Revolutionizing Death Care with Joél Simone Maldonado

Joél Simone Maldonado is a licensed funeral director and embalmer, spiritual death care educator and the founder of the Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy. She's helping to revolutionize the death care industry by educating practitioners about culturally sensitive protocols and death care for communities of color. In this episode, we talk about everything from restorative art, to various disposition methods, to how Covid impacted the death care industry. Joél also talks about growing up in Beaufort, South Carolina, immersed in the Gullah Geechee culture.

You can learn more about Joél and The Multicultural Death & Grief Care Academy here: https://thegravewoman.com/

You can find Joél's available death and grief care courses here: 2AR0NMLjE3MzU3MDQ1MjAuQ2owS0NRaUF5YzY3QmhEU0FSSXNBTTk1UXp1NGl6UURSU1dCZjJkb25PWjN4eGNJSUZtOHdmT2E4eWdNQUtlaXBsR0RsYktIcWhraEYtd2FBa05KRUFMd193Y0I

Joél's podcast, Death & Grief Talk with The Grave Woman, here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3mdh03yZygapqGX53tAwEn?si=e6b7f395d24d4938&nd=1&dlsi=0748b855318d4380

Joél's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/thegravewoman

Transcript:

Sarah Cavanaugh: [00:00:00] I am Sarah Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful Exit, the podcast where we talk to creatives about life and death. My guest today is Joél Simone Maldonado. I've had the privilege of getting to know Joél over the years because she's been a celebrated guest speaker in my Peaceful Exit course. She founded the Multicultural Death and Grief Care Academy and is joining a revolution to educate practitioners on how to care for all kinds of bodies.

When she went through mortuary school, there was no information about caring for bodies of color. Joél and I catch up about everything from the various disposition methods available today and what mortuary school was really like. And we also talk about another key part of her work, which is an in-person gathering.

She launched called the Gullah Geechee Cultural Immersion Excursion in her hometown, a Beaufort, South Carolina.

It is so great to see you. Welcome to Peaceful Exit.

Joél Simone Maldonado: Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I'm really excited to be here.

Sarah Cavanaugh: So you're a licensed funeral director, an embalmer, but you used to be a barber. I'd love to understand what's the historical connection between barbers and death care.

Joél Simone Maldonado: I love this question so much.

No one's ever asked me this, but I'm happy to share. So barbers were what is called blood letters and bloodletting was an antious practice, um, that was used as like a medical procedure and that was thought to get whatever it was that was going on inside of you out. And I recently read that it was. Used for people who were thought to be possessed or also have some type of mental illness, which was considered possession [00:02:00] during that time.

And so the correlation between that work and now we get into the funeral side, which is the embalming where the blood is removed from the body and replaced with. Eal, so there's a very close connection there. So the red in the barber pole represents the blood after it comes out, and the blue is the blood while it's in your veins.

How did you get into death care? Oh my gosh. So I. Want to say I didn't get into death care. Death care got into me at a very early age. Um, my uncle Mark, who is now an ancestor, was what we in the industry refer to as a master mortician. And so when I was a little kid and he would come home from mortuary school, he was 19 years older than me, he was like a big brother.

I. Hundreds of questions. And then when he started working in the funeral home, I [00:03:00] would go and visit him, my sister and I for the summers, and he let me come to the funeral home with him and I. I'd ask him a million questions, and I've just always been what people consider to be morbidly curious. What happens when we die?

What happens to our bodies? Why are we looking at people sleep? Those type of questions rolled in my mind as a child. So a combination of more morbid curiosity and being blessed with my Uncle Mark. So what was mortuary school like? Mortuary school was intense, um, especially for me because I completed mortuary school in a year.

I started in September of 2011, and I graduated in August of 2012. Within that time I completed 28. What I refer to them as is medical school level classes and talking about anatomy, biology, microbiology, chemistry, embalming [00:04:00] business, um, accounting, just. Classes you wouldn't even think that you would take as a funeral director, but as equally stressful and challenging as it was, it was one of the best times of my life because of the comradery that I built with my fellow students who are now friends and colleagues.

Sarah Cavanaugh: That's fantastic. So they weren't teaching you at all about caring for black bodies in mortuary school? No. Um, we had

Joél Simone Maldonado: about, I would say two pages in our embalming book that were dedicated not only to black, but what they called, um, Negro and Mongoloid bodies referring to the ancient community.

While I was blessed to have one of the instructors be a black woman, her name is Jill Adams. Um, there was no formal training about how to take care of our hair, our cosmetic needs, [00:05:00] cultural nuance, and conversation about death and grief, the types of deaths and grief that communities of color face that are, I hate to say, more prominent in our communities.

So no, there wasn't a lot or really any education. And then we do something called clinicals during mortuary school where students are partnered with funeral homes to do embalmings and work with families. But as students, right before you reach that apprenticeship level and. I did my apprenticeship at a corporation that predominantly dealt with wealthy white people and asking questions like, well, what do you do if you have a black person that comes in?

Or, what do you do if you have to style someone's hair? It's almost like, oh, well the family just has to figure that part out.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I remember we talked a little bit about. Foundation colors too.

Joél Simone Maldonado: You can Google right now bad funeral makeup, and I can guarantee you that a lot of the pictures that come up are gonna be people of color.

And what you're gonna see there is [00:06:00] probably that, um, a lot of the cosmetics that have been used on people of color, either too light or too dark. Depending on their circumstances. Now, if I have to preface this by saying there's things that contribute to the way that anyone looks when they pass away and when we see them as the general public.

And those things are called intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic of course, meaning what's going on in your body? How's your body reacting to medications? Are you, do you have a sickness? Like is there something pathological going on within your body? And that's gonna affect the way we look. Within extrinsic factors, things like the environment, the weather, exposure to certain elements after enduring transition, and then physical reactions like externally, physically react, physical reactions to chemicals, right?

All determine the way that we look when we pass away. And I say that to say if someone's on oxygen, for example, my grandfather had a stroke and he was on oxygen [00:07:00] before he passed away. Well, he got darker because of all of the CO2 that was in his body. So when we saw him, he was a lot darker than he was in life.

But that could have been corrected with proper cosmetic application. Had there been either a professional. That was astute to provide that service, or certain cosmetics had been used to match his skin tone and until recently, there have not been mainstream mortuary, cosmetic products that are inclusive of darker skin tones

Sarah Cavanaugh: because we don't see dead bodies.

On the regular. In our culture, we don't even see Hearses driving around anymore. What you're saying is really important for people to understand is that they're not gonna see what they see in the movies, which is their loved one just looks like they're sleeping.

Joél Simone Maldonado: It, it, it takes a lot of work to make your loved one look like they're [00:08:00] sleeping.

Um, a lot of people, unless you are in this profession or a death doula or a medical, um, person that works with people at the end of their lives. Don't realize that people die with their eyes wide open and their mouth hanging like as wide as you could imagine. We don't die with that peaceful, restful glow.

Um, and so there's a process with an embalming called restorative art, and that is where we as funeral practitioners do things like feature setting. That's one of the first things that we do after we've, or maybe even in some cases before we've cleans. That person's body, depending on how they died, whether there was trauma or not.

And that feature setting details, things like closing your eyes and using things like eye caps or cotton to create that natural appearance of someone with their eyes closed. And there's actually a formula for that. So if you were to close your eyes right now, you probably. Unless you had one eye open looking in the mirror and it looked a little [00:09:00] funny, but if you took a picture of yourself with your eyes closed, you may notice that more of your top eyelid comes down than your bottom eyelids come up.

And that's a two third ratio, right? And so the formula we use is that two thirds of the upper eyelid should be. Visible in one third of the bottom eyelid. And if you do that, that's more natural looking as opposed to your bottom eyelid being all the way up here or closing the mouth, whether it be through suturing or through using air alpha or using some type of mouth form or using cotton under the gum line or.

To give a more full appearance. There's so much work that goes into creating that sleeping look.

Sarah Cavanaugh: It is a restorative art, but restorative for the people left behind, not certainly for the body of the deceased. What is it about [00:10:00] our grieving, our lost loved ones that make it important for us to see them as if they were sleeping?

We use the

Joél Simone Maldonado: term memory picture in our profession, and that basically means the last memory or mental image that you're gonna have of your loved one, right? We are so tied into the aesthetics of death more so than the experience of death and grief. And so it's kind of hard to answer that question one way because we all don't die in the same way.

For example, a mother who possibly lost her child in some type of traumatic accident, whether it be a fire, a car accident, a gunshot move. A fall. I mean, any scenario that you can think of, that mother's memory picture, especially if she saw that child in that state, it's important for that mother in our society to see them again in a more peaceful life.

Something that she can hopefully [00:11:00] look back on and not be as traumatized by. But I think that also is deeply rooted in our psychological detachment from what death looks like in our society. There are some cultures that the physical body being destroyed. For example, Tibetan sky burial, where they intentionally take their loved ones to the top of mountains and hoist them off so that their body hits the rocks, and for lack of better word, not to be too graphic burst open, and the vultures then consume.

Whatever's left, um, that's important in seeing and feeling and knowing that that's happened is equally as, as important as that peaceful memory picture in other circumstances. I think that sometimes it's important to the deceased to be seen a certain way. It's their final wish to be presented in a certain way, even if their family doesn't necessarily wanna see [00:12:00] them in that way.

Sarah Cavanaugh: That's fascinating and I so appreciate you bringing up other cultures who handle it differently. And you know, my last memory, picture, if you will, of my mother, my uncle and my cousin who ran the funeral home, uh, and cemetery near us, had come and they'd wrapped her in, uh, cloth around her head, but her jaw was.

Open, and that is the last picture I have of her. 'cause they, they took her off and she was cremated very quickly. And so we never, we never had like an open casket or anything like that. But, um, it's really interesting for me right now 'cause what's coming up for me is like, we didn't really have a choice.

Like if, if we were to say I'd really like to see her again, I don't think that would've been an option. One of the things that I really want for people in peaceful Exodus to consider what are the choices and what, what people want. There's such a variety of disposition choices now. It feels like [00:13:00] there's a lot more.

Joél Simone Maldonado: Six, maybe seven. Yeah. So the, the, the common or the, the, the ones that I know of and maybe, I don't know, but are traditional meaning that you're embalmed, you're placed in a casket, maybe a vault, and. Green or eco-friendly, where there's everything's biodegradable and eco-friendly, maybe even just shrouded and put into the ground.

Um, there's cremation, alkaline hydrolysis, which is basically water cremation. Um, there's natural organic reduction and that goes by many brand names. Has, and I wanna clarify this because I learned this last week. The science behind each of those brand names is different, and the methodology behind each of those brand names are different.

You could do water burial and you could do that either with being the [00:14:00] traditional or the cremation or alkaline hydrolysis, or if you wanted to spread soil, you could put soil in the water. But it interesting to me. That we think we're creating these disposition methods. Um, but we're not, I mean, our disposition methods are as old as time itself.

The science maybe is a little different and we've manipulated something to be different, but real, we aren't creating anything new. And I think that's important to say because civilizations prior to us had their own, I think about Native American tree burial.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I think it's so important to talk about our language and our practices and understand where they came from so we can decide if we still wanna use certain words or certain rituals or practices.

Sometimes we get an opportunity to throw out a tradition that. No longer serves us.

Joél Simone Maldonado: I don't know exactly how to say this. And this [00:15:00] is based on personal lived, real time experience. Right? So, um, you've heard me talk about my husband Lawrence before, and Lawrence is Bahai and part of the reason we were in.

Was to attend a conference called Terracon, which is about, um, natural organic reduction or human composting. And he felt so connected to the process, especially after going to return home and taking the tour and listening to the science and, you know, talking to the man that created the process and the science behind.

About exploring this disposition method. Um, BAHAs aren't allowed to participate in cremation. They're not allowed to be embalmed, and they have to be buried within an hour of where they pass away. So within an hour of that geographical location, [00:16:00] and there are like a few loopholes, like we were talking about last night with his local assembly.

If he passed away in North Carolina and I was able to fly him back to South Carolina in under an hour, that would be a loophole, right? But he wrote a email to their governing body and was basically told that would not be an acceptable form of disposition because. There is a cremation aspect, and when I say cremation aspect, the bones after the interation process is complete, are heated to a certain temperature and then put through the pulverizer and then ground up, and I could tell that he was disappointed to hear that.

Because he connected so much with the disposition methods, and this is hard for me to say because I teach so much and advocate so much about culture and religion, but allowing our religious beliefs to take away from what we feel is right for us in our [00:17:00] hearts. The two have to be able to exist in some way that gives us peace of mind.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I feel so gifted by the fact that we've met really early on in your journey. Um, and you've now started the Multicultural Death and Grief Care Academy and you help educate people about cultural awareness. Um, will you tell us a little bit about how you started that and what you're working on now?

Joél Simone Maldonado: Definitely. Um, so the Multicultural Death and Grief Care Academy. Again, I think chose me. I didn't so much create it. I just was obedient to bringing it to life, and it was started for the simple fact that we talked about earlier in our textbooks and mortuary school. I was referred to as a negro. My colleagues were referred to as Mongoloid.

There was no education about how to take care of anyone outside of white people, and having several [00:18:00] traumatic experiences throughout my career when I was working in the funeral home part-time and seeing the impact. That those experiences also had on families and them not knowing that it was wrong, them not knowing that they had the right to speak up for something that seems so natural.

Um, if it's protocol to shampoo a white woman's hair. When she comes into the funeral home to prepare her for a stylist, why is an excuse made to a family about why licensed professionals can't do the same for their black or Hispanic or indigenous or any other person of color? And why should that cost the family more?

And so, um. That heartbreak and trauma and anger and frustration became education. And I'm so grateful to my mentor, miss Anita Grant, who found me on YouTube and said, you know, these are continuing [00:19:00] education credits. Not only could you be getting paid to talk about these things, you can be educating other professionals and having a big impact on the families they serve.

And no truer words have been spoken. Um, and so. I took that frustration, that heartbreak, that disappointment and anger, and I started educating my colleagues at a cost and that has now grown into what is the Multicultural Death and Grief Care Academy.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, congratulations and such Good work you're doing.

It's incredible. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's, it has such a ripple effect. So as a death educator, what's some of, what are some of the questions you're asked the most?

Joél Simone Maldonado: The, the, one of the questions that I'm asked the most is, why? Why has nobody talked about this until now? And it's not that no one has talked about it.

I don't think anyone has consistently talked about it before. Prior to Covid, the death care [00:20:00] industry was probably one of the most segregated industries. I. In our country, um, black people went to black funeral homes. Hispanic people either went to Hispanic, black or white funeral homes. White people went to white funeral homes.

Covid erased that because families were simply trying to get in where they could and have their loved ones cared for and cared for. A stretch of what we were able to do during Covid. It's a stretch of a description. Um, not saying that loved ones weren't cared for, but compared to how they were cared for prior to Covid and because of the demand, we just weren't physically able to give as much detail and com and commitment to each individual family, as I'm sure many professionals wanted to.

But, um, a big theme that comes up a lot is guilt. I used to think strongly that everything that people didn't know was rooted in racism. They just didn't care [00:21:00] about other people other than their own race. And that is not the case. Um, a question that comes up is, why weren't we taught this in mortuary school?

And I can go on and on about that, but it's questions like that. And then when. We are getting into the meat of our context, whether it be faith and religion, body care, or conversational. It's how can I. Do the work within myself to not feel uncomfortable addressing these issues. And I haven't figured out the answer to that yet.

But we talk a lot about bias and privilege and how whiteness shows up in death care and in death care spaces, and in death care, education. And when working with families. Um, we talk a lot about colonization. And the erasure of culture, and a lot of questions come up around that, so, yeah.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, you mentioned covid and [00:22:00] historically marginalized communities experienced a whole lot more death during covid because of the healthcare system and access to healthcare, and that it makes sense that the same would apply in death care.

Joél Simone Maldonado: And I wanna add, not just, um, the healthcare system, but lack of trust in said system because of the history of healthcare in this country. Again, you talk about that erasure of culture and my culture, we have what are called two headed doctors, or which doctors or hoodoo doctors and that being demonized through colonization.

And so. I know elderly people are, are elders that have not, and will not take the vaccination because they believe so wholeheartedly in what we now call herbalism, which is basically our ancestral connection to the Earth or the Tuskegee Airmen experiment where [00:23:00] those gentlemen were infected with syphilis when being told that they were receiving a, what a.

We can't just blame it on the healthcare system, it, it's deeper than that. It's the lack of trust within communities of color for a good reason.

Sarah Cavanaugh: What do you want people to know about black grief? It's

Joél Simone Maldonado: twofold, honestly. Um, on the one hand, I. Black grief is no different than any other grief, right? But on the other hand, it is completely different than any other grief.

Um, the example I use in our racism and death care, of course, is the example of 10 people seeing a dog get. On their way to work in the morning, and let's say eight out of those 10 people are not people of color. And that's not just limited to black people. The two that are people of color, [00:24:00] you are gonna talk to your coworkers about what you saw and how wrong it was and where was the owner and how could this happen.

You know what I mean? But then. We see people that look like me get killed on the news. We see people oppressed in other parts of the world that look like me, but nobody says anything. But yet those two people who are people of color, it's like, well, you watch this happen to people that look like me every day, and it doesn't bother you, but you just saw a dog get hit by a car and it's changing your life.

And so that is the way that black grief is unique, or bipoc grief is unique. The rest of the world seems to have watched us grieve so many different oppressions and experiences. And public lynchings, and public murders and massacres, but [00:25:00] it's okay. You know, and so that there's a level of disenfranchisement that we experience as people of color that other people outside of that community cannot comprehend or explain.

It's something that connects us, yet separates us. And the reason I started with it's no different is because if seeing that dog hit by a car impacts you. What is the difference between this happening to an entire population of people and it having no impact on you?

Sarah Cavanaugh: This is really hard to talk about and I so appreciate you sharing that.

It goes back to what you were saying about colonizing and the way that conditions us to see and feel the world in a certain way, and I know from what you've shared. With Peaceful Exit before that, the way you see the world has been shaped by growing up in the Gullah Geechee culture.

Joél Simone Maldonado: So I am from a place [00:26:00] called Beaufort, South Carolina, which for the foodies, you know, Charleston, for the golfers, you know, Hilton Head, and for the Ghost Hunters, you know, Savannah, and I'm smack dab in the middle of all of that.

So that means we have it all. But right outside, I'm looking outside and if I look far enough, I'll see water. Um, it's the Port Royal sound. And according to history, because I'm now learning other things that I'm not gonna speak on right now, but according to history books, the majority of people with African lineage can trace their.

Ancestry to the Port Royal Sound, Beaufort, South Carolina surrounding Sea Islands, um, where we were bought in as enslaved people and. I learned in preparing for our Gullah Geechee cultural immersion excursion that the Civil War started here in between Beaufort and South, uh, Charleston, South Carolina.

And when that war started [00:27:00] and the soldiers went off to fight, they left their enslaved people. Our culture, our language, our food, our spiritual practices were allowed to continue to grow because of the absence of our enslavers. And that culture is still very much so alive here. And because of that, anyone that grows up here, you're fully immersed in that West African culture and that.

That includes like our food, our rice, growing technology, indigo manufacturing, um, music, our soulful, like our soul is here. And so I grew up around that. The way that we handle and navigate death, dying and grief, the spirituality around that, the, the practices and the care of those that are transitioning, what some refer to as doula ship.

Or [00:28:00] as we know, or I know them as missionary societies. And so I mean our, our culture and our history is just alive here. I. And so how could that not influence the work that I do? Um, Beaufort, south Carolina's also a military town, so throughout my entire time growing up here, my friends were almost on rotation because they'd come in for a while and then their families would be stationed elsewhere.

And so I got to know people from all over the country and all over the world from diverse backgrounds.

Sarah Cavanaugh: What are the key tenets or parts of homecoming and homegoing? And why are those, why are those so important?

Joél Simone Maldonado: So when I think of the word homecoming, I think of like, um, HBCUs and. Alumni returning to not only celebrate football games and wins, but to also pour back into the [00:29:00] communities that poured into them as far as education is concerned.

Right. When I think of Homegoing, I think of the fact that enslaved people were not allowed to have. Dignity in any other area of life other than when it was time to bury someone who passed away. That's when we got to dress up in our denim overalls, our clean, our best denim overalls. That's when many of us got to put on shoes.

Many of us got to put on our linens and our head wraps and adorn ourselves in the closest things that we had to our culture to sing our songs and our languages.

And to communicate with one another to make escape or to just have conversations.

I'm not gonna say without overseers, but without interruption of overseers. [00:30:00] It's also tied, when I think about the word homegoing, to the fact that we believe because we had been snatched from our motherland, that our spirits were now able to return home or return to our home, our place of birth, the. The earth or either the spirit realm from which we came, and we were able to express that and celebrate that and believe that there had to be something better than what we were experiencing as a slave people.

And so now you take that to modern day times. Um. The differences between a traditional funeral or a home going celebration is that it's exactly that. It's celebrating the fact that this person has earned their right to transition into the next realm, and that they're now with God or in a better place or in paradise, whatever your belief system is.

It's not that we're happy they've died, but we're happy they're free. [00:31:00] So it, the Homegoing has more of a celebratory nature now in modern times than your traditional funeral.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Tell me about your cultural immersion trip.

Joél Simone Maldonado: So, um, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Immersion excursion is now in its second year. Um, it takes place here in Beaufort.

South Carolina surrounding areas and what it is is basically two and a half days full of culture, food, family, fun, and exposure to the Gullah Geechee culture. Last year, exactly about two weeks from now, we were holding our first one. We had about 12 people here, and we traveled to, um, the International African American History Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.

Learned about the rich history, not only of South Carolina, but how. Our history that West African history is [00:32:00] rooted in the black diaspora around the world. Um, we then came back and spent the day exploring Beaufort, um, here in Beaufort, South Carolina. We have a national cemetery. We have, um. The Fort Fremont, which was, it's a decommissioned army base, but it was very pivotal in several wars.

One of them being the Civil War. And we also visited Penn Center, which was the first school for freed slaves. And so we talk a lot about how these places are portals. For the rest of the United States because a lot of people traveled and migrated to other parts of the country with the experiences and the education that they got here in Beaufort.

And so we just spend time visiting sacred sites like cemeteries, and we end with a performance by the Gullah Geechee, ring [00:33:00] Shouters, and a traditional Gullah Geechee dinner. It sounds fabulous. It is. And this year it's being hosted, um, May 20th through the 22nd, which is just before the start of the annual original Gullah Festival.

Yes. So if anyone's interested in joining us, be sure that you plan to extend your trip another three or four days so that you can enjoy the Gullah Festival.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I'm just really struck as you're talking how dangerous it is for us to rewrite our history and not really, and and how much I respect What you're doing is really sharing with people, you know, in a physical space, the actual I.

Uh, history of our country and I think it's really important 'cause you're holding that wisdom and sharing it with others. I appreciate it. Um,

Joél Simone Maldonado: and I, I received that last year when preparing for our first [00:34:00] immersion tour. I was given the word grio, which in our culture and in the black diaspora means storyteller and culture keeper.

And. When I say I was given that, I mean that the ancestors spoke that to me, like spoke that name to me. And in our culture, you have some people that believe in what's called a naming ceremony. And I've had two experiences in my life where I feel like I've spiritually gone through a naming ceremony. The first was for the name, um, sacred Grief Practitioner, because I'm not a licensed therapist or counselor or anything, however.

I, I help people sacredly navigate their grief, right? And the second one was as a, and I do not take that lightly. It means a lot to me. So to hear you say that is very affirming. Thank.

Sarah Cavanaugh: I'm feeling a hope that you are part of rewriting the [00:35:00] textbook.

Joél Simone Maldonado: I actually am working on a series of textbooks that deal with things that I talk about in my courses, such as hair care, care for locks, uh, melanin cosmetic care, conversations about grief.

And so it is my big project for 2025. I love that. And you asked me a question earlier that I did not answer, and I think now is the perfect segue into that answer. But as important, and as much as I know people like to hear my voice, I. I don't monopolize the cultural death care space. So you asked what's next?

What's next for the academy is now I want to give others a platform, native American Death Workers, grief Workers, Asian, how? However many communities fall under that title, and I don't just want the resources to come from my experience and my knowledge, multicultural is in there for a reason. And so I feel almost like it's our [00:36:00] responsibility to create and hold that space for others now, because I'm not Asian, I'm not Caribbean, I'm not those things, and those communities and cultures matter.

Sarah Cavanaugh: It's so true. Any space only gets richer by bringing in more perspectives. Do you have any personal rituals in your life that remind you of your mortality?

Joél Simone Maldonado: Yes. Right now I'm working with the full Moon. We're, we're, we're under a full moon right now, and as we all know, the moon goes through phases and there's times when she's new and I see that as in the grand scheme of things, a time where we'll be new, we'll take on a new forum, a new energy, a new being.

Also being very aware of the seasons and I, there's been like this conversation about how like January dragged on forever. I try not to participate in those conversations because I've learned the value of a day, of an hour, of a minute, of a [00:37:00] second, and so just trying to be present in each one of those increments has made me both aware and appreciative of my mortality.

Sarah Cavanaugh: So what does a peaceful exit mean

Joél Simone Maldonado: to you? Like many other people, my head and my heart are full of so many ideas and things I think I'm supposed to accomplish and do. Right. I. And I think we do ourselves a disservice for waiting for the perfect moment, and I want to be empty of the ones that matter most.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Cavanaugh. You can find me on Instagram at @APeacefulExit. And you can learn more about this podcast at peacefulexit.net. )ur senior producer is Katy Klein, and our sound engineer is Shawn Simmons. This episode was edited by Sydney Gladu. Additional support from Cindy Gal and Ciara Austin.

Original music provided by Ricardo Russell, with additional music and sounds from Blue Dot Sessions. If you'd like to support our show, please follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, rate and review us wherever you listen. It really does make a difference. And as always, thank you so much for listening.