The World’s First Death Positive Instagram Reality Series @tgbeyond
The Story
Claire and Matt were young, in love and living the life in New York City. Jobs on Wall Street, friends, family, hockey games, weekends at the beach. The future was bright and filled with great expectations. And then Matt got sick. And he got sicker. And he died. And the promise of a long life together was betrayed as Claire went from fiancé to caregiver, wife, and widow in two years, during Covid. Now Claire is the Grieving Bitch, and she is sharing her 5 Step Journey with Matt, and her own thoughts about end-of-life planning, in the Instagram reality series, “The Grieving Bitch: From Newlywed to Newlydead.”
“The goal for the project is to deaducate, deadutain, and create an open, intimate, and interactive conversation around end-of-life issues that affect us all.”
About the Grieving Bitch
Since her husband’s death in June 2021, Claire has been grieving out loud. She has become passionate about educating millennials and Gen Zs about end-of-life issues. Claire feels social media’s availability and scheduling flexibility contributed to keeping her head above water while her husband was dying and thereafter. It’s important to her to pay that forward.
As the @grieving_bitch on Instagram, a contributor to the “Every1Dies” podcast and now with “The Grieving Bitch: From Newlywed to Newlydead,” Claire is using her voice and experience to advocate for advance care planning and awareness of end–life-issues that we all face.
“When Matt got sick, at best I was figuring it out as I went along and at worst, I was totally unprepared. Something that keeps me up at night is the question “could I have done more,” especially since he had stage 3 brain cancer in 2017, three years before it reoccurred as stage 4 and terminal. The reason I want to share my journey is to normalize the fact that everyone dies and to not ignore this reality until you are in the front row at a funeral. Even though we can’t control death or serious illness entirely, we have more choice and resources than we are taught to believe. Through everything I've learned in the last several years the hard way, I'd like to help people learn the easy way, before there is a crisis.”
Meet the Passionate Death Workers
JOANNE EASON
CEO and President of Five Wishes
Joanne is the President of Five Wishes, an advance care planning program of the national nonprofit Aging with Dignity. With more than 30 years of experience in healthcare and insurance communications, marketing, and relationship development, Joanne leads the program with a special emphasis on partner relations and collaboration.
CHRISTINA ANDREOLA
Founder and Director of New Narrative Events
Christina Andreola is the owner and founder of New Narrative Events, an event planning company with specific expertise in planning Celebration of Life gatherings.
CHRISTA OVENELL
Founder of Death’s Apprentice Education & Planning
Christa Ovenell is the founder of Death’s Apprentice Education & Planning, a company specializing in holistic advance care planning for individuals, groups, and forward-thinking organizations. She is a licensed funeral director, embalmer, end-of-life doula, and most recently a cold-plunger, too!
CASSIDY BASTIEN
Founder of MyEndofLifeNW
Cassidy Bastien is a Veteran Certified Nurses Aide, End Of Life Doula, founder of MyEndOfLifeNW, and the founder of The Caregivers Hub Support Group on Facebook, which has become a thriving support system to seven thousand members world wide.
NATASHA FOWLKS, RN
Executive Director of Hospice Atlanta
Natasha is a proven healthcare leader with 12 years of hospice and palliative care experience. She is focused on reshaping and innovating the care delivery systems for people who are facing chronic and terminal illness, allowing for transformational care delivery at the bedside.
ZEENA REGIS
Faith Engagement Manager at Compassion & Choices
Zeena Regis currently serves as the Faith Engagement Manager at Compassion & Choices. Prior to her role with Compassion & Choices, Zeena served as a hospice chaplain and grief care coordinator for almost a decade.
RACHEL DONNELLY
Founder of AfterLight
Rachel is the founder of AfterLight, a consulting firm that offloads the administrative tasks that come with legacy planning and after loss, so clients can focus less on logistics and more on creating space to live worry-free and grieve peacefully.
JENNIFER O’BRIEN
Author of “The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal”
Jennifer O’Brien helps people talk about caregiving and end of life, and encourages compassion through her book, “The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal,” where she shares her story through collage and writing. As a medical administrator with 30+ years of experience, and the wife now widow of a physician, Jennifer has a unique and thorough understanding of healthcare.
LANISE SHORTELL, RN CHPPN CPLC
Global Traumatic Grief Educator
Lanise has served the pediatric hospice community in Atlanta, Georgia for nearly 2 decades. Atlanta contains the most culturally diverse square mile in the United States, providing Lanise with the tender experiences of caring for families from a myriad of spiritual and cultural backgrounds.
Consciously or not, we take a 5 Step Journey when dealing with the dying, death and after loss of a close loved one. This journey consists of acknowledging the death and dying; making advance arrangements where possible; honoring the life and loss in meaningful and appropriate ways: rearranging our lives and the affairs of the deceased; and then living in our new reality, whatever that looks like.
TGBeyond’s 5 Step Journey is designed as a simplified, conscious approach to end-of-life issues. Sometimes the journey takes weeks, sometimes months and sometimes years. It all depends on individual circumstances. By being intentional about your 5 Step Journey, we believe you can benefit from increased choice and control, greater meaning and self-expression, less stress and family conflict, and saved time and money.
What is Death Positive?
The term "death positive" was popularized by mortician and author, Caitlin Doughty, as a play on the term sex positive. The death-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that encourages people to speak openly about death, dying, and corpses. The movement seeks to eliminate the silence around death-related topics, decrease anxiety surrounding death, and encourages more diversity in end-of-life care options available to the public.
What Does it Mean to be Death Positive?
I believe that by hiding death and dying behind closed doors we do more harm than good to our society.
I believe that the culture of silence around death should be broken through discussion, gatherings, art, innovation, and scholarship.
I believe that talking about and engaging with my inevitable death is not morbid, but displays a natural curiosity about the human condition.
I believe that the dead body is not dangerous, and that everyone should be empowered (should they wish to be) to be involved in care for their own dead.
I believe that the laws that govern death, dying and end-of-life care should ensure that a person’s wishes are honored, regardless of sexual, gender, racial or religious identity.
I believe that my death should be handled in a way that does not do great harm to the environment.
I believe that my family and friends should know my end-of-life wishes, and that I should have the necessary paperwork to back-up those wishes.
I believe that my open, honest advocacy around death can make a difference, and can change culture.
Credit: Caitlin Doughty and Order of the Good Death
About TGBeyond
TGBeyond was co-founded by Jason Zamer and Barry Koch in 2018, and is committed to helping individuals and families navigate the physical, emotional and unavoidable administrative aspects of a death. Dying is hard on the living and they want to make it a little easier.
For the last several years, TGBeyond has been producing Virtual Memorials that help families and friends gather and celebrate a life, wherever they are. They are now introducing the 5 Step Journey to help people better conceptualize and organize their approach to end-of-life needs and activities.
And Vivi in Brazil
Screenwriter, Creator, Director, Photographer
With 20+ years in media and entertainment, Vivi Arias has launched major campaigns for WarnerMedia and Audible, served as the Creative Director for Cartoon Network in Latin America, and created popular shows like ToonTubers and ToonTubers League. Her work has garnered over 1.4 billion YouTube views and multiple international awards.
Follow the Journey on Instagram
