WOC in Wellness: Alica Forneret
This is the third interview in a series of Women of Colour (WOC) in Wellness – an audio blog dedicated to diving into diversity in the industry through candid conversation.
Each blog will feature a WOC in the wellness industry, where we chat about their career and how we can bring more diverse voices into the spotlight.
Alica Forneret is a writer and facilitator creating spaces for people to explore their grief. She is fiercely committed to making sure that we have more conversations about grief, death, and dying - whether that’s at home, at work, or with strangers on the bus. Alica is a member of the BC Women's Health Foundation’s Young Women's Council, an Associate board member of Our House Grief Center, and hosts Dead Moms Club events in Canada and the US.
Alica’s written work has been featured on the pages of popular magazines and books, including (but not limited to) Modern Loss, Grief Dialogues, Vancouver Magazine, Loam, and Kinfolk. And her story and voice have been featured on CTV News, Grief Out Loud, InStyle, and more. You can find her writing her newsletter The Mourning Herald from coffee shops or running workshops and Death Over Dinners around North America.
The people and resources we mention in the interview below:
Alica tells us how to be a good supporter for someone who is grieving a loss…
Number one, educate yourself, read about this stuff, get new perspectives, and do it as early as possible. I don't think that we all need to wait until someone in our life loses someone important to learn how to support a friend or family member through the experience of losing someone important to them.
We should be figuring out as early as possible, how to support each other through death, because it is an inevitable thing that we're all going to experience.
And two, we're all going to have this happen to us. And to be able to prepare ourselves and our family members and friends around us, to be the best support systems that we can be like that is, to me, the most important thing.
Be realistic about what support you can offer. If you know that you cannot come cook someone dinner seven nights a week, do not tell someone, "I will support you in any way, let me know if you want me to come cook you dinner every night this week." If you can't do it, don't offer it.
Full Transcript:
Zafira: Hi, thank you for joining me today on the third interview for Women of Color of Wellness. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?
Alica: Yeah, thank you. So my name is Alica Forneret. And I am a facilitator and writer focused mainly in the space of grief, and how we can support people in our lives through grief and grieving after death.
Zafira: Amazing. So let's start with your story Alica, Why don't you tell me a bit about how you ended up doing what you do today?
Alica: Yeah, so I am a writer by trade. That's what my formal education was in, creative nonfiction writing. And so I've been writing for a while for many years, and working on different kinds of print and creative writing projects. And then in 2016, my mom died. And I'd been working on a project that was focused on death, but not grief specifically. And when she died, I realized, "Oh, I've been dealing with death and the topic of death in this really abstract sense." But it all of a sudden had come to this place after she died, where I needed to look inward a little more at my own grief and what grief would mean for me. And so I pivoted the work that I was doing on that big abstract print project about death, into writing and focusing on writing about grief and how I was processing my own grief and how I was processing mother loss. And everything just took off from there.
I was writing for my blog, and then started looking at ways that I could not just write from my own perspective on what I was experiencing with grief, but actually getting offline, doing workshops, doing events and connecting with other people who had experienced loss or needed a space to talk about their loss and grief. And so, that's where I've come to now with a million random tiny things in between, like creating lapel pins for people who are in The Dead Moms Club and creating grief greeting cards for people who need something a little sassier in their inbox or in their mailbox after someone has died. So, I've gone off on some little tangents on the side of writing, but that's been my main focus since my mom died.
Zafira: Thanks so much for sharing that and I love hearing about all of the different ways that it's manifested into your work today and how you're serving people. Clearly, grief is a very unique thing for each person. It sounds like you're able to see what people need and deliver accordingly to make sure that they can move through it on their own, in their own way. So you mentioned The Dead Moms Club. Tell me a little bit about that.
Alica: Yeah, so when my mom died, I had a couple at the time, I can think of one close friend in my life whose mom had died before mine. And I remember them telling me like, "You're in a club now. You are in a club where there are things that people are going to say to you who are not in the club that they don't know is wrong or that they don't know is offensive or that they don't know will hurt you, but everyone that's in that club that has gone through mother losses experienced losing a mother, they will know not to say those things. They will know not to ask you the shitty questions they will know where the boundaries are around support and around intention and around what you just sometimes shouldn't say to a person who's grieving their dead mom."
And so when my friend told me that I was like, "Oh, there is this really unique connection, that everyone who's lost a mother can, doesn't necessarily mean that they do have this, but that they can have over a shared loss. And so I was thinking about different ways through storytelling, and approached that and started doing some work in that space as well like with writing. But I was like, "What is a way that we can own this and connect with people over it visually and publicly?" I love lapel pins and so I started a project of The Dead Moms Club lapel pins, and designed them and really considered it an opportunity for people to wear something either for themselves or to show the world at a hard time of year or at a time when they want to commemorate their mom or every day, just so that if somebody comes up to them and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I've never seen this but I'm in the club too."
It was just an opportunity to help people if they were interested in connecting, connect over a shared loss. So I designed two different designs and I worked with a designer out of Australia. One of them specifically is a rose. And my mom loved roses and planted roses all over our house with my dad and our property with my dad. It was something flowers and floral things were really important and just really special to her. And then the other is this what we called Starry Night design, that was in I guess, inspired by the concept of looking up at the stars when your mom isn't around and knowing that she might be out there somewhere looking down, and also just those moments where you have lost someone that has provided you with guidance maybe, or answers to any questions that you have. And having those moments where you're looking for it still and looking out into the universe, looking out into the sky, looking out in those moments where you don't have anywhere else to turn. And maybe being able to think about your mom in those moments or connect with a memory of your mom or some advice from your mom in those moments.
Zafira: That's so beautiful, such a great way to create resonance between people who experienced that. And what was some of the initial reactions to you creating these lapel pins and doing the work that you do and feel like it's so needed, but they don't have nearly enough of it. Have you been surprised or what has been the response to what you're putting out into the world?
Alica: Yeah, it's been just overwhelming positivity. I think on a lot of different fronts, I think it's been a lot of incredible feedback from people saying, "I have not been able to find the words for what I've been feeling, but I found them through your writing, through your Instagram, whatever it is." And that's something that really means the most to me, because I do this work, I think about this every day. And I still don't have words to describe all the things that I feel about loss and grief. And to know that there are people out there for me who do find the words who are also doing grief work. It has been really powerful, incredible and influential.
So to know that I could be that person in any way for even one person has been really, really special. And in other ways, it's just been really incredible to know that there are some people who needed to have someone else, say and voice something that they were feeling that maybe they could find the words for but didn't feel safe to bring up. I write about and do some speaking about grief in the workplace, and how support in the workplace can be quite limited and harmful in a lot of cases for people who are grieving.
And so being able to hear from anyone who's like, "Work sucks every day. And I'm just so glad I'm not the only person going through this, " or "Work sucks every day and I'm really glad that I know and understand now why it sucks or what support I might be missing when I didn't even know that there was the option to have that support." So that's been really incredible.
And then of course, I get feedback. Like, the first time I ran an ad for my pins. My partner does all the ad stuff and somebody commented was like, "This is tacky. This is horrible. These pins are so awful, these should not exist. I lost my mom, and would never wear one of these." And I think coming from a marketing background, in my mind and my partner also did tell me when I freaked out, I was like, "No, this is terrible." But we both talked about just the fact that it's really important and says, probably in a lot of cases really good things about a product that you've created, when people are polarized and say really incredible things and maybe say really negative things, but they're responding. And it's touching people in a certain way, and it's making people at least have conversations or express themselves about their own grief, in a way and in a place that they might not normally be able to.
So yeah, it's mostly been positive, like overwhelmingly positive. I think and the only other times that I think I've heard from people or had any pushback is when I have to clarify, the work that I'm doing is not for everyone, the language that I use is definitely not for everyone and the way that I position myself with cursing and language and aggression, and also just a real serious appreciation for laughing through grief and laughing at things that a lot of other people would not find funny. Not everybody's done with that. And sometimes I have to clarify, "You don't have to laugh about things that happened at your mom's funeral." But like I do, and that's a really important thing for me to be able to do, but I'm not speaking for everyone. And I'm not trying to speak for everyone. It's just been a really important opportunity for me to put myself out there to see if I can speak for or connect with anyone that needs it.
Zafira: Totally, and I totally get that. I feel like if what we're putting out into the world isn't causing a reaction of some kind or trying to please everyone, then we're not reaching as many people as we can or not impacting them the way we want. So I totally agree on that front.
I'd love to explore your relationship with your writing, because it sounds like it's really carried you forward. Possibly before your mom passed away and it clearly informed so much of the work you're doing today, and creates such profound impact and emotion in your readers. Can you share a little bit about your relationship with your writing and your process? And how it might have evolved to what you're doing now?
Alica: Yeah. So I started writing in high school, and I wrote for the school newspaper, and I was an editor. I ended up being an editor editing in college. But I remember in high school, I was writing Bright Eyes reviews and music reviews for bands. And it was one of those things where I was like, "Okay, this is fun, this is enjoyable and it's something that I clearly am good enough at for people to print my words on a page."
And then in university, I ended up moving into like features and longer form writing, and creative nonfiction at the end of my university years, and then I started freelancing when I graduated. And the majority of the writing that I was doing honestly, until my mom died was about food and food culture through an ethnographic and anthropological lens. So I was looking at the ways that people connected over food. I was writing like 80-page papers about hot dish casseroles in Minnesota, and crawfish boils in Louisiana, and I was really focused on looking at how people connect over food, what food traditions can mean to them and what food traditions meant for me.
And so when the death project that I was working on the year before my mom died, actually came out of, I was heading the editorial arm of a pop up dinner company in the US, and I was working with a designer and the company went under. And so when the two of us got laid off, we were like, "Okay, let's just take this opportunity to like, we live in New Orleans right now. It's super cheap. Let's just like explore continuing to be creative while we look for work." And so we launched this project, and I've continued editing and writing for this project, but it was mostly about death and my huge love of food and looking at death through a food lens and a cultural lens.
And so, I'd been writing about this topic, and in this world in freelancing for food magazines and all that for a long time, and this switch was huge for me. I still have my connection to food with events like hosting Death Over Dinners in the US and Canada. But the writing to not look at it through that lens of food and eating and sharing meals was very different for me and it's been incredible to see my work and my voice and my practice, grow in a new subject matter area.
But it's still the reason I do it is because it is the medium that I love the most and it is the way that I know I can express myself the best. I love talking, I talk a lot. I've done some video work. Great, whatever. But being able to sit down and write, is the best way that I can get what's going on in my brain and what I'm synthesizing from experiences that I'm having out into the world in a way that I'm really happy with.
So the practice is still the same. I still do all the things that freelancers do. I still procrastinate. I still have an incredible time with the thesaurus and enjoy looking at new words. And all of those things were a huge part of my freelancing career before getting into grief. And now it's a totally new arena to be in, but with very similar practices and habits. So I love it.
Zafira: I feel like it seems like even though you're writing about food and you're focused on how people connect over food, you do almost a similar thing now where you just connect people who are experiencing grief. And it seems like your writing has always been fascinated or intrigued by how we bring people together through different experiences, which I feel like is so beautiful and I think your writing does such a good job of, it sounds like you're having a conversation with someone who just understands you. And it feels very conversational, so that's so powerful.
I'd love to switch gears for a second and take a step back to look at how the industry speaks to, especially the wellness industry speaks to people who are grieving or going through difficult periods in their life. What are your thoughts on how wellness is marketed towards those groups of people, if at all, or what you've noticed about what people expect they should be doing or thinks they should be doing because of the messages they're receiving through the media?
Alica: I think it's been really special to get into this work and get into this world. Because when my mom died, and I went on the internet and I was googling resources, sad grieving person help. You're just like, you don't know where to start.
Zafira: Help me.
Alica: Yeah, help me please Google. You think about all of the resources that I would have encountered up to that point. And then my mom dies. And then I was sitting there and I'm trying to figure out, "Okay, what can I use? How who can help me?"
I was really inundated with things that are like cool, grief equals the five stages, you will experience these things. Grief equals being really sad. It's okay to cry for a certain amount of time, but then maybe you'll heal, you'll feel better, things will get better and I was really looking for some resources that we're going to talk to me in the way that my friends talk to me, and that I talk to myself, and that I talk to people around me, who were processing their grief alongside me. And that didn't involve when you go to the grocery store, the grief cards that you find are like angels and doves with a rainbow saying, "Everything will be okay one day. I'm here for you."
And I think there's a lot of issues with the way one, the greeting card industry is a whole other conversation that I could have for a million hours, but the way that people say they will support you through things like that, and the way that people communicate that you can and will and should be okay one day. I was just finding all of these little pockets of the internet and the world where I was like, "Who's just going to tell me that this sucks and where am I going to find an article that just tells me or a greeting card that I get from someone or Instagram telling me like, you're just going to feel awful. And it's okay to feel awful as long as you feel awful, there is no timeframe, there is no endpoint that you have to try and get to."
And I was having a really hard time finding that and I was having a hard time finding it from people. Once I did start finding books like what Modern Loss has put out, which is a website and now book and a collection of stories by writers who've written about loss and grief in incredible ways, but it is run by two young white women. And the same with a lot of other books that have been written about grief and it being okay to experience your grief however you need too. They weren't from women and people that looked like me and necessarily talked like me.
But the deeper that I get into it, I'm finding so many incredible women of color and black women, specifically out there who are working in the mental health and wellness and grief space and death space in general, who I'm connecting with more, whose voices I'm connecting with more. So I think they're out there. Whether it's grief or death, or whatever it is, these are not always the voices that are going to rise to the top of Google or be on the bestseller lists or necessarily be out there and accessible in the same way as other authors or other people that are in the industry. So I think in the beginning, it was hard, but it was hard and it caused me to do the work that I'm doing because I was like, "Oh, for now I'll fill this gap until I find other people who are doing it and then we can all work together. It'll be great." But it was hard in the beginning to not feel like I had to based on marketing and based on the resources that were out there feel like I had to just fit into a box.
Zafira: Yeah, absolutely. If it just didn't feel right, and I can't believe that through all the googling and everything, it was still hard to find any resources or any voices that would really speak and resonate with you. So I'd love to know your thoughts on why do you think that there is such a glaring gap without reasoning? Or people have been passing away forever.
I am just so curious as to ... you may not have all the answers, but this is an open conversation. I'd love to know your thoughts on why you think that there might be such a gap in the industry or what are some obstacles that women of color or other minorities might be facing to help fill that gap if you've experienced any as well on your end because we need those voices rising to the surface.
I personally had friends more recently going through really extreme loss and even though I've been more of a supporter, I'm like, "These cards suck."
Alica: They really do, yeah.
Zafira: I do not want to give them anything with the devil on there. So share with me any thoughts you might have on the diversity gap in the depth space or how the authorities in that space may not look or talk like us?
Alica: I think the gap in general is one question. So the gap in general about why the ... like feel however you need to feel for as long as you need to feel it perspective is not necessarily at the top of every list or in every single marketing campaign. Or the opinion behind all death and grief resources is, it's really hard I think, for a lot of people to be able to tell their friend or tell their family, you're just going to feel awful for a while maybe, and I can't do anything about it.
And when we put things into a box, and when we put things on a list of stages, which were totally misinterpreted, by the way, and I've written about this. It's one of those things where it's like, Kübler-Ross never knew that the five stages were going to be interpreted the way that they have been widely. But anyway, the thing is, when you put things on a list or you put them into stages, or you say, "Cool, this is a reasonable amount of time to go on bereavement leave or a reasonable amount of time to take off of work and then you should stop crying," is that we contain them because it gives us control. It gives us an endpoint, and it gives us a time where we can say, "I only need to support you for this long, and then you're going to be okay, right?" Or "I only need to support you for this long, because I only know what to do for that long and I don't know what else to do if it's five years down the road, and you're still solving every day."
And I think it makes it more in that sense, just more accessible. Those resources that put things into that box are way more accessible than you might never know how to help your friend. And that's just going to be the reality of their grief. Or you might never be able to help your parent "fully get over" the loss of their partner. And you're just going to have to deal with that and support them in ways that you know how.
So I think that that gap is there's a fear to be able to say, "Your employee might need more time than three days, and that might affect their productivity," or "Your friend might need more time than the one year anniversary to feel shitty." And so I think that the gap in general is there.
I was having a conversation with someone about this a couple of months ago, just about specifically women of color being able to speak about the hardship of grief, and be able to speak about one, any pain that can be perceived as weakness, any struggling that can be perceived as weakness, and any type of grieving that can be perceived in the workplace or with family or with any situation that you're in as a weakness. And it's really hard when I think about looking back on my time in the workplace.
A couple of years ago where I ended up leaving this job, and it was really difficult for me to know that, "Okay, I'm coming into this office, where everyone has probably read the whatever, maybe books that they've read about grief or grieving or articles about grief or grieving, or they have their ideas of what grief is and what it looks like." And I'm coming into this office feeling what I'm feeling as a woman, a black woman, a woman of color, and a young woman and a queer woman who's going to sit at their desk and cry sometimes. There is pressure from so many angles to not fully feel comfortable, being vulnerable with people.
And I think that that goes from everyone to employees all the way to people who are out there doing the incredibly courageous work of being able to talk about publicly, to write about, to blog about and to create social media content about the fact that women of color are grieving and feel pressures and have experiences that are just as valid but are being seen through a very different lens.
So yeah, I think the gap is there for probably a million reasons. People's fear of people's discomfort.
Zafira: Totally.
Alica: But I think it's quite unique and for me, I feel very lucky to be within a emerging and also very seasoned cohort, like a mix of everyone who is really excited about talking about grief and loss and feelings and mental health. In general, I feel very, very lucky because filling that gap is very important. And it's very important for I think, young women, especially and young women who are in the workforce, trying to go to their desk and training go to their job after experiencing a loss and having some constraints put on how it is you're supposed to be acting.
Zafira: Yeah, 100%. It seems like we're just ... we've been told to basically not feel our feelings, right and just like fit in them and allow them to marinate and that there is a bit of an overwhelming optimism or you'll just get right back to it attitude that you feel pressured by and I totally get that.
Something I wanted to touch on as well that I know is important to you is how we receive care and support for going through grief in these experiences and the lack of access to exceptional care and mental health resources for all groups. I know that's something that really matters to you. Can you share a little bit more about maybe what you've seen or experienced and what you're taking away from that?
Alica:
I think for me with the work that I'm doing right now and the focus that I have, specifically on the workplace, it became very clear to me after returning to work and returning to not even traditional 9:00 to 5:00. I was working for a content marketing agency, so it was a traditional like, 7:00 to 7:00.
I realized, it is hard for everyone to talk about grief. It is hard for everyone to talk about grief and talk about grief in the workplace. It is hard for everyone to talk about grief in the workplace and have consumed resources or had the training as a manager, CEO, coworker, whatever it is to support someone on a very individual and personal level. And I realized, "Okay, I'm coming into my workplace knowing that there is stuff going on for me and that I need to take care of myself but also need to be upfront and honest with my employer about what kinds of resources I need and what kinds of support I need." And that backfired very dramatically and very seriously to unfortunately, the detriment of my mental health, my physical health and I ended up leaving my job.
And so over time I've just really been thinking a lot about if we know that we need the support, and we can look for the support, and we really want to have access to great counselors or great employee resources or employers that are educated about grief and how to handle it in the workplace. What am I not seeing right now? And it was people capable of having conversations, people willing to have the conversations, and then people specifically, who can't have the conversations, knowing where to send you if they can't do it themselves.
So the more I learned about just HR and employee resources and training and what the capacity is of managers and people that are in a situation of managing people and managing human beings. It's been forcing me to think a lot about, "Cool, I take care of myself. I go to my counseling, I have it scheduled in, I do the things for my body and my brain for my physical and emotional wellbeing to take care of myself, but how do we get that support when we're not just in our own bubble and going somewhere for 40 plus hours a week, or being with our friends and family who might not know how to take care of us either?" And so it's been really incredible.
I wrote a piece a while ago that was like, there are so many different ways to work, your grief into your wellness to make sure that anyone in your life is aware of the fact that you're grieving and to also talk about then, how is it impacting my relationship with a friend? How is it impacting my mental health? When I go to the doctor and tell my doctor, "Hey, here's the update, whatever. I'm having stomach problems. I have a yeast infection. I'm having really bad headaches and I'm not sleeping well." When I didn't put in the note, and my mom died a couple of years ago, and I've been grieving very intensely. They're going to think about it and diagnose it in a very different way. And there's this really full picture that you can give anyone in your life when you're trying to work through what support you need, by putting in the fact and mentioning the fact that you're grieving because it does have very serious impacts and effects on our bodies and our wellbeing both physical and mental.
So the piece that I wrote was like, I told my doctor that I was grieving. I told my nutritionist that I was grieving. I told my kickboxing instructor that I was grieving. I told my yoga instructor that I was grieving. And it's been really ... my employer, my friends, my family, everybody knows. I'm also a person that's like, I just tell everyone all the time.
Zafira: Yeah.
Alica: Because it's really important to me, and that's part of my life. But I really wanted to write that piece to make it clear that one, more people responded very positively, and with a lot of support versus people who were like, "Oh, cool, it doesn't matter. Here's some pills just go do your thing." Or, "Okay, you need to hide in the back of the class then in case you cry." It was the complete opposite of that. And I feel like the resources that we can receive if we have a safe space, to open up about our grief can can double and triple and just be received in a very new and different way.
Zafira: Totally. And I never thought about it that way. But it makes total sense. Your doctor is not going to prescribe the right things if they don't know what's been going on in your life.
I would love to know for people that may struggle with sharing their feelings openly in general, especially around grief or tend to not want to talk about it that much. What are some accessible ways that they can mention it or introduce it into conversation or into the people of their lives in a way that doesn't feel like they're being excessively vulnerable?
Alica: I would say first, it is important to think about the people that you share that information with especially if being vulnerable or being open isn't safe with the people that you're around. There's people that I say, I talk to everyone about this. I don't talk to everyone about this. Because I know that there are some people who will do the pat on the head. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry." And then not know what to say. I know there's people that just can't handle having conversations about it.
So I think the caveat in the beginning of this is just like think about who you express this stuff to. And that doesn't mean don't do it, but just think about who is going to be a really good place to start having those conversations. And so first, I would say, when you can think of that person, or people in your life or someone, like a counselor, or a friend or family member, have the conversation with someone who you know will take care of you first. Because they can be clunky conversations. The first time you have to express what it feels like to be experiencing something without, for example, your parent around. You might cry, you might get really angry. You might not you might have all kinds of emotions come up, you might laugh and then if you're in front of the wrong person, which I've had happened before, like "Why are you laughing about this? It's your dead mom."
You might experience something with someone that is going to feel really new and potentially uncomfortable. So I'd say try doing it first with someone who you know will hold the space for you to experience whatever it is that you need to. And I think the second when you're going into those conversations, for me it can be about asking myself questions and self reflection first.
I think when I think about sharing things with my dad, for example, and talking to my dad about my mom, I don't typically. My dad and I have become a lot closer in our spending. We're actually spending this weekend together, just the two of us going to San Francisco and we did not do like solo trips ever. But before going into this weekend, or we did a trip to New York last year before going into that trip, I think a lot about the other people who I'm having the conversation with before I just start firing questions. Because I think as much as it's important for them to hold space for you, and being vulnerable, it's also really important to think about holding space for them and about how like having a conversation about death might trigger a million things that you don't even know about that are going on in their life. So I think thinking about how you're going to have the conversation, thinking about who you're going to have the conversations with, is really important.
And then from there, like if you found a safe person, just opening up and accepting that it could be a little fumbly and could be a little clunky. And having patience with yourself to find the words is really important. Because I did not come out the gate the day my mom died ready to have conversations about the intricacies and complexities of what it feels like to be a young woman of color grieving the death of my white adoptive mother. These are conversations that take time, that take work and that take a lot of caring people around you being willing to have those clunky conversations in the beginning.
So I think being really patient with yourself and being really patient with those around you can be just really important because then you, you get over the hurdle and you're like, "Cool. I'm just going to do this. It might be a little weird. I might feel uncomfortable for a while. But I'm learning, I'm working and I'm finding the words."
Zafira: Yeah, absolutely.
Alica: Yeah.
Zafira: And I feel like on the flip side, people who are supporters of those who are grieving, I know, that's something like on your website. I can see that you've got resources for people who are grieving and for people who are supporters, and I'm sure people listening in on this conversation may have found themselves in a supporter role as well a couple of times. What are some things that you think make for a good supporter of grief or help that people who are supporting those moving through a painful experience should keep in mind or that you wish they knew when that had happened to you?
Alica: Number one, educate yourself, read about this stuff, get new perspectives, and do it as early as possible. I don't think that we all need to wait until someone in our life loses someone important to learn how to support a friend or family member through the experience of losing someone important to them.
There are resources out there. There are blogs, books, podcasts, articles everywhere right now, with lots of different perspectives on how to support someone. I was talking to someone about this recently, and I like, "There is no reason why we educate ourselves and prepare ourselves with sex education. And when we talk about nutrition, we talk about our mental health, we talk about our physical wellbeing, we talked about how to have important friendships and emotional relationships. We should be figuring out as early as possible, how to support each other through death, because it is an inevitable thing that one we're all going to experience. And two, we're all going to have happened to us." And to be able to prepare ourselves and our family members and friends around us, to be the best support systems that we can be like that is, to me the most important thing.
And learning how to have these conversations with someone can be really important, but also educating yourself beforehand about what is grief beyond those five stages of, depression and anger and denial. What does it mean for me to have a conversation with someone and what could it look like when my friend comes to me and says, "I'm really jealous, related to this thing that happened to me after I started grieving," or "I'm just really happy about this person being able to release from their body and die," and if we can start thinking about what those conversations can look like, reading about what the experience of supporting someone can feel like. I think that is the best, most incredible place to start.
And I think from there, one of the most important things to me that I tell people is be realistic about what support you can offer. And I see this all the time. If you know that you cannot come cook someone dinner seven nights a week. Do not tell someone, "I will support you in any way, let me know if you want me to come cook you dinner every night this week." If you can't do it, don't offer it. And it's a really tricky cycle that we can get into where it's like, "I just want to support, I just want to be there. I'm just going to tell them that I'll do whatever." Because you end up disappointing them, you end up disappointing yourself, you end up putting yourself in this feeling of like, "I didn't do enough. I said I would do this, but I just know that I can't. Why did I offer in the first place?" And you put someone else in a situation of feeling like, "Cool. That person said they were going to support me, they didn't want a shit friend."
I think that being very, very realistic and actively thinking regularly about what it is that are your strengths. What it is that are places that you can support someone and ways that you can support someone is is very, very important.
Zafira: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that was super helpful. Just got to be real with ourselves and with our loved ones and do the work and you're right, death is inevitable and humans tend to just react when disaster strikes and find solution from the moment. But I really love the idea of just, educating, being proactive and seeking out the resources and support you might have to yield later on.
And speaking of resources, I know you mentioned earlier that you've connected with a lot of women of color and other groups who are in the death space as well and are doing great work. So for people to support people to not end up on super generic websites or articles, who are some people in the industry that you really look up to, would recommend supporting, and that are doing great work that just needs to be shared more?
Alica: Yeah, so I would definitely say maybe not specifically in the grief space on but just looking at how to connect with ourselves, our mental health and our wellbeing on Dora Kamau is a local here in Vancouver who does a lot of work in that space. And we've had conversations and I've been part of programs with her. And for me, it's been really incredible to see her business and consume her resources that really put intention and thinking about yourself, and the place that you hold in the space that you take up as being really, really important and key to being healthy.
And I think, in addition to Dora, who's just been a huge light in my life since living in Vancouver the last couple years. There are some other people I guess specifically. There's a woman here named Christina Andreola, and she runs a company called New Narrative and she is looking at different ways that people can support their loved ones and themselves through death, through unique memorial services and different ways to grieve and mourn through memorials. And what's been really important about her work is one, what I talked about a little bit which is being proactive in your planning and proactive in thinking about how you want to grieve someone and how you want to mourn someone, and how you want to be mourned and grieved yourself.
I think it's been really interesting. Her and I are quite close and what's been beautiful about watching her work is it is so special to see someone who can say, "If you want your celebration of life, to not just have the title of celebration of life, but really be lived into as a celebration, with people smiling and dancing and cheering on the fact that you've lived the life that you did, I am here to help you create that experience for the people who will be mourning and grieving you after you've died." And to really think about what it means to host a funeral? What does it mean to have a memorial years later? What does the space look like? What does it feel like? And what does that experience really look like for people?
And the work that we've done together, it's just been so special to work with a young woman in this city, who is saying, "You don't have to have the cookie cutter. You don't have to spend every last dollar and you also don't have to have any idea of what you want to do. Let's sit down and talk and we can come up with it together." There is space to think about how you want to be mourned and to think about how you want people to experience a really special, intimate time that celebrates you.
Zafira: Yeah, that's beautiful.
Alica: They're both incredible, beautiful, inspiring women.
Zafira: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts with me today, Alica. I feel like everyone who's listening in will have taken a lot away from this conversation. I would love to know how people can support you, work with you, buy Dead Mom lapel pin, and just get involved with what you're doing?
Alica: So my website is a great place to start, like you said and mentioned. I have resources and I've broken it up into two audience buckets. One being people who need grief support for themselves and others who are looking to support someone who's grieving. So my site alicaforneret.com is a good place to start. Same with my Instagram. My shop is on there so you can find pins, you can find gift cards, you can find all the things.
And then ways to support me. Sharing for me the most incredible feeling is to wake up to a message or an email from someone who just says like, "I was on someone's random Facebook page or feed and I saw your article pop up. My mom died 15 years ago, and there was a nugget in your article that just made me feel a little bit heard or seen today." So sharing my content is the most incredible way for me to get support right now.
I'm hosting events in both Vancouver and in the States. I'll be in the states in San Francisco with Reimagine which is a death focused, end of life focused conference in San Francisco in October. So I'll be down there for that. If you have readers, flash listeners in San Francisco, I'll be around for that. But it's just to me, the most important thing is people being able to find voices that have different perspectives like mine.
So sharing my stuff is always ... it's the best.
Zafira: Awesome. Well, I'll make sure I link all of that in the interview and highly encourage everyone to read your work, it's amazing. And thank you so much for bringing all your thoughts to the table and sharing everything you did today. I really appreciate it.
Alica: Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate the time and the space.
Zafira: Awesome.
Follow Alica here and share your thoughts on this interview in the comments below!