Mimi Zenzmaier:

“I grew up in Richmond, west of Sydney. Back then it was a sleepy little rural town. As a child, I was really concerned about suffering in people and animals. I use to have these thoughts…Why are we on this earth only to suffer death? It was a big deal for me as a child when the reality hit that we are all going to die one day.  In my teens, I lost a couple of close family members and it affected me deeply. That’s when I really began my search for meaning, I wanted to find sense in all this.

When I turned 18 I saw a tiny ad in the SMH paper wanting people for a pilot program to companion the dying. I immediately applied and got in. I finished the course and worked in St Vincents Hospital on the North Shore as a spiritual and emotional companion. That was the whole pre-curser to the Death Doula. I’ve been working in this end of life area as Death Doula ever since. The role is so similar to a Birth Doula except there’s a lot more joy with one and a lot more sadness with the leaving. We tend to know how to welcome people but we don’t really know how to say goodbye. That’s a big thing for our culture to get on board with, simply because it’s inevitable.

In my 20’s I applied at a funeral home but they told me to go away and get life experience first and then come back. The 2nd time I attempted to enter the funeral industry, I went straight into the modern funeral industry which is profit and shareholder driven. It’s a conservative, male industry so if you’re a younger woman you don’t really fit into that lifestyle. Alcohol is a big thing. I went to Uni and started drinking (laughs), got a Bachelor of Communication and then I did a Cert 4 in Funeral Services. I went back and they still said no. 

I went off and did other things, journalism and some nutrition work. I came up here to the North Coast and did a Bachelor of Naturopathy at SCU. It was all kind of just stuff to do because I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do. Finally, I got a gig up here with a funeral home. It wasn’t necessarily local based and thinking about local people. Some of the stuff that happened there we could have done a lot better. I’d say, couldn’t we offer this?… and the response was always, Mimi, you’re crazy, we’re here to serve our shareholders and make money. They told me that by being emotionally invested I was unprofessional. Over the years I’ve realised those people shouldn’t be in funerals. You have to have a response to people’s suffering.

It was there that I learnt about the huge gaps in care of our deceased and also the care of families, the ones that remain with the huge grief and really nowhere to go. I started to investigate alternatives to the funeral approach and found a huge scope to create more healing opportunities for families going through great loss. When I flagged the ideas that I had after thoroughly researching NSW Public Health guidelines, I found that we could create time and space around families needing to come to terms with the massive shock of the death of someone they loved, and that wanting to spend time with their person was completely normal, perhaps dressing or caring for them after death as they had done before death was also quite legal.

There was so much opportunity for healing rituals all the way through to the final disposition and everywhere I looked in the modern funeral homes there was no willingness to come on board with a more gentle procedure. So I created them all with Sacred Earth. I began by offering myself as a guide for families who wanted a home funeral. Everything from the paperwork, after death care, cleansing and dressing and the laying out of the deceased, to emotional comfort and support through listening, creating sacred space with candles and flowers around the bed of their loved one, anointing with sacred oils, offering last words, finding meaning, etc.

After 3 or 4 years it became apparent that I needed to find a physical location to continue. Work was growing and some families needed to be in an intimate caring space with their loved one, away from home.

Being a Lismore girl for the last 25 years, I looked everywhere in the shire for a place to set up but the Council was not helpful. At one interview I was told: ’we don’t want any more sadness in our area’. I was dumbfounded.

I said, Sacred Earth is not causing sadness, we are supporting healing in grief and loss. I ended up having to give up setting up in my hometown as I hit so many roadblocks.

Anyway, this beautiful space in Coraki came up, we gathered the forces of people to invest to buy this large and beautiful historic block of land and here we have created a true and perhaps the only Funeral Retreat in the country. We have built (out the back of the Earth House) Australia’s first purpose-built family vigil room. We and our community are so proud. We have also moved away from beige chapel walls. All our furniture and lighting has been recycled and repurposed. All furnishings have been gifted or handmade by someone who loves what is happening here.

Everything in this big place has a story. We have the beautiful Sanctuary which is the beautiful old Anglican Church with many reminders of our eternal nature, to the familiar vibe of the community hall “Brandon Hall” which was originally where all the community dances were back in the day, all the weddings, the naming days, everything was held in this hall. Every neighbour here has a story about this hall. Behind the hall, we have the Earth House, natural body care area, the last place we go on this Earth before we return to it (The Earth). Every hand that has created this has worked with love and respect for our vision. 

We are a hub for all the Death Doulas on the North Coast - the “Northern Doulas” People can come to meet a Doula with the skill set they require, at any time of life. We also run public information and experience days, open houses, morning teas, paint a coffin day, Day of the Dead and special commemorations like loss of a baby or suicide loss. We run as a social enterprise, educating and calming people around fears of death. We love and believe in community. We all thrive if none of us are struggling or left behind. We offer all manner of community services: many are completely without cost.

One thing I always thought, even before I had the concept of Sacred Earth was, when my Mum dies (she’s 93 and well thankfully) but when she dies I thought, who’s going to touch my Mum? Who’s going to wash her and dress her in the clothes I want. I thought it’s going to be a man and because I knew the men from where I worked who said to me: ‘It’s just a job Mimi’. I just felt I should personally look after all women. Women always looked after people in their dying time traditionally. It’s only 80 years that we’ve had the funeral industry in this country. Before that, we all died at home. We were kept at home for a few days while the neighbour dug a grave in the cemetery where we would transport them in their homemade coffin by horse and cart. The women would be cooking and serving after the death, the kids would be running around and it was so normal that no one had this fear of death. By removing it and sanitising society, we fear what we don’t know. 

We are really excited that the Coraki Community Gardens are setting up on our block as well. This has been due to the incredible hard work of our local community and we feel so blessed to have been chosen as their preferred site.

I’m 52 and I have 3 children, two girls and a boy. I home schooled and my eldest girl is now at Uni doing a combined Law/Arts degree. I still live in East Lismore but I feel very grateful to the Richmond Valley who have been so supportive. Everything I do except to come here is in Lismore. We don’t have a Doctor in Coraki. All our elderly have to travel into Lismore. I’m very happy to be doing all the things that fill my heart with joy. I love dogs, I love dog rescue and I also work for Northern Rivers Wildlife Carers. I do all the things I love.”