There are very few people who can sit at the threshold of life and death with the kind of steadiness that both calms the room and delivers the truth. Zenith Virago is one of them.

For more than three decades, Zenith has served as a deathwalker, celebrant, educator, and spiritual elder, walking alongside individuals, families, and communities through some of life’s most tender, raw, and sacred passages. Her path into this work was not gentle. It was a baptism of fire, forged in the heart of the AIDS epidemic, where death did not arrive politely or occasionally, but relentlessly, personally, and with profound urgency. In many ways, death itself initiated her, shaped her, and polished her into the elder and wise woman she is today.

Zenith is the co-author of The Intimacy of Death and Dying, the subject of the documentary Zen & the Art of Dying, and a beloved guide to many who are learning how to meet mortality with honesty, courage, and compassion.

In this episode, we speak about the importance of learning to hold the midpoint, to stay calm and steady in the presence of intensity, both personally and professionally. Zenith shares how, culturally, we’ve been conditioned into fight, flight, or freeze when faced with death and crisis, and how over time we’ve underestimated our own capacity to function and to meet and respond in these moments. Through medicalisation, control and avoidance, we’ve slowly handed away skills that humans have carried for millennia: the ability to sit, to stay, to tend, and to accompany one another through dying.

We talk about ritual, language, community, children and grief and what it means to bring death back into the village, not as something to fear, but as something to meet with presence, reverence, leadership and heart.

This episode includes themes of death, dying, grief, and end-of-life care. Please listen in a way that feels supportive for you, and take care of your heart. I hope you enjoy listening to Zen as much as I did.

Links & Resources

💛 Griefline
Free, confidential grief support
📞 1300 845 745 (8 am to 8 pm AEST, 7 days)
🌐 griefline.org.au

💙 Lifeline
24 hour crisis support
📞 13 11 14
🌐 lifeline.org.au

🌿 Zenith Virago – Official Website

https://www.zenithvirago.com/

📚 The Intimacy of Death and Dying

https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org/a-book-about-dying/

🎥 Zen & the Art of Dying

https://zenandtheartofdying.com/

🌱 Natural Death Care Centre

https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org

💡 Deathwalker Training (Online & In-Person)

https://www.zenithvirago.com/deathwalker-training

This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer.

For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:

https://www.deadicate.com/

Talk to LWELL here:

lwell.ai

Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter

Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review!

Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows

(https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/)

Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/)

There are very few people who can sit comfortably in the presence of death without flinching, and fewer still who can make that space feel alive, honest, and strangely liberating.

In this episode of Live Well, Leave Well, I am joined by Cheyenne Harper, known artistically as KING IV, a musician, performance artist, and modern psychopomp working at the intersection of music, ritual, and transformation.

Through her work, including the album Psychopomp, the new track The Other Side, and the immersive live performance FUNERAL, KING IV explores endings, shedding, and rebirth. Not as concepts, but as lived experiences. An embodied bravery that willingly enters the unseen, names what others avoid, and creates beauty and meaning from spaces many people only encounter through loss, illness, or crisis.

In this episode, Cheyenne and I speak about death as a teacher, art as a portal, and the power of meeting mortality with curiosity rather than fear. We explore what it means to consciously prepare for death, not morbidly, but devotionally, and how ritual, music, and presence can transmute grief into connection, agency, and love.

This conversation is an invitation to listen differently, to your body, your fears, your endings, and to consider what becomes possible when we stop turning away.

KING IV’s next performance of FUNERAL takes place at Midsumma Festival on January 29. This episode offers a glimpse into the world behind the work, and the work behind the becoming.

Links and Resources

Shed your grey being.

Buy tickets to FUNERAL here: https://linktr.ee/kingivsound

Midsumma Festival

Howler :: Jan 29

This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer.

For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:

https://www.deadicate.com/

Talk to LWELL here:

lwell.ai

Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter

Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review!

Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows

(https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/)

Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/)

Gavin Blue is an award winning photographer, humanitarian, and the President of Heartfelt Australia and New Zealand.

For more than a decade, Gavin and his extraordinary team of over 320 volunteer photographers have quietly and reverently stepped into some of the most intimate and devastating moments a family can experience. Together, they offer free photographic memories when a baby dies before, during, or shortly after birth.

This is work done with deep presence.

With humility.

With radical compassion.

Gavin and the Heartfelt team meet families at the intersection of joy and grief, where love still exists even when hearts are breaking. Their photographs are not just images. They are legacy. Proof of love. A way of saying you were here, you mattered, and you are forever held.

This episode is tender, powerful, and deeply human. Please listen gently and take care of your heart.

Still frames. Eternal echoes.

One moment of presence. A single photograph, yet it echoes forever in the hearts of those left behind.

This conversation includes themes of stillbirth, baby loss, and grief. Please listen in a way that feels supportive for you.

Links & Resources:

💛 Griefline

Free, confidential grief support

📞 1300 845 745 (8 am to 8 pm AEST, 7 days)

🌐 griefline.org.au

💙 Lifeline

24-hour crisis support

📞 13 11 14

🌐 lifeline.org.au

💬 Beyond Blue

Support for anxiety, depression, and grief

📞 1300 22 4636

🌐 beyondblue.org.au

🤍 PANDA (Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia)

Support for parents experiencing perinatal loss or distress

📞 1300 726 306

🌐 panda.org.au

📸 Heartfelt Australia - Please donate this Christmas!

Photographic memories for families experiencing stillbirth or child loss

🌐 heartfelt.org.au

This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer.

For more about Baci & Dedicate, visit my website:

https://www.deadicate.com/

Talk to LWELL here:

lwell.ai

Join the Deadicate community → deadicate.com/newsletter

Please support the podcast by leaving a rating and review!

Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows

(https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/)

Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/)