#62 - Sarah Chavez, Death Adept and Winter Wizardress

Sarah Chavez has dedicated her adult life to examining death and dying through an intersectional-feminist and inclusive lens. She one of the founders of the Death Positive movement, through which she examines the relationship between ritual, decolonization, and death itself. She is the executive director of the Order of the Good Death, a founding member of The Collective for Radical Death Studies, and co-founder of feminist site Death & the Maiden. She weaves together the relationship between death and food, rituals, culture, and society, via her blog Nourishing Death. She is also a museum curator and a co-hosts the Death in the Afternoon podcast with Caitlin Doughty and Louise Hung. Sarah was the subject of a chapter in Caitlin Doughty’s NYT bestselling book, From Here to Eternity, and she has worked on the popular YouTube series, Ask a Mortician.

Sarah has also garnered a wide, devoted audience for her writing and posts on folklore, mythology, and rituals that surround death, including her vast knowledge about witches, vampires, saints, and other beguiling beings.

On this episode she discusses the importance of destigmatizing death, how both Hollywood and her Mexican-American neighborhood influenced her conceptions of the afterlife, and Yuletide myths and wintery New Year’s magic to help us celebrate what she calls “The Other Halloween.”

Pam also speaks about honoring winter darkness, and answers a listener question about taking spiritual workshops online.

Our sponsors for this episode are BetterHelp and Zouz Incense.