What Really Scares You? A Halloween Wake-Up Call Every October, the rest of the world borrows a little piece of ours. Caskets appear on front lawns, skeletons dangle from porches, and someone at every party leans in to ask whether your work gives you the creeps. Those of us in
A year ago, I sent Wake-Up Calls out into the world without knowing what would come of it. Writing that book meant putting words to a lifetime of lessons I’d
Every day in our profession, you give. You give families your compassion, your steadiness, and your full attention in the hardest moments of their lives, and you give your team
I have spent more than 40 years in funeral service and deathcare. I’ve buried the version of myself who thought she had to know everything before she was allowed to lead, and I’ve spent the years since making sure other women don’t have to wait as long as I did to let that version go. […]
I can still feel the dusty ground under my palms. I was a kid the first time one of my grandfather’s Shetland ponies sent me flying. Pop Baue stood there in the summer heat on his farm in southern Illinois, arms crossed, watching me pick myself up, spit the dirt out of my mouth, and […]
There is a story I love telling, and I told it not long ago to a group of women in the profession. The organ player for the St. Louis Cardinals died. If you’re from St. Louis, you know exactly who I mean (for those not from St. Louis, his name was Ernie Hayes and he […]
I have spent more than four decades in this profession. I’ve seen it change in ways I never could have predicted, and I’ve stayed close enough to the ground to hear what’s really happening to the women trying to build careers within it. That’s why I’m honored to share that my story, and my advocacy […]
I grew up in a family where children were to be seen and not heard. Sit quietly at the dinner table. Sit politely in church. Do not make a scene. Do not take up too much space. And being a curious, opinionated child in a very boisterous German family, that was a considerable ask. So […]
I have spent more than four decades in this profession. I’ve seen it change in ways I never could have predicted, and I’ve stayed close enough to the ground to hear what’s really happening to the women trying to build careers within it. That’s why I’m honored to share that my story, and my advocacy […]
