The Funeral Gal 

The oddities of the funeral industry can make it downright grueling at times. When you are out to dinner with your spouse and kids and just as the server puts your dinner plate down, your cell phone rings for a death call. As you leave the table, your kids ask why you are always working. It’s the arrangement when a widow’s tears are flowing so fast down her face, she can’t see the page you are presenting her with the different services options you provide.

But, then there i...

You hear this a lot from funeral directors this time of year as we finish out the last couple of doldrums weeks of summer. I went to one funeral home last week, and the funeral director had nothing but time to talk and complain about the lack of calls this summer.

I talk to another funeral home on the phone today, and the funeral home owner says, “I haven’t been this slow since I took over the business in the 70’s.”

Another 250-call funeral home even admitted to me that they...

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4. Post traumatic growth is possible- Sandberg writes that after a trauma or tragedy there are several whose lives move forward – she calls it bouncing forward or post-traumatic growth. Her co-author, Grant, notes that at least half the people experiencing a tragedy report some sort of positive outcome. The five keys to post traumatic growth are: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and...

“Grief is a demanding companion,” writes Sheryl Sandberg in her new autobiography Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy that she co-authored with Adam Grant.

For those of you who don’t know, Sheryl Sandberg has quite the resume. Sandberg is currently COO of Facebook, and in the past has served as President of Online Sales at Google and Chief of Staff at the US Department of Treasury. She married Dave Goldberg while he was an Executive at Yahoo, an...

I spent the better part of the other day calling on funeral homes in Delaware and on the Maryland eastern shore. With about 275 miles of driving round trip, I had a lot of time to think about the latter half of my week in which I am cramming a trip to our manufacturing plant in Alabama, a couple hours walking the floor of the ICCFA convention, and finally NFDA’s Professional Women’s Conference in Franklin, Tennessee.

I have never attended the PWC before, and while I was pum...

You know the definition of insanity right? Not the literal definition, but the figurative definition.

Insanity – doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

So, I ask… are you insane?

I think we all are at some point or another. If we are all having an honest conversation here, there are certainly times where we all do the same thing we have always done, hoping that circumstances change and we get a different result.

But why is human nature’s default i...

So where exactly has the Funeral Gal been? It seems as if I have been a slight bit absent lately from the blogosphere – I know, I know. Fact of the matter is that on the see-saw of work/life balance, the “life” part became a little bit heavier the last couple of months. Truth be told building a new house, moving in when you are eight months pregnant, and then having a baby 6 days before Christmas eats into a lot of evening/weekend time (the times I usually spend writing bl...

Self-confessed, I fell asleep watching the election coverage last night. I woke up this morning, checked my phone with my bleary eyes and found out that Donald Trump won the Presidential Election.

Before you start thinking that this is just another written statement of whether the results infuriate me or make me gleefully happy, IT’S NOT. This post is meant to be an honest reflection of my thoughts and how it specifically relates to my professional life.

Over my bowl of Hone...

Besides my beloved home state of Maryland, Philadelphia is the next closest place that I can call home. I spent four years in the suburbs of the “City of Brotherly Love” attending Villanova University. And yes, there couldn’t be a better year for NFDA to be in Philly – the year my alma mater wins the NCAA National Championship Tournament. Okay, I’ll stop gloating.

I came to ‘Nova expecting simply another East Coast city that was much like DC or New York, but what I found ov...

In the beginning of the summer, our company hosted a contest called “Community Connections”. Our goal was to create a forum by which funeral homes could share the unique ways they reach out to their individual communities.

New, unique and different ways to reach your community is becoming necessary and vital to the success of a funeral home. As I mentioned in “Community Connections: Part I”, memberships in both fraternal and religious organizations are down dramatically.  A...