Death Over Chocolate

Grief and bereavement conversations

RA Tas helps individuals experiencing grief and loss.

It is currently an organisational priority to extend our capacity to support more people as they experience and adapt to grief and loss at an individual level, but also within families, communities, and workplaces.

We acknowledge that thinking and talking about our mortality is challenging for many Australians, which in turn becomes a barrier to people reaching out for support when they are grieving and/or bereaved.

…thinking and talking about our mortality is challenging for many Australians …

During this year’s staff conference, staff participated in a Death Over Chocolate workshop. This inspiring workshop created an opportunity for us to have an important and straightforward conversation about death.

The workshop was inspired by the grassroots movement Death Over Dinner, which was created to promote open conversations about end-of-life wishes. It was started in the U.S. by Michael Hebb and introduced in Australia by Rebecca Bartel from Deakin University. The program aims to normalise discussions about death, dying and our mortality, one conversation at a time.

This inspiring workshop created an opportunity for us to have an important and straightforward conversation about death.

The Death Over Dinner program provides free tools for anyone to deliver an internationally-recognised, evidence-based model for changing community attitudes toward death, dying, grief and bereavement.

Over 60 staff members participated in the Death Over Chocolate workshop, which was an opt-in experience at our 2022 Staff Conference.

Staff engaged openly about the issues of grief, loss, and dying, and many reported feeling more open to having the ‘tricky’ conversation about death as a result of the workshop participation.

Staff engaged openly about the issues of grief, loss, and dying …

Many staff reflected on their own beliefs, family culture about death or mortality, and shared their motivation to positively influence our community willingness to engage in this conversation in a proactive manner, rather than at a time when a person is very unwell and unlikely to participate. Our workshop facilitator received emails and phone calls for months after the event from staff sharing that they had extended their workshop experience by initiating conversations with their loved ones that they previously had avoided, and a few have held their own Death Over Dinner events!

To continue this work in the community, over the next year we will bring the Death Over Dinner program experience to students and staff within the Tasmanian community, specifically healthcare sector, including palliative care services.