Nine Keys: the art, business, activism, and mystery of death work

In this tender conversation, Narinder sits down with her Admin Angel, Kursten Hedges, a strategist and mystic who helps artists, healers, and visionaries build businesses that actually hold their souls. Together, they explore a radical truth: business and spirit were never meant to be separate.This episode is alive with honesty, magic, and practical wisdom. Narinder and Kursten talk about:following sacred nudges inside your workhow money conversations must be part of mutual aid and community carewhat it's like to navigate chronic illness while still building new worldsthe tender, magical intersection between creativity, death work, and strategyIf you’re an artist, death worker, healer, or heart-centered solopreneur trying to build something sustainable in a world that’s falling apart, this episode will feel like sitting at a warm table with two people who deeply get it.Expect real talk.Expect magic.Expect to leave with a softened heart and a clearer path.Find Kursten at https://theadminangel.com/

In this episode, Narinder invites death workers, healers, and soul-led practitioners into an honest conversation about getting their work out into the world beyond the grind of social media. Narinder reflects on the early “soul era” of death work online, when community and education were central, and contrasts it with today’s fast-paced, algorithm-driven “crazy bazaar.” (Daje Aloh's phrasing) Listeners will learn how to shift from algorithm-dependence to an ecosystem approach, using newsletters, blogs, podcasts, local workshops, and real-world creative offerings to grow their work with sustainability and intimacy. Narinder shares why repurposing your content is a wise use of our precious time, and how different channels reach farther.If you’re a death worker or healer feeling overwhelmed by social media, or longing for ways to share your work that feel more intimate, grounded, and aligned, this episode will feel like a deep exhale and a way forward.To sign up for Narinder's newsletter go to www.narinderbazen.com To schedule mentorship sessions with Narinder go to https://www.narinderbazen.com/study-with-narinderMentioned in this episode are:Yarrow Magdalena of https://glimmerportal.com/about-yarrow/Misha Murphy of https://hafezdeathcare.com/Meghan Johnson of https://www.madisondeathcollective.org/Daje Aloh of https://storywork.studio/

In this tender episode, Narinder shares conversation with Venessa Greenheron - artist, parent, farmer, and death worker on Whidbey Island, Washington, and a cherished Nine Keys alum. What begins as a discussion about Venessa’s upcoming grief gathering grows into a deeper reflection on death work as an art form and the practice of reciprocity that keeps our care alive.Together, they explore the complicated ache that can surface around the holidays for those navigating fractured or unsteady family systems, and how tending something small and alive, like a Paperwhite Narcissus bulb, can become a ritual for reclaiming warmth and beauty inside that ache.An easy conversation, meant to be listened to with your hands around a warm mug.

*Best listened to in stillness, with a candle lit and your notebook nearby.In this Samhain-season, Halloween episode of The Nine Keys Podcast, Narinder invites death workers into an intimate, experiential reflection on the role of fear in death and grief work.Through story, breath, and gentle somatic guidance, she explores the quiet hauntings that accompany this vocation: the fear of saying the wrong thing, of not knowing enough, of being too much or not enough. Rather than trying to fix fear, Narinder teaches how to hold it, warm it, and listen to what it’s asking for.This is not a teaching episode, it’s an experience.If you need Narinder's one-on-one care, check out her mentorship offerings here.

In this episode, Narinder explores the other half of giving, the often-forgotten practice of receiving. Speaking to death workers, caregivers, she reflects on how the balance between giving and receiving forms the very rhythm of life itself. On this Libra New Moon, she considers the imbalance of giving without receiving, why receiving can feel unsafe for so many, especially women identified death workers, and how our cultural conditioning has made depletion a virtue, and receiving a fault or even something we register as dangerous.Narinder weaves the theme of reception through the lens of death work, asking what it means to truly allow ourselves to be cared for in return for our death work. If you'd like mentorship with Narinder go to her website here. ✨ AND! To join Dead of Winter, Narinder’s upcoming seasonal art circle for makers and folks looking for something so fun to do during the darkest months, beginning November 6th, go here. Learn more, stay connected, and sign up for her newsletter at www.narinderbazen.com

Find Madrid-based death worker and Mourning Artist Paula Hernando’s grief dolls on Instagram @doulas_project. And her death work performances and drawings on Instagram at @murnanaz.In this episode, Narinder sits down with death worker and Mourning Artist Paula Hernando to explore her work of alchemizinggrief into form. Paula’s “Doula Project” offers bespoke dolls that carry the stories of loss. Each one is a vessel, each one is a witness. Together, theydiscuss the reclamation of the plañidera (the mourning woman), the need for new death and grief conversations in Madrid, and how art becomes both death workand culture work: an act of remembering, restoring, and remaking the world through mourning.

In this episode of Nine Keys, Narinder speaks with grief worker Abby Goelzer about her upcoming offering Midwestern Daughter — an exploration of what happens when cultural niceness meets real grief. Together, they unpack the Midwestern Daughter Archetype: the one raised to be kind before honest, the one who carries grief with a polite smile.Their conversation moves through tenderness, agency, and the quiet rebellion of telling the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. To find out how to join Midwestern Daughter go to Abby's website Garnet and the Moon or her IG account @Garnet_andthe_Moon Before the conversation, Narinder shares a brief note about Dead of Winter, a four-month art and death salon designed by Narinder and death arts worker Meghan Johnson, as a soft, creative respite for the darker months ahead. With prompts, artist-inspired process sharing, and room to rest, Dead of Winter offers a place to land when the world feels heavy.A grounded and intimate episode about grief, art, and the undoing of politeness in favor of something more real.

In this episode, Narinder shares a story of an angel and hergolden oil, running water, and the unexpected path from childcare into the sacred work of death midwifery. She speaks candidly about living with chronic illness, the shame death workers often carry around charging for care, and the survival necessity of solopreneurship. Narinder explores how art making in Nine Keys keeps death work alive, stretching imagination, pushing the edges of practice, and offering new ways to sustain ourselves without burning out.Threaded through the conversation is her prayer-song, an invocation to Great Mother, Good Ancestors, and Earth herself, that opens and closes the episode as a reminder of why we labor, why we serve, and why our sustenance matters.This episode also connects to the upcoming gathering Dead of Winter, where Narinder and other artists weave together death, art, and mysticism during the darkest months of the year.Oh, Great Mother give me the desire to do your workI am your hands. I am your ears. I am your mouth. I am your feet.I am peace. I’ll do my chores; I’ll do my chores for peace. Oh, Good Ancestors, guide me home, for as long as I live.Meet my needs, and a little more, so that I may give.Oh, Earth, hear my love and my sorrows for what we’ve doneand know I will tend this little patch, this little land,where my feet firmly stand doing chores for peace.Oh, Great Mother give me the desire for work you’d have me do.And when my day come to rest, I’ll come home to you.