Nine Keys & Co: the art, soft-business, activism, and mystery of death work

In this episode, Narinder sits down again with trauma alchemist, death worker, and somatic coach  Sam X  to explore one of the most overlooked aspects of death work:  the voice. Together they discuss why so many death workers struggle in their work with knowing how to find the right words - struggle with speaking up, with boundaries, advocacy, conflict, and showing up honestly in di...

What happens when death workers bring the same willingness for difficult conversations to each other that they bring to the families they serve? In this roundtable discussion, Narinder is joined by death workers, artists, and activists, Misha Murphy , Venessa Greenheron , and Rebecca Lopez Mullins for a thoughtful cultural critique on the death worker movement and an invitation to practice the ski...

In this grounding episode of Nine Keys & Co., Narinder sits down with somatic therapist, astrologer, and grief worker Sam X (xe/they) for a conversation about the somatic realities of death work. Together, they explore practitioner trauma, nervous system responses, imposter phenomenon, burnout, fear around speaking honestly in the death care field, and the grief death workers themselves quietl...

In this episode of Nine Keys and Co., Narinder Bazen sits down with death workers and artists Meghan Allynn Johnson and Rebecca Lopez-Mullins for a contemplative and unfiltered conversation about the modern death doula movement, comfort aesthetics, marketing, grief culture, trauma, and the growing pressure to make death look clean, palatable, and consumable. Together, they explore what gets erased...

What does it mean to tend grief, death ed, and end-of-life planning in late-stage capitalism? This is death work beyond the bedside. In this episode of the Nine Keys & Co. podcast, I speak with grief and death tenders Abby Goelzer and Venessa Greenheron about the evolving shape of death work in 2026. Together, we explore facilitating advance planning, death education, and collective grief spac...

Facilitators, space holders, death workers, grief workers - This episode is for you. People are raw. And they’re braced. Grief groups are everywhere, which I love, but the nervous systems walking into our spaces are more lit up than they’ve been in years. Triggers surface faster and repair feels urgent. And facilitators? We’re not outside of it. We’re grieving too. Watching the news. Paying bills....

Find  Melissa Word 's Devotion Mode  here! In this episode, I get into why death work isn’t something you memorize, and why art, making, and creative practice actually train us for the parts of this work that can’t be taught. I talk about death work as a lived, hands-on practice and why creativity matters right now. Then I’m joined by Melissa Word to talk about death work as art practice...

Welcome back to the Nine Keys podcast. I’m Narinder, and this first episode of 2026 returns to death work as a  path of devotion . After a quiet winter shaped by listening, rest, and a new diagnosis of moderate hearing loss, I reflect on the magic that lives inside death work, specifically  sympathetic magic : the simple, often unspoken practices we use to communicate with the holy, the...

In this final Nine Keys episode of the year, Narinder closes the door softly on 2025 with reflections on soft business, world-building, and the death arts. She invites listeners into a season of genuine winter rest, where miracles land quietly, and nothing needs to be performed. The episode ends with  Pink Light , a short guided moment for anyone who feels tired, tender, or stretched thin. Th...

In this tender conversation, Narinder sits down with her Admin Angel,  Kursten Hedges , a strategist and mystic who helps artists, healers, and visionaries build businesses that actually hold their souls. Together, they explore a radical truth:  business and spirit were never meant to be separate. This episode is alive with honesty, magic, and practical wisdom. Narinder and Kursten talk...

In this episode, Narinder invites death workers, healers, and soul-led practitioners into an honest conversation about getting their work out into the world beyond the grind of social media. Narinder reflects on the early “soul era” of death work online, when community and education were central, and contrasts it with today’s fast-paced, algorithm-driven “crazy bazaar.” (Daje Aloh's phrasing) List...

In this tender episode, Narinder shares conversation with  Venessa Greenheron - artist, parent, farmer, and death worker on  Whidbey Island, Washington , and a cherished  Nine Keys alum . What begins as a discussion about Venessa’s upcoming grief gathering grows into a deeper reflection on  death work as an art form  and the  practice of reciprocity that keeps our car...

*Best listened to in stillness, with a candle lit and your notebook nearby. In this Samhain-season, Halloween episode of  The Nine Keys Podcast , Narinder invites death workers into an intimate, experiential reflection on the role of fear in death and grief work. Through story, breath, and gentle somatic guidance, she explores the quiet hauntings that accompany this vocation: the fear of sayi...

In this episode, Narinder explores the other half of giving, the often-forgotten practice of receiving. Speaking to death workers , care givers , she reflects on how the balance between giving and receiving forms the very rhythm of life itself. On this Libra New Moon, she considers the imbalance of giving without receiving, why receiving can feel unsafe for so many, especially women identified dea...

Find Madrid-based death worker and Mourning Artist Paula Hernando’s grief dolls on Instagram  @doulas_project . And her death work performances and drawings on Instagram at @ murnanaz. In this episode, Narinder sits down with death worker and Mourning Artist Paula Hernando to explore her work of alchemizing grief into form. Paula’s “Doula Project” offers bespoke dolls that carry the stories o...

In this episode of  Nine Keys,  Narinder speaks with grief worker  Abby Goelzer   about her upcoming offering  Midwestern Daughter  — an exploration of what happens when cultural niceness meets real grief. Together, they unpack the  Midwestern Daughter Archetype : the one raised to be kind before honest, the one who carries grief with a polite smile. Their conver...

In this episode, Narinder shares a story of an angel and hergolden oil, running water, and the unexpected path from childcare into the sacred work of death midwifery. She speaks candidly about living with chronic illness, the shame death workers often carry around charging for care, and the survival necessity of solopreneurship. Narinder explores how art making in Nine Keys keeps death work alive,...

In this episode, Narinder sits down with Melissa Word (co-creator of  Eye of the Needle ) for another deep conversation. They explore what it means to gather right now in threshold spaces, - beginning at the sacred springs, moving through the urgent necessity of collective dreaming, art-making, and ritual. They also talk about how  Eye of the Needle  has evolved, who is invited, who...

In this special episode, Narinder invites listeners into a threshold moment: the renaming of Nine Keys from the Death Midwifery Apprenticeship to the Nine Keys School of Death Arts. Recorded during Still,Life the online opening reception and gallery night on September 7th, Narinder is joined in conversation by her friend and fellow death worker and artist, Melissa Word . Together, they explore how...

In this episode of the Nine Keys podcast, Narinder sits down with creator and visionary Dajé Aloh to crack open what it means for the soul to have its own momentum when it’s rooted in the radical aliveness of Earth herself. We start with a passage Dajé wrote about soil, pollinators, and the magnetics of life-force, then tumble into conversation about the power of delight as resistance. This is a c...

In this episode of the Nine Keys Podcast, Narinder is joined by fellow death artist,  Meghan Allynn Johnson of  Madison Death Studio . Their conversation follows the flow of water - they explore  death work as a force, art as a force, and the unruly magic that happens when those currents meet.  They speak to the ways death arts keep pressing the edges of what this work can be,...

Beneath the asphalt, the springs of life are flowing. Her waters press against the gates we’ve been told to guard, our gifts, our art, our soul’s work. In this episode, a sermon by the spring water, Narinder rides the first wave of a great soul shift, where the pendulum between masculine and feminine swings wildly enough to break its hinge. She speaks of the feminine rising and the Great Mother’s...

Narinder lets the wind have her presently - thistledown, unscripted, carried by the Great Mystery and the hands of her ancestors. Death workers are always holding : space, others, steady - What happens when the death worker un-holds? Here, Narinder's flower in the morning. A spring in Merriweather County. A miracle older than bone dust. Stories to inspire you. This episode is for you if you’ve bee...

Misha Murphy of  Hafez Death Care  and the podcast  Halva for the Heart  joins Narinder for a warm, sharp, and deeply human conversation. A Nine Keys alum, Misha’s grief work centers Iranians in the diaspora, holding space for inherited griefs, ancestral wounds, and love stretched across time zones. Though Misha currently lives in Seoul, they serve globally. This isn’t just a s...

Narinder sits down with death midwife and artist Venessa Greenheron for a grounded and quietly magical conversation on the Nine Keys podcast. Venessa is a steward of land and hearts on Whidbey Island, Washington. Her days are spent working with her hands, whether in the barn, the kitchen, or her art studio. Narinder and Venessa talk about practicing death care in a rural place, the magic in death...