Today Eterneva speaks to Elizabeth Eddy. She is the CEO of Lantern.co which is a death planning company. Through the website, clients are able to account for all aspects of end of life planning, including a guide for relevant tasks, resources for storing important information, and the ability to easily track and share progress to make the process as easy as possible.
Eddy is an entrepreneur who is doing some amazing things in the grief and wellness space.
Eterneva: Liz, if you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your founding story, and what is lantern?
Elizabeth Eddy: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Lantern. We help people navigate life before and after death. So basically what that means is, if you’re pre-planning for yourself or you’ve recently lost someone and you’re navigating the process afterward, we take you step by step through the process to make sure you understand what needs to be done — and also know what “done” is. That’s oftentimes the hardest part. You go through this process, you’ve never done it before, and you don’t know what’s expected of you.
Lantern.co was borne out of personal need originally. I lost my grandmother, and my father before that, so I’ve worked in end of life, in grief, and mental health for a while. But I was faced with a new personal challenge when my grandmother passed away, and I was responsible for everything with her end of life and death, and truly didn’t know how to navigate it.
I got a phone call on a Saturday morning and went up to her nursing facility in Connecticut, and I was met by two police officers, a nurse, and her body, and they looked at me and said, what do you want to do?
I was 27 at the time and truly clueless. I’ve since learned that it doesn’t matter what age you are, nobody knows how to navigate these situations until you go through it.
I initially turned to my phone and Googled “what do you do when someone dies” and expected to find something like Lantern. I just assumed. Every other life event has these sort of single locations that walk you through every aspect. But with end of life and death, it is so fragmented.
There are tons of amazing resources and services out there. But it could take you days, weeks, months to find them all. So our idea, and I went to my co-founder, who was previously a co-worker, turned best friend, turned co-founder, and I said: “we’ve got to do something about this”.
She’s an incredible systems thinker, really brilliant with product, and she literally started breaking down the process and identifying ways that we could make the grieving process easier.
Lantern.co originally launched in September with the Post-loss product, and now we do pre-planning as well, which launched in January. Lantern.co has evolved dramatically based on our user needs. And we’re seeing it grow every day, especially right now.
How did your personal experience change the way you approach end of life planning now, especially with Lantern?
For anybody who has lost someone, One of the first things you start to realize is how unprepared you are for all of this.
You never know what grief is going to feel like until it happens. But you can know what to do, and you can plan for it. I’ve also found that planning for something is so much easier when you can have a conversation with the person in real-time.
I think there’s always been this kind of stigma with death, or somehow if you plan it, then it’s going to make it happen faster. But there is absolutely no correlation between end of life plan and dying. One does not cause the other.
But the problem is if you don’t have your affairs in order, that’s left for your family to sort out.
And we really believe as a company that planning ahead is the most empathetic and kind thing that you could do for someone you love.
Many people think that by not planning for the future, they’re protecting their loved ones from the reality of death. But actually you’re leaving them with more to do.
Yeah, and it’s sort of counterintuitive. But a lot of research has actually shown that addressing your own mortality can be really healthy. It can reduce stress, make you more efficient with your time, and can even improve relationships with the people in your life.
So there’s a mental health benefit to doing these kinds of things ahead of time.
A part of planning is allowing people the opportunity to talk about memorials or the way they want to be remembered, or what a legacy could look like.
Have you noticed some positive effects of having those conversations too? To help surround end of life planning?
That’s a great entry point when you’re trying to figure out how to talk to someone else about an end of life plan. Talking about end of life can, of course, be awkward, and a lot of people think that an end of life plan is a will, and that’s a part of it, but it’s not the entire process. A will just defines what you do with your money, your possessions, you figure out your guardianship, what happens to your kids, but there’s all these other pieces of an end of life plan that we forget to touch on. There are other things that are forgotten, like where important documents are kept.
And of course how you want to be remembered. What you want a memorial service or funeral to be like. And then also your legacy and history. I think that is one of the most beautiful parts that’s often forgotten in an end of life plan. What do you want your family to know? What do you want your great-great-grandchildren, who you may never meet, to know about you?
I often relate that to my experiences with my grandmother and with my dad. There are all of these questions that I never asked them, and I never really thought to ask.
I’ve heard the story of how my mom and dad met and their proposal from my mom. But I never heard it from his side of the story and what he was thinking and how he felt. And I so badly wish that we had it written down somewhere.
That’s the point of Lantern.co. When you pass away, the people you love aren’t just getting a legal document with your bank account numbers. You also get to say here’s my story, here’s my love letter.
What about when things don’t go smoothly? Are there ways to help plan around those kinds of communication problems that can strike during end of life conversations? We know it’s such a complicated time for people. Tensions there are probably higher. Is there a way that you’ve seen that people can navigate that too?
End of life is one of the most heartbreaking processes, and when somebody passes away, especially if they were sort of the glue in a relationship, things can crumble, there can be a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
First and foremost, if the person is able and capable to talk to their family members in advance about what their plans are, have a real conversation, and hash out all the details, that’s the ideal scenario.
Does that happen in reality? Very rarely, unfortunately. Especially when people have different expectations.
One of the things that are really helpful with Lantern is that we’re introducing collaboration capabilities. We find that a lot of times family members butt heads when there’s miscommunication around what somebody wanted for their funeral or who’s doing what, or who is contacting this person.
So being able to have better insight into what everyone is doing and in the decisions, they’re making can reduce some of that stress.
But it’s always difficult because emotions are running high, and you’re adding a lot of logistical and legal and financial things on top of everything else.
But we believe communication is key, and being able to really explain to your family members why you’ve made certain decisions can make a huge difference.
Do you have any advice for someone who wants to start having this conversation or bring up this topic? What’s the best way to start that conversation?
There are two different categories that people tend to fall into. The realists and the empathetic people. On the realist side, they’re more from the perspective that everyone’s going to die at some point, and it’s important that we prepare for this. This is a reality, and we need to accept that and plan accordingly.
On the flip side, there are some people that don’t want to think about it and push end of life decisions to the furthest parts of their mind. That’s a little bit harder to talk through.
The empathy card can sometimes work really well in those situations. That means explaining if something were to happen to your loved one, you have to know what to do. Pointing out the stress that comes with planning a funeral, and celebrating the person the way they would have wanted to be celebrated. Who are the right people to care for their dogs and cats? What if they have children? These are difficult, but important questions that need answers. Most people will be more comfortable knowing those decisions are taken care of, should any tragedy befall them.
Starting a dialog can even be so simple as just acknowledging that life is so short. There are things happening in this world, I want to know more about you. I want to know what you would want, and I want to share with you what I want.
What kind of tools and tactics have been working for you at Lantern that have helped you stay connected through the pandemic?
My co-founder does an amazing job of keeping our team really engaged on a daily basis. We utilize quite a few online resources to normalize operations as much as possible including Slack, Google Hangouts, and Zoom.
But we’ve also incorporated performing a lot of wellness checks just to check-in and ask “hey, did you get up and walk around since this morning?”
We’re a team of four, and so far three of us have had birthdays in quarantine. So that has been a really interesting challenge for how do we make people feel really special and loved during a day that is celebratory but also challenging?
So my co-Founder has done a fantastic job, just making everyone feel really connected.
Personally, I am a big fan of online workouts. I have a friend of mine who has been doing almost daily morning routines that are challenging and rewarding. It feels good to move and get some of that energy out. I’ve also been doing the five-minute journal. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. I don’t know if this is Quarantine Liz, or if this is a new habit. But for the five-minute journal, every day you write about three things you’re grateful for, you set an intention for the day, and at the end of the day, you write three things that were really great. Then follow up with one thing you would have changed or want to work on.
Reflecting like this is a really nice, quick way to document your life and a good reminder to show gratitude. So I really love that.
From the company side, working on the end of life plan side of our tool is a really positive way to kind of channel some of that lack of control and anxious energy. It is really the only aspect we can control in terms of this.
We’re also working on some documents to help people with addressing their own mortality and also helping healthcare workers address mortality. It’s not commonplace to have education around actually dealing with death as a health care worker. And this is a climate where health care workers are seeing a lot more death, but they’re also facing it head-on without family members present. So, really trying to offer our support and guidance around how to have those conversations and make sure that someone’s end of life is fully supported in the best way possible considering the current climate.
Obviously grief in all of this has existed before, but I think collectively now we’re probably learning that maybe we didn’t have the tools in place to deal with it. But now is the time to figure out what those are and how to make them the most useful.
This might be the first time that everyone globally at least has a sense of what grief feels like. In some way that’s incredibly uniting. I, of course, wish this wasn’t the way everyone found out about it. But I’m hoping the pandemic allows for an extra level of empathy for people that have lost someone and are going through this process. Because a part of the loss of a loved one is the loss of normalcy. It’s the loss of safety and security. And that really is deep grief that I think we’re all feeling right now.
Do you have any other recommendations on tools that you could leave people with if they wanted to get more information?
Obviously come to lantern.co if you’re interested in what we’re doing, or follow along on social media @followlantern.
Also, my previous life was in mental health, and I think now more than ever, we at least need people to talk to and reach out to, and get support from. So my previous life was at Crisis Text Line, which is a free 24/7 crisis support line through SMS. And I would really highly recommend, if you’re feeling like you need that extra support, you can text 741741, and be connected with a trained crisis counselor.
I think it’s empowering to at least know it’s there even if you never use it.
