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

If you're just beginning your journey as a death worker, this episode is for you. It’s a grounding love letter of encouragement for you who are answering your first calls, tending your first thresholds, or simply wondering if you're ready.

This episode is a pocket-sized companion for your journey—save it for the days you need a little courage and clarity.

Reach out for support if needed. Go to www.narinderbazen.com/study-with-narinder.

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In this episode, Narinder invites death workers and grief workers into a deep remembering: you are not here to replicate what has already been done — you are here to dream, to create, to reshape death care itself.

Narinder speaks about the quiet trap of seeking approval — how it waters down your vision, drains your energy, and keeps your deepest offerings hidden.

She shares personal stories about choosing truth over popularity, and how standing firmly in her values magnetized the exact people who were seeking her voice.

You’ll be reminded that your "far out" ideas and your truths are sacred threads in the larger weaving of this work. Your authenticity is not just personal — it is part of the universe’s great unfolding.

This episode is a permission slip to stop asking if you are "allowed" and instead to step fully into the death care world you are here to build.

Maybe you are not here to fit in — maybe you are here to transform culture.

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So many healers, artists, and death workers feel called to grief work but hold themselves back—waiting for a certification, a title, or someone to tell them they’re “qualified.” But grief isn’t something you master. It’s something you witness, hold, and walk with. Grief teaches grief.

In this episode, Narinder unpacks the myth of expertise in grief work and why you don’t need permission to show up for the grieving. We’ll explore how our gifts—whether they come through your healing modality, your creativity, your weirdness, or deep gifts for witnessing —are enough. If you’ve been playing small, doubting your readiness, or feeling like you need another credential before you can begin, this is for you.

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Press play and let the unraveling begin.

In this episode, Narinder sits down with The Story Doula, Vision Midwife Dajé Alōh, to explore the wild and real terrain of bringing our visions to life, our soul's work to the world. From the grief that shapes our boldest creations to the authentic expression that leads us to liberation, Dajé invites us into a deeper understanding of what it means to lead with soul.

Whether you're a death worker, a creative entrepreneur, or someone longing to follow the pulse of your own vision, this episode will leave you stirred, softened, and ready to step 👏 it 👏 up! 👏

🌿 Connect with Dajé at https://storywork.studio/. ✨ Follow her on Instagram: @thestorydoula

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Expanding on something said in the previous Nine Keys episode, The Death Worker's Antenna, through storytelling and poetry, Narinder explains the Great Mother's world that is being built through people who listen to her direction. A world where work is balanced with play and rest. Service that comes through devotion to her and not the exploitative ways we are used to working.

If you are a hospice nurse, a caregiver, a death worker, a healer, a guide, a seer, this episode is for you.

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In this episode for Death Workers, Narinder addresses the importance of having a clear signal to receive the inspiration and guidance for our death work.

She's going to ask you, death worker, some really powerful questions that may lead you to more clarity.

If you'd like to receive Narinder's support for your death work, spiritually and practically, check out her Study with Narinder page on her website, narinderbazen.com.

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This episode of Nine Keys is the last episode in a six part series called The Death Healer's Hexagon. If you haven't checked out the previous episodes in this series, you might enjoy going back to part one of the series.

Death Work as a Path of Devotion is a topic close to Narinder's heart. Here she is, unscripted, talking about what death work as a path of devotion is, what it requires of us, and how it serves us in return.

If you'd like to study death work, the mystic's way, with Narinder, please check out her Nine Keys death midwifery apprenticeship at www.narinderbazen.com

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From bespoke shrouds, to grief memes, to death art, to conceptual art spaces that double as death education spaces, creativity weaves infinitely through death work.

In this episode, Narinder talks with artist and death worker Meghan Johnson about the facet of The Death Healer's Hexagon that is Death Work as Art Form and Medium. Death work and art go together seamlessly. Both artists and death workers reflect onto us our choices, our agreements, and identities. Both artists and death workers can break up status quos, can reshape realities, and can reorient us towards soulfulness.

Death work invites so much creativity into it, and art invites our death work in return.

Meghan Allynn Johnson (she/her) is an artist and death worker specializing in connecting community members to death and grief resources and sharing in the tenderness of life's endings through creative workshops and artworks that she calls 'living portals.'

She is the co-founder of the Madison Death Collective, an online resource for grievers, the dying, and the dead, and her artwork has been exhibited in New York, NY; Johannesburg, South Africa; St. Louis, MO; Chicago, IL; and Madison, WI. 

She recently completed the Nine Keys Death Midwifery Apprenticeship, and has a BFA in Studio Art from UW-Madison, and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Art. She has published work with the David Krut Print Workshop in Johannesburg, and her artwork is included in the text, Singular/Serial: Contemporary Monotype and Monoprint (Kernan, Oresman, Einstein). Meghan is based in Madison, WI.

Follow Meghan and the Madison Death Collective on Instagram here:

@meghan.allynn.deathwork | @madison.death.collective

Also featured in this episode:

Artist Jennifer Bastian: https://www.jenniferbastian.com/about

If you are interested in studying death work with Narinder you can check out the Nine Keys Death Midwifery Apprenticeship at www.narinderbazen.com.

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You're invited to press your ear up against the studio door and listen in on this lyrical conversation between Narinder and her friend and colleague Melissa Word as they sing of the beauty and the hard realness of Death Work as Culture Midwifery. The conversation grows tendrils that touch on our collective grief, our body's intelligence, the power of keeping prosperity flowing in the eddies of community, and the threshold job that is death work.

Melissa is an Atlanta-based artist, dancer, death doula and grief coach. As a facilitator, she helps people heal their creative lives and explore their relationship to their bodies and mortality. 

Her background as a professional dancer has shapeshifted through the years into creating experiences for others to get more in touch with their own way of moving and expressing. As a creative grief coach, she leads a seasonal online workshop for grief processing through quilting and hand-sewing, reimagining healing spaces as ones where our bodies, hands, and intuitive impulses guide the way. 

She is a graduate of Narinder's Nine Keys Death Midwifery Apprenticeship.

Learn more about Mel at www.melissaword.com and on Instagram @melissawordstudio

There are two other death workers mentioned in this podcast. They are wisemawellness.com and bodygriefcoach.com.

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This episode is the third episode in a six part series called The Death Healer's Hexagon: the six facets of death work as Narinder Bazen knows it, sees it, and teaches it. In this episode, Narinder is highlighting the facet of the hexagon that is death work as soft-business. Narinder is joined by her friend, death worker colleague, and business inspiration Yarrow Magdalena.

Yarrow is a web designer, tech consultant and small business mentor based in Scotland. They hold an MA in creative media and bring a decade of experience in digital strategy to their work, which supports introverts in building creative businesses that are aligned with their values and fun to work in. Yarrow also makes textile art, facilitates ritual and hosts two podcasts - the Kind Business podcast and the Making&Mending podcast. You can find them at PinkWellStudio.com and YarrowMagdalena.com

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