Bringing Culture Back Into Deathcare

Hey, y’all.

Before I get started, if you’ll allow me, I would like to open by pouring libations for my ancestors and inviting them to join me here today, or to join us here today.

While I’m doing that, I’d also like us to take a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the October 12, 2025 mass shooting that happened in my home, St. Helena Island, also known as Gullah Gullah Island.

Thank you.

How many of you have heard of Gullah Gullah Island?

All right. We’re going to find out for real.

This is what we call call and response. Come on, let’s play together.

“Let’s all go to Gullah Gullah Island.”

“Gullah Gullah.”

Yes.

For those of you who are not familiar with Gullah Gullah Island, St. Helena Island, we are the home of the Gullah Geechee people. The Gullah Geechee people are what I like to consider keepers of the culture.

My ancestors, and many of your ancestors as well, are the living heartbeat of the African diaspora here in the United States.

We are keepers of sacred wisdom and the spiritual technologies of life and death.

My ancestors preserved the spiritual science of transition, honoring water as a sacred portal, song and call and response as sacred prayer, and earth as a bridge between worlds.

Our way of death is not about endings. It’s about remembering that the veil is thin, and that we keep the culture and the connection to our ancestors alive through veneration and ritual.

My name is Joél Simone, and at the age of eight years old, lying on my grandmother’s floor, I drew a picture. It has become somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The picture that you’re looking at on the screen, of me in a purple suit, red lips, red hair, with a microphone, standing in a cemetery, either talking on behalf of or to the dead, has now become the reality that I live in today.

I’m now known all over the world as the Grave Woman.

Little did I know that at eight years old, I was developing the spiritual gift of being able to communicate with the dead and speak directly to my ancestors.

Now, I can imagine that may have been a little bit disturbing to my parents. But I’m so grateful for my grandmother, who preserved that photo for me, because she understood that what was happening was a form of connection that would guide me through the rest of my life.

Those spirits and those ancestors became my friends. They became my playmates. But most importantly, they became my guides.

That photo became the reality that I’m living right now.

In Gullah Geechee culture, death, dying and grief are not things that we shun. They’re part of everyday life. They’re part of work. They’re part of play.

My favorite form of play was playing funeral with my cousins.

Of course, whoever I was mad at that week when we got together on Saturdays had to die, right?

But I got what I considered to be the best job of all. I got to be the funeral director, which meant I got to hold everybody as they were falling out, because we got really dramatic with it.

I got to care for the people who were grieving, pretend grieving at that time. But most importantly, I got to play with the dead bodies.

Fortunately, as children do, I grew up.

During that time of growing up and realizing what was different and what made me unique, I quickly learned that talking to imaginary friends and wanting to play with the dead was not so socially acceptable. It made people really uncomfortable.

So I began to forget so that I could fit in.

My spiritual gifts were also muted through being diagnosed with ADHD and put on medications like Ritalin and Adderall so that I could focus and keep still.

But that connection was essentially my lifeline.

As I finished high school, I was still drawn to mortuary science and becoming a funeral director. I started having dreams and visions without knowing what was happening.

I eventually enrolled in mortuary school at the age of 27. Sitting in mortuary science classes and listening to my professors speak, I realized that there was a lot missing.

There was no education about how to care for people who looked like me, spoke like me, or had hair textures and skin complexions like mine.

I started again having those visions and those inner promptings. What I didn’t realize was that my ancestors were calling back out to me because I was being reactivated.

I realized that there was a huge disconnect between how I had been raised and what I was witnessing as a student and, eventually, as a professional.

The voices of my ancestors began to get even louder and sharper.

I started having experiences like seeing Black women’s braids cut off in the funeral home, or professionals who were supposed to know how to care for the people who came into their care trying to comb out locs or not knowing how to communicate with families of color.

I started hearing inappropriate jokes about Black male genitalia. I also experienced a lot of racial exclusion and racism while simply trying to learn how to care for the dead and their families.

Through a lot of prayer and reflection, I realized that deathcare had become disembodied from what makes us human.

Guided by the wisdom of my ancestors, I began to question: How can I bring culture and ritual back into deathcare?

And they answered.

I was instructed to start the Multicultural Death and Grief Care Academy, where I host workshops and courses designed to help not only myself, but other professionals working at the end of life learn how to care for people on a cultural level.

I’m standing before you here today as an innovator. But my form of innovation is not about what’s new and exciting. It’s not about some new medical breakthrough or advanced technology.

My form of innovation is about remembering what we’ve forgotten.

Reimagining deathcare as something culturally rooted, personally informed and spiritually affirming is the mission of the Multicultural Death and Grief Care Academy.

Innovation, to us, is an invitation.

It’s an invitation to welcome those who have been excluded and the wisdom they carry. Because culture and ritual, combined in community, are a radical act of healing and bravery.

Centering traditions, embodied practice and ancestral wisdom is inviting culture and ritual back into deathcare.

How many of you actually work with those who are dying or who have passed away?

Okay, that’s about everybody in here.

I hope you recognize the power you carry with you into every room you enter.

The warmth of our hands reminds us, and reminds those we care for, that they’re not alone.

Familiar sounds, songs like the one we just sang and familiar voices unlock memories. They also soften the heaviness of grief and loss.

Smells unlock core memories.

Our sight reflects reverence and presence and can provide reassurance.

My favorite is taste. The taste of a favorite meal or treat becomes a bridge between worlds when someone is transitioning.

Our most important portal is our intuition.

Our intuition guides us when to speak and when to simply be still, when to touch and when not to touch.

Engaging these senses and recognizing them as the portals they are, not only for us but especially for those we care for, transforms routine tasks into ritual.

Through engaging our senses, we return to the ancient understanding that healing and honoring begin and are offered through the body, our bodies and the bodies of those we care for.

My work in funeral service has been guided so much more by intuition and connection to ancestors than it ever has been by anything I learned in mortuary school.

I’m not saying that traditional education is not important. But what I’m telling you is that through ritual, you have the power to tap into something deeper: your intuition.

I can give countless examples, but the one that comes to mind is mixing a lipstick color for a woman who had passed away.

It was an orange and red mixture. It was probably the ugliest color I had ever seen in my life.

But when I was in the embalming room working with her, something inside, my spirit, my guides, that same guidance I felt as an eight-year-old on my grandmother’s floor, told me to mix those two colors together and put it on her.

It felt so wrong mentally, but something inside made it so right.

When I presented her back to her loved ones, they were so moved.

They were like, “How did you know this was her color? She wore this color every day. How did you know?”

I didn’t know I knew.

Another example is choosing and creating playlists that families resonate with deeply, without having any prior connection to them or knowing their taste in music or what the deceased enjoyed listening to.

They move beyond tears when they hear something that unlocks memories for them.

This, to me, is proof that my ancestors still guide the work that I do.

Reconnecting with our bodies and opening our senses as vessels of comfort and compassion turns what we do into divine care.

Our sight truly becomes sacred when we see what is truly in front of us.

Touch becomes healing when we approach each person and each body with reverence.

I stand here before you today because I chose to remember.

I chose to listen beyond training, beyond protocol, even sometimes beyond the law, to be guided by something older and wiser.

What we refer to in my culture, and in many other cultures, is Sankofa.

Sankofa is an African proverb that means, “Go back and get what you forgot.”

It reminds us that the wisdom of the past isn’t lost. It’s simply waiting to be remembered.

Through the work that we do, through the lives that we touch and through the rituals that we choose to restore and honor, we’re shaping the future of what death, dying and grief will look like for generations to come.

My intention in being here and coming all the way from Gullah Gullah Island to Los Angeles, California, during the rain, might I add, like, what the hell, is to invite you to remember.

I want you to remember that curious eight-year-old child who sang the song we all sang together.

I want you to remember your families, your ancestors, the land, the tastes, the music, the sounds and the sights.

I want you to remember your roots.

Most of all, if you take nothing else from anything I’ve said today, I want you to remember that culture is the medicine for grief.

Thank you.