Today my guest is Mitzi Weiland, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and creator of the podcast Dead Funny Dead Serious.

In this episode:

- Mitzi was a bartender and artist before her mother was diagnosed with terminal stage 4 cancer (her father and grandfather also passed away when she was 7). Then she started looking into volunteering at hospices and senior centers (bingo is ruthless) and started to school to be a geriatric mental health specialist.
- She then took a grief class and learned why she uses humor to deal with her grief (it was very eye opening).
- Mitzi was raised by a grieving mother and it was never addressed. She was using humor to deflect.
- Humor is absolutely a healthy coping mechanism- if it’s ONE of your tools.
- Every tool should be used in moderation. Netflix is great until you start watching it for 24 hours a day and stop going to work. Wine is a great tool until it's not.
- Using humor to deflect vs to cope is a fine and personal line
- Going to local comedy clubs and listening to comedians using the platform to process and cope with loss.
- Why we have so much death anxiety in American culture (we’re living longer so palliative and deathcare is actually a new concept)
- The new movement surrounding death positivity and how that’s not the space grieving people are in
- Grievers are shunned for sharing their feelings
- We hashtag and label everything so we put everything and everyone in a box. You can be happy, grieving, and angry all at the same time
- Grief groups are often filled with laughter
- Turning her mom’s ashes into a lawn gnome

For more information about Death Is Hilarious, visit deathishilarious.com To get in touch, email [email protected]. You can support the podcast by subscribing, becoming a patron at patreon.com/deathishilarious, or by simply sharing the show with your friends and on social media.