At a Loss - It’s life and death

Dying Matters Week 2026 starts 7 September, bringing people across Aotearoa together to have open conversations about dying, end-of-life, grief and loss.

The week is about creating safe spaces to ask questions, learn from local experts, seek support, and make informed and meaningful decisions for ourselves and the people we care about. Across the country, there will be expert talks, workshops, Death Cafés, open days, grief walks, poetry displays and much more.

At the heart of this movement is Katy Mandeno, who over the past three years has built a nationwide network helping people reconnect with conversations around death and grief.

In this episode, Katy shares how the movement began for her, what she’s learned along the way, and why she believes creating space to talk about death can help take away some of the fear and make death feel like a more natural part of life.

In this episode of At a Loss, Dr. Kylie Kim (BVSc), founder of Sunset Vet Care, shares what it means to support families through one of life's hardest decisions: saying goodbye to a beloved pet. Through her work in in-home palliative care and euthanasia, she sees a peaceful farewell as one final act of love.

Together, we explore Kylie’s deep passion for animals, her own experiences of loss, and the compassion and openness she brings to conversations about grief.

A Loving Decision with Kylie Kim is a conversation about love, loss, and finding peace in the moments that matter most.

What is a Death Cafe? It’s a global phenomenon! Growing from a lounge room 15 years ago, to 97 nations now.

In this episode of At a Loss, Dame Naida Glavish reflects on Ora, Hinengaro, Wairua, and the experience of the tūroro, the person who is unwell, and how these parts of life and wellbeing remain deeply interconnected.

Through stories, insight, and lived experience, Dame Naida speaks about the relationship between the mind, body, spirit, and community, and how understanding those connections can shape the way we move through grief, illness, healing, and care.

Natasha Plunkett loves her club,  Shocking Pink, but is deeply saddened every time a new member joins.  Shocking Pink is for women living with Breast Cancer, Natasha shares laughter and lessons she’s gained there. Insights for friends, family and especially spouses on how to live alongside someone you love facing this diagnosis.

She shares some "how not to" advice also. There are ways to be told bad news. Natasha’s experience being told of her diagnosis was so bad it’s almost satirical. Naturally warm, and engaging Natasha shares even her hardest reflections, with humor and hope.

She speaks about the difficulty of moving from caregiver to someone needing care, the challenge of accepting vulnerability, and how past experiences of loss shape the way she processes her own illness. Working as a funeral director, she reflects on what it means to be surrounded by death professionally, then suddenly face her own diagnosis and the shock, clarity, and practical decisions that follow.

A conversation about resilience, identity, friendship, and how to take on change and the unexpected liberation of knowing the goal is not to “recover” into who you were before.

Writer, poet, and filmmaker Kevin Toolis explores a way of understanding death that feels both ancient and immediate. Raised on a remote Irish island, he reflects on a culture where the dead are not hidden away, but kept close - Seen, touched, and shared in the company of the living.

Woven through are later experiences reporting from warzones, where death takes on a different kind of presence. At the centre is the Irish wake, offered not just as tradition, but as a guide. A way of meeting loss without distance.

What emerges moves between the philosophical and the practical, holding space for a quieter question: what changes when death is no longer something to turn away from, but something to be faced together.

How to die naturally.

Carol McAllum is the doctor you meet when recovery isn’t possible. She shares thoughts, wisdom and wonder in all she has learnt about life and death. Death can be messy, but it can also be natural, here’s how.

Do tell the children

Sarah’s kids know Mum works with the dead. Because she tells them her work stories. In her old job nursing the dying, she told them all about that too. Sarah says, please talk to kids about death. Here she tells you how.