John Christian Phifer, executive director of Larkspur Conservation, led the creation of Tennessee’s first conservation burial ground, a nature preserve for natural burial. John Christian is also currently president of the Conservation Burial Alliance. At Larkspur, John Christian utilizes his background as a funeral director, embalmer, end-of-life doula, funeral celebrant, and a home funeral guide to demystify death and create meaningful end-of-life rituals. His work was recently featured on PBS in a documentary film called Bury Me At Taylor Hollow. John Christian holds a deep respect for mother nature and works to educate and empower the public by bridging environmental advocacy and end-of-life care.

What is it like to align our values in our lives with plans for our bodies after we die? After the sudden and tragic deaths of her parents, environmental education professor, Mallory McDuff, decided to explore sustainable options for her own body in her home in the mountains of western North Carolina. She is the author of five books, including Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, and  more.

Lyla Rothschild, program director of the Ernest Becker Foundation, has been preoccupied with the concept of mortality for as long as she can remember. Lyla completed a degree in psychology and worked for five years as a researcher. After discovering the Ernest Becker Foundation and its empirical research on Terror Management Theory (TMT)), she studied TMT for a year and was amazed to find a connection between our fear of death and our tendencies towards group think, prejudice, and discrimination.

Based on the ideas of anthropologist, Ernest Becker, liberator of a Nazi concentration camp, and Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, the Ernest Becker Foundation raises awareness about how denial and fear of death affects individual and societal behavior.

Some 1500 experimental studies indicate how death can affect the way we live, make decisions, form beliefs, create cultures, structure our societies, and interact with each other - especially those who are different from us. Our strategies for coping with our mortality can lead to acts of hate and violence, but also to noble, altruistic striving.

JOIN LYLA to learn more about the fascinating research on fear and denial of death, how it shapes us and our world.

Dr. Nancy Frumer Styron will share her wisdom about how children understand death from their own developmental perspective. Dr. Frumer Styron, J.D., Psy. D., is a licensed psychologist and the clinical director of The Children’s Room, a bereavement center in Arlington, MA. She has distinguished herself as an expert in pediatric psychology, specializing in the areas of grief and oncology.

Dr. Frumer Styron worked with families at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA for over 24 years. At Children’s Hospital in Boston, she supported families affected by diagnosis, treatment, loss, and death. Nancy serves as the training director for graduate and undergraduate students in the fields of psychology, social work, and expressive arts therapy. She has been a meditation practitioner for over thirty years and has a particular interest in the area of mindful parenting, and teaching meditation to children.

Ezra Salter (they/them) is a Louisiana licensed funeral director and embalmer practicing in New Orleans and a board member Wake, a New Orleans based deathcare non-profit. Ezra is the progenitor and co-creator of the Louisiana LGBTQ+ End of Life Planning Guide and contributor to The Order of the Good Death’s end-of life planning resources for the transgender community. Ezra's professional focus includes advocacy for queer deathcare and green burial options in Louisiana and the preservation of historic cemeteries in New Orleans.

Brigitte Mars is an internationally renowned herbalist, nutritional consultant, author and also an end-0f-life doula.  She is a founding and professional member of the American Herbalist Guild. She will share her wisdom about sacred plant medicine such as psilocybin (a mushroom) and how it can ease the fear of death.

Her books include The Natural First Aid Handbook, Natural Remedies for Mental and Emotional Health, The Country Almanac of Home Remedies, The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine, Beauty by Nature, Addiction Free Naturally, The Sexual Herbal, Healing Herbal Teas, Rawsome! and co-author of The HempNut Cookbook. FIND OUT more about Brigitte at https://brigittemars.com/about/

Joanne Tubbs Kelly is the author of Walking Him Home: Helping My Husband Die with Dignity. It is the kind of book, from the viewpoint of a spouse, she wish she'd found on a bookshelf when her husband, Alan, chose Medical Aid in Dying (MAID). When Alan was diagnosed with a rare, fatal, neurogenerative disease (MSA) he was clear he wanted the ability to end his suffering using Colorado’s Medical Aid in Dying Act. Joanne faced what for her was an impossible choice; to support Alan in his desire to maintain control over the end of his life or to do all in her power to keep him alive for as long as she could. Told with honesty, humor, and love, Joanne's
journey challenges us all to revisit our values and beliefs about end-of-life decisions. More about Joanne at https://joannetubbskelly.com/.

Megan Carnarius has dedicated much of her life to understanding people with dementia. She has used her wisdom to design facilities for people needing memory care.  Like no other dementia expert, she speaks to their journey from a spiritual perspective. She paints a picture of the person with dementia as spiritually well, despite the deterioration of their mental capacities.  It is from this spiritual viewpoint, particularly regarding the journey with dementia at end of life, that Carnarius will address our Parlour audience.  Carmarius is also the author of A Deeper Perspective on Alzheimer's and Other Dementias. She consults nationally and internationally on dementia care.

William Peters is an end-of-life therapist, founder of the Shared Crossing Project and author of At Heaven’s Door: What Shared Journeys to the AfterLife Teach About Dying Well and Living Better. What can explain shared death experiences? How can we increase our likelihood of having one? What do these experiences tell us about what lies beyond? And, most importantly, how can they help take away the sting of death and better prepare us for our own final moments? How can we have both a better life and a better death?

Anita Hannig: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America

Drawing on five years of research on the frontlines of assisted dying, cultural anthropologist, Anita Hannig unearths the uniquely personal narratives masked by a polarized national debate about assisted dying. One of the people we meet in Hannig's new book, The Day I die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America, is Ken, an irreverent ninety-year-old blues musician who invites his family to his death, dons his best clothes, and goes out singing.  Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans going to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own deaths. Join us in The Parlour in July.

Psychic Medium/Author

I first met Kelle Sutliff  via a mother who had contacted Kelle to find her missing adult son. He had walked onto a frozen lake in the deep of winter and fallen through the ice.  It was a month before search teams recovered his body. Sutliff was the first to identify the nature of his death and orient his family to his whereabouts. That's when I learned that psychic mediums are recognized by organizations like the FBI and the National Missing Person's Organization as reliable resources for locating those who have disappeared. They also bring comfort to families who are struggling with the mystery of their loved one's journey beyond the threshold.

Writer/Podcaster

Longtime ESPN writer Ivan Maisel never thought he’d write a story like this. In February 2015, he received a call that would change his life forever: his son’s car had been found abandoned in a parking lot next to Lake Ontario. Two months later, Max’s body was found in the lake. With grace, depth, and refinement, Ivan explores the tragically transformative reality of losing a child. He also explores their relationship, its complications, and their struggle—as is the case for so many parents and their children—to connect. In the process, he began to see grief as love.

Co-creator of The Chrysalis Body Composting Vessel
Seth Viddal is co-owner of The Natural Funeral and the premier expert in Body Composting (natural reduction) in Colorado. He is co-creator of the Chrysalis human composting vessel. The Natural Funeral was the first Colorado funeral home to serve a family that chose body composting for their loved one at death. Colorado legalized natural reduction (the technical term) in 2021. The first body composting laying in ceremony occurred September 22, 2022. The Natural Funeral

Co-host of The Parlor and executive director of Natural Transitions
Join us as Karen takes us on a trip down memory lane which includes Natural Transitions Magazine and the co-founding of the National Home Funeral Alliance. Karen will revisit some of the history of Natural Transitions non-profit and her own personal journey – culminating in the founding of The Parlor.