When Grief Professionals Grieve With Cole Imperi

People have a lot of misconceptions about grief professionals—one of the biggest being, "They know all about grief, so the loss is easy for them!" Nothing could be further from the truth. This week, I'm speaking to Cole Imperi, a dual-certified thanatologist about the grief of grief professionals. She's sharing her experience of the death of her sister, how practices like Americanized yoga have "sucked the death" out of healing modalities, and what it truly means to be a death companion.

Transcript

Well,

Cole,

I am delighted to have you on the show today because in a weird way,

As you said,

We are cut from the same cloth.

We talk about death,

We make gardening metaphors,

And we both know that it doesn't take death to constitute a loss.

So welcome to coming back,

And if you could please launch into your lost story.

Thank you so much for having me and inviting me into your space.

One of the things that really struck me was how just kind,

I would say,

Your community is.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you for having me.

So I'm a Thanatologist and Thanatology is the study of death and dying.

And I've been involved in this work in all kinds of ways for more than a decade now.

And like every single human being,

I have had loss in my own life.

But I will say that my loss and my multiple losses in life were not what like was the catalyst for me to get into this work.

Over the years,

Working with funeral directors,

All kinds of people in end of life,

Even working with other death doulas and things,

A lot of people found that work because of a loss.

And I'm a little bit different in that my losses did not impact this entrance into the field.

The field kind of found me.

So that said,

I think I will share,

You know what,

I want to talk about a really recent loss.

My sister died in March of this year,

2019.

And I want to bring that up because that's a recent loss.

And for somebody like you,

Shelby,

You know,

We're educated about grief,

Right?

Loss,

Death,

Dying,

What to expect,

All that stuff.

And then,

You know,

Going through my sister's loss showed me a whole new side of loss that I had never considered,

Looked at or thought about.

And it's that people who work with death,

With end of life,

With loss,

With grief,

When they have losses in their own life.

What is that like?

Right?

Because I think back to my very first losses when I was a teenager,

You know,

I knew nothing about what to expect,

Right with grief.

And then now as an individual who's now in her thirties and I've been around so much loss to whether one is a totally new experience and it kind of took me by surprise.

So one of the things that I learned since my sister died is that one of the comments that I often got from people were,

Oh,

Like I'm so sorry to hear your sister died.

I bet you're already done grieving,

Right?

Because you're an expert in death.

Haha.

And I'm like,

Whoa.

And I heard that a lot.

You know,

Shelby,

You talked about this.

I forget what guests about like things people say,

Right when they're trying to be supportive.

So this is new for me.

So people are like,

Oh,

Well you're,

You're an expert in death,

So you must not really have been that sad.

So that's been very eyeopening.

So now one of the,

I always look for,

You know,

Instead of asking why something happens,

I always ask what,

What can I learn?

So what can I learn from this experience after losing my sister?

Now if there's anybody else in my world that works with end of life,

Death or dying and they post or share about a personal loss,

I make it a point to super directly make sure to reach out to them because now I know from going through it that a lot of people make an assumption that if you have an expertise in this area that you don't grieve as hard.

I'm going to draw as close of a parallel as I can,

But this is really similar to those posts that have been circulating about mental health of like,

Watch out for the happy people.

Like people know to check in on their friends who are depressed or bipolar or anxious or struggling with mental health in a visible or like a,

Even a tangible way.

But it's always like,

Watch out for the comedians,

Watch out for the chefs,

Watch out for the designers,

The people who show no signs because oftentimes those are the people who have these things but no one cares to check on them because they must be an expert in happiness if they're so happy or if their lives are going so well.

And this is so interesting because this is the first time I've heard this from a death care professional on the show is that people thought I was an expert in death and so I wasn't going to grieve.

And I literally wrote down,

As you were talking,

Information does not equal emotions.

Like it doesn't make it any better or worse to have more information.

The brain is totally separate from the heart.

Yeah,

It's a totally different realm.

And I was in New York last weekend and I attended a like a little funeral event.

And I talked to,

So I was in a room full of death doulas,

Death midwives.

They're like a state attorneys,

Funeral directors,

Crematory operators.

And I was able to share,

You know,

Hey guys,

This has happened since my sister died.

And everybody was like,

Oh yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Like it's this apparently thing that is understood among death people.

But I mean,

I had never heard anybody talk about this.

And then all of a sudden this was like the sort of quote unquote support that I was getting and it really honest to God,

I just,

It like took the breath right out of me because it's like it was so unexpected.

And so that's been humbling for me,

Someone who has been in this work for over a decade,

You know,

To be,

To,

To,

To be in a situation where you don't know what to say,

You know,

I'm just like,

Whoa.

So anyway,

That's my recent loss story.

I'm curious to know then,

Cause so many people,

Including myself,

Get into grief work because of a loss that we've experienced.

How did thenotology enter your world then as an option?

Because not many people growing up are like,

Oh,

I think I want to work in the death industry.

Yeah,

And I definitely was not that person.

You know,

When I was a kid,

I wanted to be like a singer and then I thought I was going to do fashion.

And if you look at me,

I have,

Um,

Like dark green hair.

Um,

I really am into fashion like so much.

Um,

And death,

Honestly,

It,

It followed me.

I very actively,

Directly and distinctly like significantly altered my career path in my twenties specifically to get the heck away from it.

And I ran right back into it without even seeing it coming.

Um,

And let's see,

Like at my,

The tail end of my twenties,

I went through a process by choice called vocational discernment.

Um,

Vocational discernment is something that religious people who are like trying to figure out if they want to enter the priesthood or if they want to become a nun or a brother go through.

It's like a multi-year process and you discern if this is truly your vocation or not.

Um,

And I was able to,

I contacted a local order of sisters.

Um,

I contacted people from all different faiths to help me go through this process.

It took about 18 to 24 months and that was when I came to terms with the fact that this is my calling.

Um,

And also learned that callings are not easy and they're not fun.

Um,

All the time they're very rewarding,

But they're,

They're really difficult and challenging.

Um,

So it kind of found me and at no point was I ever like a kid being like,

Oh,

I want to be a fanatologist.

You know,

I didn't know what that word was till I was in my twenties.

Um,

And now I'm dual certified,

So I've gone to,

Um,

School or certification for that,

Uh,

More than once just to get educated from different schools of thought as well.

So yeah.

That's so fascinating.

And I'm curious,

I mean,

I'm picturing you,

I've seen photos of you with like the green hair and like the fashionista element,

Like hanging out with nuns being like,

Tell me what to do with my life.

And it seems like the plot for like a sitcom or,

Or some kind of movie or something like that.

Um,

Was there religiousness in your history or background or have you had to do some kind of uncoupling because sometimes religion can be really great for grief and death work and sometimes it can be really toxic.

Yeah.

So,

Um,

This centers on the idea that sometimes our greatest strengths can also be our greatest weakness,

Right?

Like you might be really great at focusing,

But there are times in life where you need to not be so focused and pay attention to things that are going on in your environment.

So I kind of have formed a relationship with religious traditions on a personal level that are like that.

I think that religion can be a great strength in your life,

But it can also be a great weakness,

Right?

Like there are ways that we can use religion or religious beliefs as a way to keep us stuck or keep us defeated and keep us in negative patterns.

So I was raised,

Um,

Roman Catholic.

Um,

I went to Catholic school through eighth grade and in eighth grade I decided I did not really resonate with what was being taught.

And so I chose to go to public high school.

In high school I sort of became one of the Jewish kids.

Um,

I went to a public high school that like over 10% of our population was Jewish.

Um,

And I just fell in with that group and people just thought I was Jewish and I started to observe Shabbat,

Um,

At like 13 or 14 that's Friday night ritual,

Light candles,

Unplug from technology,

Hang out with each other.

And then in college,

Um,

Or by the time I hit college,

I was really angry at religion and I was so angry that I decided to channel that anger by getting a degree in it.

Um,

I got my bachelor's as in journalism and then I also got a degree in Judaic studies.

So I learned to read and write biblical Hebrew in college so that I could read the biblical texts in the native language and understand the linguistics of the time.

Like I was so angry at religion that I was like gonna be able to speak it.

Um,

And then after that I found out that I was Jewish by blood and this had been kind of withheld in my family and a DNA test like confirmed that many years later I ended up getting my bat mitzvah done when I was over in Israel and I got a Hebrew name and all that stuff.

Um,

But to this day right now I would not identify as a religious person.

I'm,

I'm,

I would identify as spiritual and I currently,

Um,

And very,

I'm very closely associated with a Buddhist sangha that is based out of New York City,

Um,

That has a big emphasis on death.

Um,

So I am what you might call my friend Amy Cunningham,

Who's a funeral director in New York.

She calls herself religiously promiscuous and I identify with that very much so.

Oh,

I love that phrase so much.

Um,

Yeah,

Because it kind of,

I mean for lack of better phrasing,

It kind of implies like sleeping around with different religions or like trying them on and seeing if they work.

And I'm so,

I'm cackling at this idea of I hated it so much I decided to get a degree in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just like I'm going to dislike it so much.

I'm going to learn everything I can about it.

And like the first thing that's Frank to my mind are people who do nothing but read,

Like um,

Political pieces or,

Or memoirs or texts or,

You know,

News sources or what have you.

And then they just get as educated as they possibly can so they can like turn it around on what they actually believe.

Yeah.

And at some point I got to the point where I was like,

Dude,

Do you want to carry this anger around that you will never be able to do anything with?

And then at that point,

That was when I really learned about forgiveness,

Um,

Truly.

Um,

And my work in death over the years has really helped me,

Um,

Get to a place with,

With what I would call presence,

Um,

To all faiths,

All belief systems,

All religious viewpoints where I am just so happy to be in the room with it.

You know,

I don't have to pick it up and carry it home with me.

I just love to be with it and around it.

Um,

So I know that that is an experience that I think quite a few people,

You know,

Get to.

Um,

And also it helps not being 18 years old and angry at religion,

But you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that's,

Um,

I won't say it's an experience that everyone has because I think some people have,

I wouldn't call it the good fortune,

But kind of the,

The unwrapped experience of having religion constantly throughout their lives.

And so I'm like,

Oh,

That must be nice because I had a massive religious reckoning kind of pre-grief,

But then post,

I would say pre-grief.

Grief is unending,

But pre,

Pre-loss and post-loss,

Um,

Because God takes on a whole different role when someone you love has died.

Um,

But oh my gosh,

That's just,

That's just so wild.

And I love that there are even different sects of Buddhism now that are like,

We deal mostly with death.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I,

You know,

I,

I feel like so much stuff in America,

We,

We,

We suck out the good part,

Which is often also the difficult part,

Right?

Like death.

Um,

Yoga is a great example of this.

You know,

All yoga classes traditionally end in Shavasana,

Which translates to corpse pose.

And the whole purpose of the system of yoga is to become comfortable with your own death.

But we don't teach that here in the U S and the reality is,

Is when you are aware of that fact and you engage and go through a whole yoga class,

A lot of times it becomes more potent because you are recognizing that interplay with death,

Um,

That we undertake by choice.

Um,

And I say this as someone who is a yoga teacher,

So yeah.

I'm so interested.

I'm literally on your website right now and I'm so interested by the wide umbrella of things that you do.

So I'm wondering if you can tell us what people would expect a thenotologist to do and then what you do.

Because I feel like it's so,

Um,

I mean the reason I was drawn to it was because it's so eclectic and fun and approachable as opposed to so much death material that exists in the world that's very dark and or it's filled with like calla lilies and platitudes.

You have neither on your website.

Heck no.

Yeah.

So,

Okay,

So I'm a thenotologist,

Study of death and dying.

The word of thenotology itself wasn't,

Didn't exist before 1905.

So there was that word I've never been used before.

So it's,

It's,

It's an emerging field.

Um,

And a lot of people that would identify as thenotologists,

They tend to be like clinicians.

They're,

They're academics,

They're scholars,

They're researchers.

I am different in that,

And I'm going to tell you this,

My mission by the time that I die is to improve the way that we deal with the death and dying in the United States in my lifetime by the time that we die.

That's what I'm here to do.

And so the way that I work with the subject of death is I try to and have been doing this for over a decade now,

Develop,

Test and put out there ways that we can apply,

Ways that we can make the process of grief physical,

Because that's sometimes the hardest part about grief is you have this like invisible roommate that you have to live with the rest of your life.

And it's really hard because we are physical beings to not have a physicality to that.

So some of the things that I do,

I do a lot of speaking and teaching and lecturing.

I have two certifications that count for college credit if you need that.

There are like,

I think I can't use the word accredited.

Some weird tech like approved.

So you can become certified in thanatology through me all online 22 weeks of education or certified in death companioning.

Here in Cincinnati,

I serve my local community as a death companion.

Death companioning is not new.

Humans have been helping each other through losses as long as we've been living.

And so that's what I do here locally.

I also pioneered the field of fan of botany.

Fan of botany is the study of how people use plants to deal with death and dying.

And I've pioneered a subset of yoga called Fanta yoga,

Which is the where we like yoga is huge and vast.

And I created a program.

I was very active in the yoga world all throughout my twenties.

I been to Ashram's,

I've worked with all these lineages of figuring out and unlocking particular postures and sequences of postures,

Particular breathing exercises that you don't come in and talk about your loss,

But you move through the loss on the mat in a particular Fanta yoga class.

And so all the postures and things are selected for that.

So I like,

I know that probably when you look at myself,

You're like,

What the heck is she doing?

But it's all in service of my mission to improve the way that we deal with death and dying in my lifetime.

And I want to be able to look back and see that I've left behind a body of work that is researched,

Tested out there and something that people can actually apply in their lives.

Well,

And I love this because I get this,

I'm like a very visual brain person,

Which is funny that I'm doing a podcast because you can't see either of us,

But I get the visual of like,

I'm touching my fingers to my thumbs.

Like it's tactile.

Like all of a sudden you've given me something to hold onto where for the most part,

And you mentioned this as well,

Grief,

We've made grief,

Especially in the United States,

Something that lives in our minds or in our hearts and not a physical expression.

And so to be able to touch it or move through it on a mat or take some kind of course where you're writing things down or you're interacting with other people,

All of a sudden that puts grief into the realm of the physical,

As opposed to the mental or the ethereal or the spiritual.

And you can like,

It becomes sticky.

Like you can get a grip on it and it's the coolest thing.

And something that's coming to mind right now is Elizabeth Gilbert just released her book City of Girls,

Like literally last week or the week before.

And she's going around the country and doing all these interviews and something that she consistently brings up is the death of her partner,

Raya,

And how that was an inspiration to write something that was extremely lighthearted and fun as a result of experiencing such loss.

But she was like,

The craziest thing happened in that I've never done this before with any other loss.

She's like,

I started to dance.

Like literally the day after she died,

I would put Raya's iPod or music playlist or whatever it is on shuffle and say,

Here,

You pick the song.

And then I would just move my body.

She's like,

And it wasn't attractive.

And sometimes it was a ballad and sometimes it was a rocker and sometimes it was acoustic classical piano.

And sometimes it was like screamo emo or whatever it was.

And she was like,

And I would literally just move the energy of grief out of my body because it is this thing that needs to be geolocated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I believe this is informed by my specific experiences working with the dying and stuff over the years that grief is actually,

Yes,

It's physical.

There's definitely the mental,

Emotional part,

But there's something in our bodies that our bodies need that can really help us move through it and really help us process it.

And sometimes that physicality can just be laying flat on the ground.

You know,

There is a physicality,

A processing that can happen just from laying on the ground.

I mean,

Think about,

Have you ever laid outside under a tree,

Just laid there?

That's physical and that's very moving.

So it doesn't mean that you have to go run around the block to have that experience,

But the body is a tool that we have to help us move our grief.

I absolutely love this.

And it's something that comes up in my own grief story as well because the way that my grief started to move was literally through temper tantrums and I would shrink and hit things and I was like,

I'm not usually a violent person.

And so with that,

With the physical death of my mother,

I also had to embrace the death of an old identity of being a nonviolent or a non-angry person.

And I was like,

Ooh,

I'm going to inhabit this now and just like let that take over and see what happens.

But yeah,

I became very physically angry and not towards other people or living things or animals,

But there was a couple of pillows,

A wall and a car that got a lot of beating from me.

That was really interesting to watch.

And even now I'm kind of fascinated as an observer of my own experience.

I'm like,

Oh,

That's really interesting.

The human needs to hit things when she's grieving.

It makes me laugh sometimes,

But then at the same time,

When I'm experiencing grief or when I'm stressed,

I'm like,

Okay,

Where can I physically channel this into?

I'm curious as you talk about death companioning,

It sounds like something that's so now that you've been trained in it,

Like a run of the mill thing.

And so many of us are,

I don't want to say lacking in that department,

But we don't know we need it until almost until it's too late.

Like,

Holy shit,

I didn't know I needed to be a companion for this death and now someone is dying.

What do I do?

So I'm wondering if you can share some insight for people who are listening,

Who are maybe in the process of actively companioning someone who's dying,

Or if they're anticipating that in the future?

Yep.

So death companioning is a role that we can take,

You can become a death companion to yourself or to other people,

Even to groups of people like to communities to companion people through a loss.

And death companions can show up as soon as like as early as let's say diagnosis,

Like somebody finds out that they are terminal and then they are like,

I need a death companion to help me just sort this out.

Death companions can be present all the way from diagnosis all the way through dying,

Active dying,

Death,

Immediately after a death post death.

And there's even a subset of death companioning that looks at care of the soul,

Like long after the person is gone.

But most death companions will specialize.

So you'll have some death companions that are what are called vigil doulas.

That means that they're trained in recognizing,

Identifying the signs of active death.

So they can be in the room with the person as they die.

And they become that sort of grounding presence for anyone else that's in the room.

And it kind of lets everyone else in the room feel like,

Okay,

Cole's here,

She's been around a lot of dying people.

So if she's not freaking out,

I'm not going to freak out.

So that's like a very specific subset of death companioning.

A lot of people get into death companioning because of a loss that they had.

Like they did it for somebody and they found the immense rewards and the very rewarding experience that comes from it.

So you might hear terms like death doula,

Death midwife,

Vigil doula.

There's even something called an abortion doula in the United States.

There's all different types of loss companioning that come along with this.

And it varies from doula to doula.

There are some death companions who don't want to be around dying people,

But they're really,

Really great at all the advanced planning.

And so that's the area that they focus on.

This is nothing new.

As long as humans have been living,

We've been dying.

And there's always been people.

This is actually a lot of what I researched in my recent fellowship that I completed earlier this year.

I was looking at the role of what you might call healers in our communities.

And I'm talking about thousands of years ago,

Even hundreds of years ago.

Anytime someone was dying,

There's always someone in town that people would know who to call.

They'd be like,

Oh my gosh,

So and so is taking a turn for the worst.

Call Shelby,

Right?

That is death companioning.

Usually that person might be religious,

Right?

Like usually that's attached to somebody in religious communities.

But part of why this seems like it's a new thing is because in the United States,

It's now really,

Really common to not live in the city or town that you were born in or that your family resides in.

And it's really,

Really common to not be deeply attached to a religious community.

So who do you call if you are away from your family and friends and away from your community where you originated and you're not attached to any religious traditions?

Well,

Death companions.

And I can tell you that anybody that I have worked with individually,

None of these individuals had a deep religious connection or they were in Cincinnati,

But they're not from here.

So that's death companioning in a nutshell.

They provide nonmedical,

Nonjudgmental support.

I love this.

I literally just wrote down death companioning as being a rock in the room or the touchstone for everyone else.

And that's so cool because.

.

.

And so valuable and anybody can do that.

And it's so important because grief is something that literally uproots and un-anchors almost all of us,

Especially if we're going through it for the very first time.

And it's like,

There is literally no ground underneath my feet.

And I have this sense that death companions can be like,

Well,

It's not the same ground that you were on before,

But at least I've been here before.

And so,

Yeah,

I love the sense of if I'm not freaking out,

You don't have to freak out.

And that's really helpful.

And that's something I saw glimpses of with hospice because they were attuned to signs of death and told us what to look for.

And so we could play,

For lack of better phrasing,

Like a morbid I spy with my mom and be like,

I spy some closed eyes.

And as she was getting closer to death,

I've never phrased it that way before.

So that was really helpful because the whole thing seemed less foreign or scary.

Yeah.

Yes.

But that's pretty incredible.

I wonder,

And please let me know if this is something that is or is not off limits to talk about,

But were you able to companion your sister earlier this year?

No,

I was not.

And that's another interesting thing I'm happy to share and bring up because it's my experience.

But I thought I learned so much from her death.

I thought that going into it like,

Oh my gosh,

My sister is going to die.

We're probably going to connect over this,

Right?

Like she's going to reach out to me.

Like we're going to bond over her death and go through it together because this is what I do for a living.

But sometimes people react.

She did not want to die.

So her reaction was more avoidance of me because I work in death and dying.

So she didn't want to die,

So she avoided me.

Now I'll tell you from like a professional sort of outlook.

And I told you I was in New York classic and at like a funeral event,

I was talking to all these death professionals as well.

And I asked them if they had had that experience too.

Like did you have a close family or friend who died and they like avoided you and all the funeral directors were like,

Oh my gosh,

Yes.

All we want to do is do the funerals for our like family and friends.

But they like specifically went with another funeral home.

And so that was really interesting to hear.

And I think that just kind of touches on a broader conversation just about like avoidance and the ways that we avoid death.

So it's interesting.

So I have done,

You know,

Anybody who works with end of life and like dying,

We all tend to have counselors or therapists that we just regularly check in with.

So I've done my,

Done the hard work of sort of processing and understanding that.

But again,

This has just been a takeaway for me from her death.

Like all of these things that I learned that,

I mean,

There's no book about this.

And I know that you have a lot of listeners who are professionals,

You know,

In some way with loss as well.

So hopefully that is helpful for them to hear.

One of my favorite people in the death care industry is a man by the name of Caleb Wilde who actually came on.

And he wrote this book called Confessions of a Funeral Director.

He wrote the most hilarious Facebook post the other day.

And he's one of the few people like professional pages that I follow.

And he wrote this thing about he's like funeral directors won't make you die.

Like we don't have that power.

But somehow there's this spookiness or this hauntedness that comes with being comfortable with the death care industry where people like,

Oh,

No,

You're wishing it on me.

Or even a woman came on the podcast even earlier this season named Susan Angel Miller.

And she's like,

Just by the organ donation woman visiting my doctor's hospital room,

I felt like maybe they were speeding along death.

When in reality she found out later,

Like that's not the case.

They don't have any control.

Like they don't have any sway over that.

They're just,

I mean,

We're just doing our jobs.

So it's really interesting.

So I'm wondering what can we say to people besides we won't make you die just by exposure to us,

We're not that powerful,

About people in the death care industry or people who are comfortable with death?

Like more or less,

We want to be allies with you.

Right.

So I think for me,

And I guess the place that I've gotten to with my work is like,

For example,

In my death companioning course,

I have like a little unit on this now about professionals who work in a field that sort of have the opposite experience than what you might think.

And it's replicated in other professions.

So I did a little research on this and I actually found that,

For example,

A lot of surgeons,

Like heart surgeons,

They,

There's like this like common thread that I kept finding where they would have these heart attacks and they like knew all the symptoms because that's their expertise.

But it was happening in themselves and so it just kind of got skipped over.

And then also there's been research that shows that for like physicians and surgeons that their coworkers might recognize signs and symptoms of things but are less likely to say anything because they assume,

Oh,

You got it.

So what happened here,

Like in my particular experience is something that I have started to see that is actually replicated what seems to be across most all other professions.

So I don't know.

And this is something I'm looking forward to spending time figuring out like,

What can I do here that actually creates a tool that others can apply?

That's so fascinating because it's almost like your brain automatically is how can I make this go beyond me?

Like how can I make this applicable to other people as opposed to just my experience?

Yeah I mean I guess we're just I've had a lot of loss of my life and I think I learned the hard way that asking why,

Why did this happen?

Why me?

That really doesn't even if you get an answer,

It doesn't make you feel any better.

But asking what questions does what can I learn?

What did this show me?

What did this teach me?

You can do something with that and I always feel better knowing that I did something instead of not doing something.

Reviews

Interesting, thank you🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻