Here we are. Weekly prompt #26. Which means we've been doing this dance together for SIX WHOLE MONTHS. 🎉 Half a year of showing up, putting ourselves out there, trying things, sharing our work, getting a little uncomfortable and making ourselves visible in a world that doesn't always make it easy. And my darling Vizzy D's, we're just getting started... I've got some BIG things VERY close to birthing, and I am SO excited to start sharing them with you. The very first sneak peek will be revealed in my newsletter this weekend, so if you're not signed up to that, what are you doing?! SIGN UP HERE: https://www.amyfirth.com/sign-up Otherwise, stay tuned. That's all I'm saying for now, but to keep it interesting I will give you a hint using these 7 emojis: 💐 ⚰️ 🎨 💭 ✍️ 🎓 🔄 (That was deceptively hard to choose - why do I do this to myself?! 😂) 🐦‍⬛ NOW. THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: I'm sharing a video short snippet from our 'Holding Families Through Assisted Dying' call a few weeks back. The full recording is now available in the Vizzy D Classroom and is absolutely worth a watch if you haven't caught up yet. But this particular clip? I hope it stirs something up in you. An idea. A question. A little spark of possibility. I'd genuinely LOVE to hear your thoughts, reflections and ideas in the comments below. And there's something else that's come out of this conversation that I'm particularly excited to share with you. I've been working on a resource I haven't been able to find in an Australian context: a guide to explaining voluntary assisted dying to children. How do we talk with children about VAD? What language can we use? How do we answer their questions honestly and safely? It's a resource I've wished existed, so I've had a crack at creating it myself. I'm still tinkering with it but you can read the current version here: https://www.amyfirth.com/blog-builder/explain-vad-to-children

I've been sitting here this week beaming like a proud mama hen. So many of you have started putting your face and voice out there in new ways, on camera, in your own words, and I just want to say I see it. It's not a small thing. So this week I'm gifting you a snippet from the Social Reels Masterclass. Eight minutes, deep dive, all about Your Profile, Your Platforms, Your Sound. Watch for free below and you can find the full course in the Classroom tab. I'm also dreaming into something bigger. A Vizzy D Video series where I challenge us all with different prompts and questions to speak to camera and share it in here first, encouraging each other across that vulnerable threshold together. Still shaping what this looks like, but I wanted to say it out loud before it's fully formed, because that's kind of the whole point isn't it... Would this be something you'd want to be part of? Curious what a prompt might look like for you, something silly, something serious, something that scares you a bit to say out loud. What is stopping you from putting your face and voice out there? What are the blocks? How can we help each other? Only love, Amy 🐦‍⬛

A reflection space for death care workers with Amy Firth & The Visible Death Worker Community This 90 minute virtual call is for death care practitioners and grief workers supporting, or looking to support, families eligible for the assisted dying process. 10am - 11:30am // Weds 9th September (AEST) REGISTER HERE: https://events.humanitix.com/holding-families-through-assisted-dying **NB: Please note this is not an information session for families seeking Voluntary Assisted Dying. This is a closed event for death care professionals looking to share and learn from each other, from both a professional and cultural perspective. ABOUT THE WEBINAR: Known here in Australia as Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD), this practice goes by different names depending on where you're working from. Canada calls it MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying. In the US it's most often Medical Aid in Dying. New Zealand uses Assisted Dying. The Netherlands, Belgium and much of Europe still use the word euthanasia. Whatever the name where you are, the territory we're gathering to talk about is the same. VAD is relatively new here in Australia (available to families in my state of NSW since 2023) and many of us are still learning, still finding our footing in how we support and prepare families and accompany families in our death care role. Not so much with the practicalities of the process itself, but with everything that sits around it. The parts nobody hands you a manual for. This webinar presents an opportunity to hear from each other about the tender role we play when supporting these families, and what we can learn from each other in what we collectively witness in this particular strand of our work. Together we'll explore: - The Space Between Yes and Goodbye, supporting families who are counting down the nights - Continuity of care, from before, to death, to funeral, and beyond - VAD grief presenting as sudden death bereavement

Darlings - Happy Friday! I’ve got two tasty treats for you today, both ready & waiting for you in the Classroom tab. 🐦‍⬛ 1) Introducing: The Vizzy D Resource Library 🐦‍⬛ The *Vizzy D Resource Library* is a new shared space for the resources that have shaped how we think about death, grief and ceremony, built by this community, for this community. You can find it in the Classroom tab. It's meant to grow with whatever's actually shaping your practice right now, the book that changed how you show up with a family, the podcast episode you've sent to three colleagues, the poem you keep coming back to for readings. A shared shelf of books, podcasts, documentaries, readings, trainings and accounts that have shaped how we think about death, grief and ceremony. Comment your suggestions in the new *Vizzy D Resource Library* post pinned to the top of our community chat and we can together start breathing life into this exciting new global library for us all. 🐦‍⬛ 2) Funerals Reimagined: A Guide For Creating Meaningful Ceremonies🐦‍⬛ $27 AUD / $19 USD / £15 GBP I've been sitting on this for a while and I'm genuinely excited to finally share it with you. *Funerals Reimagined: A Guide to Creating Meaningful Ceremonies* Thirty pages. Seven real ceremonies. The three shifts that turn a funeral from something people sit through into something they help create. A worksheet of prompts to actually put into practice with families. The hard part wasn't the writing. It was the cutting. I could have made this three times longer, but I wanted something you could actually share with a family, or read yourself in one sitting between appointments, not another PDF that sits in a downloads folder unread. My hope is that it helps in a few different ways. Maybe there's a story or a framing in here that gives language to something you already know in your bones but haven't quite found the words for. Maybe it's something you can point a family towards when they're struggling to imagine anything beyond the standard traditional funeral service.

🐦‍⬛ Visible Friday #6: A newsletter is not optional. It’s your anchor. ⚓️ When I started my monthly newsletter over a year ago I had one very loud internal voice asking: *who on earth is gunna want to sign up for monthly emails from a funeral director?!* I poured my heart and creativity into it & sent it anyway. My subscriber list started at zero but I didn’t focus on that, I focused on the rhythm of it. It arrives every month whether I feel ready or not. It forces me to keep making things, keep noticing things, keep sharing what I’m finding across the death care space. Advocacy over advertising. It also had to feel like me, which means every issue includes a mixtape playlist cos my folks taught me you never arrive empty-handed - even when it’s an inbox. 🎶 SOCIALS v SUBSCRIBERS It’s all well & good us busting a gut building our social presence - but the hard truth is that your social following isn’t really yours. It’s borrowed real estate. The algorithm decides who sees your work, and it can change overnight. Your email list is different. Those people gave you their actual inbox. That relationship is yours. The numbers back this up. Email consistently outperforms social media for reach, engagement and conversion - most estimates put email open rates somewhere between 20-40% for niche audiences, compared to organic social reach that often sits below 5%. For a small practice built on trust and relationship, that gap matters enormously. Building an email list is one of the most practical things you can do for your visibility and your business sustainability. It doesn’t need to be a weekly marathon. It needs to be yours - consistent, generous and recognisably you. So, this week’s Visible Friday prompt: 🐦‍⬛ If you already have a newsletter - drop your sign-up link below. Let’s all subscribe and learn from each other. 🐦‍⬛ If you don’t have one yet - start small. What would you genuinely enjoy writing? What do you love receiving in your own inbox? Begin there. A list of one is still a list.