Death Literate

When the Kuia Speaks

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.

Getting Through Grief

Matthew Flynn is a grief specialist working in Aotearoa NZ and in some of the world’s most war torn and traumatized regions. He knows how to help and in this conversation, he shares how any of us can support someone through grief, however intense.   Drawing on years of supporting people through loss, Matt explains how grief can alter behavior, overwhelm everyday thinking, and leave people feeling disconnected from themselves in ways they may not immediately understand but shows how we can.   At the centre of the conversation is understanding how grief shows up, that it won’t forced it into timelines, expectations, and does NOT conform to neat stages of recovery. Supporting a friend (or yourself) through grief and into happiness again,  takes patience and being, for a time,  "a friend to sadness."

Told You’re Terminal

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.

We all need a good Wake

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.

Death Literate

When you meet Trish, what stands out isn’t heaviness — it’s energy. "The space of death is about people, he tangata, what’s more vibrant than people and the journey they are on?”. In this Episode Trish talks about developing a Death knowledge, breaking down the myths around hospice care, and why community connection matters so deeply. After nearly two decades in hospice care, her work is driven by a belief that caring for one another at the end of life is simply what we do.   A conversation about death that is, full of life.