AUSTIN – I curled the microphone in my hands. Sweat dripped from my palms as I brought it to my lips. “Hello? Oh, that’s loud,” I muttered as the sound surprised me. It set the tone for a sometimes silly, sometimes serious conversation about death at the 2026 SXSW conference in March.
How did I get here? Four years ago, I never would’ve expected to moderate a panel in front of dozens of people, ruminating on grief and how death became the new wellness frontier.
Me? Grief? What did I know about grief? Sure, my grandmothers died, and I had friends whose parents died, and it sounded so awful and I empathized, or thought I did. But around this time four years ago, grief stormed into my life with Category 5 hurricane speed. It destroyed everything in its path and left me to clean up the debris of my shattered world.
My dad, Dr. Mark Oliver, died of rare fatal illness Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) over the course of seven weeks. I turned my pain and anger into action and wrote about it at work. I interviewed people about all kinds of losses, from death to unemployment. Mental health and grief experts told me that the journey is not linear, that everyone reacts differently, that there’s no timeline.
My work was noticed, and last year a PR agency asked if I’d participate in a panel on grief. Next thing I knew, I was Austin-bound and ready to dive into “How Death Became the New Wellness Frontier.”
I was in conversation with several grief professionals – Rebecca Feinglos, founder & CEO of Grieve Leave; Jamie Thrower, a death doula, grief educator and funeral celebrant and founder of Queer Grief Club, and Darnell Lamont Walker, a death doula and TV writer – all with unique perspectives on death. Despite my intimate knowledge of grief, I learned more about myself in the process than I expected, showing me once again that your journey with grief, however it begins, never quite ends.
Grief and the COVID-19 pandemic
The conversation spanned myriad topics – explaining that a death doula is a guide and companion for those who are dying or going through major life changes, that our own experiences with grief define us but don’t need to solely dictate our lives, that the COVID-19 pandemic served as a launchpad for grief influencers to dominate on social media as people yearned for spaces to grieve during quarantine.
“All of us were at home. All of us were on Zoom. Everything was different and death was at the forefront of the news every single day,” Feinglos said during the panel. “So I think people were just talking about grief and loss on the internet, especially because we had nowhere else to put those feelings. All of us were feeling a sense of grief.”
Walker illustrated how expectations about grief don’t match reality: “I grew up with the thought that grief looked a certain way, that grief looked like falling apart in Walmart, in the egg section or at the red light for 20 minutes.” Sure, sometimes grief gnaws at my neck. Claws at my vocal cords. Usurps my sense of time, place, agency. Other times, it sends me into a fit of laughter when I realize I’ve made a joke I know my dad would’ve laughed at.
We also covered euphemisms and how people like to use phrases like “passed away” or “they’ve gone to a better place” in lieu of saying someone died. “A lot of times, we see the words death and dying and grief even as these like, ‘ooh, they’re sharp words,” Thrower said, and “it doesn’t feel like it gives enough humanity or support or gentleness in this space. And I feel like there is a lot that you can do, and that those words don’t have to be so loaded, that they get to just kind of exist where they are.” They’re only as harsh as we let them be.
A grief realization
I peered out into the audience throughout the talk, and spotted my mom, her boyfriend, my younger sister and my fiancé. A warm embrace of support. Who was missing? The one person I yearned to see. The person responsible for my seat at this table in the first place.
“My dad died almost four years ago,” I said, collecting my thoughts after the panelists shared their own grief stories, “and it’s totally transformed any way that I’ve thought about grief. And it’s made me write about grief at work in ways I never would have expected. And it’s made me meet all of you, and many other people, and talk about this work. It’s just it’s so appreciated. I’m glad that we can talk about this.”
I know my dad would be, too.
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