Planning a Good Funeral with progressive funeral director Louise Winter
Conversations with Annalisa BarbieriShow Notes
This is not a subject many of us discuss is it? Birth plans, maybe, weddings, definitely, but we will all die and we all need a send off, however small and modest.
This episode isn't really about planning your own funeral, although it can be of course (but as we'll see, don't be too prescriptive) but it's more that this potentially distressing subject - a funeral is the ultimate distress purchase - is important. Why? A good funeral is the start of grieving, it can help people come together to remember the person who has died.
Because we don't tend to want to discuss funerals (although this is changing, thank goodness) it's very easy to just go with what your high street funeral director offers and not realise there can be another way. Do you know you don't even need to use a funeral director? Or not for all of it? You don't need a hearse, either, or a coffin, or you can make the coffin. There are various possibilities to make funerals more personal instead of, as Louise describes them 'templated'. We discuss woodland burials, the law around funerals (surprisingly few) and much more, including 'what's next' in terms of body disposal.
I think a good funeral is one where, if the person who has died were to magically come alive, they wouldn't feel out of place. And a good funeral can be very healing for those left behind.
Louise is a progressive funeral director and her London based company is called Poetic Endings. She is also the co-director of an award winning festival and community called Life, Death, Whatever which seeks to change how we talk about death and dying and Louise co-authored of an excellent book called We All Know How This Ends. And we do, don't we? Know how this ends. So let's start talking about it.
Here are the links talked about in this episode.
Josh’s funeral: https://thegoodgriefproject.co.uk/our-films/ https://www.poetic-endings.com/when-someone-dies https://www.lifedeathwhatever.com https://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/06/it-was-an-incredibly-enriching-day-the-families-taking-control-of-death
Make a one off donation: https://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri
Want this podcast ad free? Head over to my Substack page: https://pocketannalisa.substack.com/
Follow us: Twitter: @AnnalisaB, Instagram: @pocketannalisa Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri
I am not a fan of the saying “let’s agree to disagree”, it can be so passive aggressive. But it’s the title of Gabrielle Rifkind’s new book and maybe this pass-agg comment deserves an upgrade.
This episode was not easy to name. The subject is highly topical, but the take on it is original and thought-provoking.
In this episode I’m in conversation with David Robson. David is an award winning science writer and author of three books, one of which The Laws of Connection, we really delve into here. David graduated from Cambridge university with a maths degree, has worked as features editor at the New Scientist, was a senior journalist at BBC Future and his work has appeared in various newspapers and journals such as The Guardian and The Atlantic.
Dr Sophie Behrman is a is a general adult psychiatrist and works in a community mental health team in Oxford. She’s set up an NHS menopause and menstrual disorders clinic, open to women who fit a certain criteria. She’s also edited a book called “Menopause, Menstrual Cycles and Mental Health” which is published by Cambridge University Press in June 2026. In the last series Sophie and I talked about the menopause and its impact on a woman’s brain and in this one we are talking about how the menstrual cycle, and the fluctuation of hormones can affect us physiologically.
I first came across the concept of dissociation when I saw a film called Sybil starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward. It was about a young woman with multiple personalities. Sybil would dissociate and her various personalities would take over.