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Death can be one of the clearest teachers we have—but only if we stop treating it like a distant problem.
In this episode, I’m joined by ritualist and death educator Shaina Garfield, founder of Leaves With You and one of the co-facilitators of the Beyond the Veil Retreat, to talk about green burial, grief, and the surprisingly life-giving practice of planning a sacred return to Earth.
We begin with Shaina’s nonlinear path into this work: being diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease in college, discovering holistic healing, and following a design question that led her to create her first macrame coffin. Shaina shares why handweaving a biodegradable coffin can become so much more than an environmentally conscious funeral option—it can be a communal ritual in which every knot holds prayers, beauty, love, and memory.
From there, we explore Shaina’s deeply personal essay, The Return to My Earth, and the moment she realized that healing was not about transcending or escaping her body. It was about coming home to it.
We talk about letting go of the lives we thought we would have, learning to hold gratitude and longing at the same time, and recognizing when the search for healing becomes another way of searching for something wrong with us.
Shaina shares how plant medicine ceremony has served as a form of threshold training, why the real ceremony begins after the ceremony, and why integration and physical action matter more than continually chasing the next cure, treatment, or spiritual breakthrough. She also offers guidance for anyone curious about connecting with guides, ritual, and the unseen—even if plant medicine is not part of their path.
And because this is the Ode to Joy podcast, we make space for the joy woven through it all: dance breaks, trees, water, gardens, laughter, daily acts of offering, and the practices that help us stay openhearted while living with pain and uncertainty.
If you are curious about death-positive living, end-of-life planning, ritual, chronic illness, green burial, or what it means to return fully to your body and the Earth, this conversation offers both grounding and permission.
Subscribe to the podcast, share this episode with someone who may need it, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.
Three Shaina Truths
1. The equation of becoming requires both giving away and receiving.
Whenever we cross a threshold and become a new version of ourselves, something must be released. Letting go creates the space into which the next chapter can arrive.
2. Medicine is not necessarily a cure—it can be a key.
No teacher, ceremony, treatment, or spiritual practice can walk the path for us. The key may open something, but we are still responsible for building the door, walking through it, and integrating what we have learned into our everyday lives.
3. Our death can become our final offering to the Earth.
Preparing for our sacred return is not only about deciding what happens after we die. It asks us to consider what we are cultivating within our bodies, our relationships, and our lives right now.
Standout Quotes from Shaina
“It’s important to witness what is witnessing you, because what we’re seeking is also seeking us.”
“The equation of becoming means having to give away in order to receive.”
“The ceremony is great, but it’s really the integration and the action that make it real.”
“Plant medicine is not a cure—it’s a key. I’m the one who has to build the door and walk through it.”
“Death is a key to experiencing more joy.”
“We’re looking at our death only to inform our life here today.”
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Journaling Prompts
- What am I being invited to give away so that I can receive what is trying to enter my life?
- Where has my desire to heal, grow, or improve quietly become a search for something wrong with me?
- What would it mean for me to return to my Earth—to my body, my needs, my limits, and the physical reality of my life?
- If I knew I were going to die tomorrow, what would feel complete—and what would I wish I had tended to more lovingly?
- How might I treat one ordinary act today—washing the dishes, preparing food, walking outside, or caring for my body—as an offering?
- What expectations about my life, my body, or the person I thought I would become am I ready to grieve and release?
- What would my own sacred return to Earth look and feel like? What does imagining it teach me about how I want to live now?
- Where is life already inviting me into the dance—and what keeps me from joining it?
Resources Mentioned
In This Episode
- Chronic illness as an initiation into healing, death work, and the Earth
- Shaina’s journey from industrial designer to ritualist and death educator
- Creating biodegradable macrame coffins
- Weaving prayers, memories, and love into a burial vessel
- Returning to the body after years of spiritual exploration
- When the healing journey becomes another form of self-rejection
- Holding gratitude for the present while maintaining a vision for the future
- The equation of becoming
- Life as a series of thresholds
- Plant medicine, responsibility, lineage, and discernment
- Why integration matters more than chasing spiritual experiences
- Connecting with guides and the unseen
- Learning to live with death rather than treating it as a distant problem
- Dance as prayer, embodiment, and connection to creation
- Green burial as a physical and spiritual offering
- Using death to inform how we live today
- Shaina’s offering at Beyond the Veil
Connect with Shaina
Shaina Garfield is a ritualist, death educator, designer, and founder of Leaves With You. Her work helps people reconnect with death, grief, ceremony, and the natural world through ritual containers, death education, green burial exploration, and biodegradable macrame coffins.
At the Beyond the Veil Retreat, Shaina will facilitate The Sacred Return to Earth, an exploration of green burial, the spiritual dimensions of decomposition, and how envisioning our return to the Earth can transform the way we live today.
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