🎬 Here is the recording of our first ever virtual cuppa for those who want to catch the replay. My day was full of unforeseen curve balls so ended up having to dial in from the car - but wouldn't have missed it for all the world! Deep thanks to those who joined & blessings to those who will join the replay. We're weaving something so special here... thanks for being here & creating this together. x 🐦‍⬛ THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD By David Whyte The sound of a bell still reverberating, or a blackbird calling from a corner of a field. Asking you to wake into this life or inviting you deeper to one that waits. Either way takes courage, either way wants you to be nothing but that self that is no self at all, wants you to walk to the place where you find you already know how to give every last thing away. The approach that is also the meeting itself, without any meeting at all. That radiance you have always carried with you as you walk both alone and completely accompanied in friendship by every corner of the world crying Allelujah. 🐦‍⬛

🐦‍⬛ This week: shoot your shot... Not recklessly. Not in a "put it out to the universe" kind of way. Just one small, deliberate act that takes you somewhere you haven't quite been willing to go yet. A podcast you'd love to be on. A publication you want to write for. Someone whose work you genuinely admire and whose radar you'd like to be on. A collaboration idea sitting in your drafts. A workshop proposal. A DM. An email. An ask. Most of us wait. We wait until we feel ready enough, established enough, polished enough to deserve the ask. We wait for visibility to arrive before we risk being visible. But it usually works the other way around. Courage tends to show up first - and it often looks completely ordinary. Sending the email. Pressing publish. Introducing yourself to that neighbourhood centre. Starting the Death Café. Replying instead of lurking. Letting yourself be seen before you feel certain. This isn't about being louder. It's about making yourself more available to what's possible. What if once a month we made a ritual of this? Carving out space for the courage to do something for our future selves. Consciously nudging the edges of our comfort zones. Forging a path in the direction of what's actually calling us. So, your Visible Friday prompt for this week: What's one shot you could take that your future self would thank you for - even if the answer turns out to be no? 🐦‍⬛ Drop yours in the comments - let's inspire each other, swap ideas, maybe even help each other craft the ask. Mine makes me wince a little to say out loud, but I've always wanted to be on the radar of Sarah Kerr at Sacred Deathcare. So I'm going to shelve my fangirl nerves and reach out. What's yours? 🎵 And because courage can grow collectively, I’ve made us a playlist mixtape. A shared 45minute soundtrack for sending the email. Pitching the idea. Hitting publish. Taking the meeting. Backing yourself.

Your experience deserves a better name… A while back, I changed one word on my website menu: BLOG became RESOURCES. That’s it. One word. But something big shifted. Not just visually, not just strategically. Something shifted in how I related to my own work. Because my inner critic had been quietly calling my writing self-indulgent for years. Just Amy processing things on the internet. Nothing to see here. 🙈 Renaming it asked me a different question. Not *what am I feeling?* but *how can this be of service?* It gave me a new angle for crafting and sharing my experiences. Through the lens of genuine usefulness rather than whatever that voice in my head had decided it was. And here’s what happened… The RESOURCES section is now the most visited part of my entire website. Those articles act as standalone lead magnets. They’re the main driver of my newsletter sign-ups. People find them, read them, and decide if they want more. Same writing. Same ideas. Just held differently. TRY IT FOR YOURSELF: Here’s a place to start. Look at what you’ve already written, or already know, or list some ideas you have - (or use any of these…), and ask: what is this actually doing? 1. “Some thoughts on embalming” → A plain-language guide to what embalming is, what it isn’t, and what families can ask 2. “Why I stopped using the word closure” → A reflective piece on grief language and what we say instead 3. “That funeral that changed everything for me” → A case study in what meaningful ceremony actually looks like 4. “What I wish families knew before they called a funeral home” → A practical rights-and-choices guide for people at the beginning of the process 5. “How I plan a ceremony when I’ve never met the person” → A behind-the-scenes look at ceremony design methodology 6. “On sitting with a body at home” → An introduction to home vigil and what families need to know 7. “The questions nobody asks at the arrangement meeting” → A question bank for families navigating funeral decisions

Before you spend another hour thinking about your next reel or wondering why the algorithm hates you this week - I want to make a case for something a lot of death workers overlook. Your local newspaper. I know. Bear with me. When the Blue Mountains Gazette ran a piece about the Death Café I host here in Lawson, my phone rang for weeks. People who had never heard of me. People who had been quietly wondering if there was anyone doing this kind of work nearby. Families I am now holding, because a journalist asked a few questions and wrote a story. Local media still carries weight in a way social media doesn’t. It lands on kitchen tables. It gets passed to a neighbour. It signals to your community that you are a real person, doing real work, in the actual place they live. And recently, I was approached about paying for an advert in a “planning ahead” feature of our local paper. Clearly they hadn’t had many takers - but here’s what struck me. It was little ole independent me, and the one big corporation-owned facility that holds pretty much the entire market in this area. Side by side. Same page. That’s the thing about showing up in local media. It puts you in the conversation. It doesn’t matter that they have more money, more staff and a brand that’s been here for decades. You’re there too. And for the family quietly doing their research, that matters more than you might think. This week: look at your local paper. There are two ways in: A paid advert. Small, well-worded, consistent. Doesn’t need to sell anything. Just needs to say you exist and what you do. A story pitch. Think about what angle a local journalist might actually care about. Death Café hosting. Families who choose home funerals. The rising cost of funerals and what alternatives exist. Local Death Doulas. The history of burial in your region. You probably have more stories in you than you think - and journalists are often looking for them. Write down one pitch idea this week. One local journalist’s name and contact. One small ad concept.