language and I'm inviting you to embrace this prompt in two ways: 1. Reflect on your own relationship with language in your corner of death and grief care. What's changed and evolved in you and your work? 2. How might you share this as advocacy? On socials, in a blog post, in an interview, in a conversation with someone. How can you more concisely weave and speak the evolution of death care language into your work and world? 🐦‍⬛ There's so much within language that's nuanced to who we are, where we work and what we do. A funeral director in a regional town carries different words than a chaplain in a city hospital, than a doula sitting with someone dying at home. None of us are working from the same script, and I don't think we should be. And yet, reflecting on the language we uphold and perpetuate in this work is relevant no matter where we live and what we do. It's culturally nuanced and our responses will all be different. It's something we should all keep tending to. For example, a lot of the western Anglo-centric grief language encourages us to "ask their name", or to "speak their name" to honour that person's loss and keep their memory alive. Some of my ‘best performing’ social posts are about exactly this. And yet, when I support First Nations families here in Australia, the cultural protocol is the opposite. In some communities you DON'T speak their name for the first year, to ensure their spirit can be free in the Dreamtime and not unsettled during a time when it needs to move on undisturbed. When supporting Sorry Business (the Indigenous name for death care and funeral rites), I always ask permission to speak their name or ask how best to refer to the person who has died. There will be nuance with this in all countries and communities. 🐦‍⬛ Here's some more examples from me if helpful. I haven't quite worked out how I want to share this as advocacy, but feel free to borrow or apply anything that resonates for you.

Darlings - Happy Friday! I’ve got two tasty treats for you today, both ready & waiting for you in the Classroom tab. 🐦‍⬛ 1) Introducing: The Vizzy D Resource Library 🐦‍⬛ The *Vizzy D Resource Library* is a new shared space for the resources that have shaped how we think about death, grief and ceremony, built by this community, for this community. You can find it in the Classroom tab. It's meant to grow with whatever's actually shaping your practice right now, the book that changed how you show up with a family, the podcast episode you've sent to three colleagues, the poem you keep coming back to for readings. A shared shelf of books, podcasts, documentaries, readings, trainings and accounts that have shaped how we think about death, grief and ceremony. Comment your suggestions in the new *Vizzy D Resource Library* post pinned to the top of our community chat and we can together start breathing life into this exciting new global library for us all. 🐦‍⬛ 2) Funerals Reimagined: A Guide For Creating Meaningful Ceremonies🐦‍⬛ $27 AUD / $19 USD / £15 GBP I've been sitting on this for a while and I'm genuinely excited to finally share it with you. *Funerals Reimagined: A Guide to Creating Meaningful Ceremonies* Thirty pages. Seven real ceremonies. The three shifts that turn a funeral from something people sit through into something they help create. A worksheet of prompts to actually put into practice with families. The hard part wasn't the writing. It was the cutting. I could have made this three times longer, but I wanted something you could actually share with a family, or read yourself in one sitting between appointments, not another PDF that sits in a downloads folder unread. My hope is that it helps in a few different ways. Maybe there's a story or a framing in here that gives language to something you already know in your bones but haven't quite found the words for. Maybe it's something you can point a family towards when they're struggling to imagine anything beyond the standard traditional funeral service.