What Nobody Tells You About Grief And Loss with Ariana Lavelli
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
“There’s no scorecard to life.” — Ariana Lavelli
Ariana Lavelli is a Solutions Engineer at Slack (Salesforce), where she helps small businesses spot the gaps in how they work and match them to the right tech. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Accounting (with a minor in Spanish) from Binghamton University, and got her start at KPMG before making the jump to tech.
The real turning point came in 2023, when Ariana became her mother's primary caregiver after a terminal diagnosis. After her mom passed, Ariana became the family's default executor, which meant she was the one untangling probate, estate admin, and all the family dynamics that grief blows wide open. Unexpectedly, she lost several more people close to her in quick succession, and learned some uncomfortable lessons firsthand and more than once.
So on the two-year anniversary of her mom's death, Ariana started Light & Ari, a grief and end-of-life support company built to fill that experience gap for others. It's meant to be practical, unglamorous help for grievers and executors, delivered with the same whimsy and warmth her mom always brought to everything.
Right now, Light & Ari is launching an Etsy shop of curated goods for the grief-stricken and the people who love them, with plans to grow into full-service support: legacy planning, document organization, probate guidance, trust funding, estate and home sales, memorial planning, the whole thing. Ariana is building it out of Brooklyn alongside her corporate career, with an eye toward going full-time early next year.
Connect with Ariana Lavelli
Website → https://thelightandari.com/
Etsy Shop → https://www.etsy.com/shop/LightandAriShop
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/arianalavelli/
Email → hello@thelightandari.com
Light and Ari Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/thelightandari/
Connect with Naomi Haile
Website → https://www.naomihaile.com/
Sign up to my Newsletter → https://powerofwhy.kit.com/57ca5180df
Purchase the Purpose Canvas to ensure your dreams have an action plan → https://naomiahaile.gumroad.com/l/purposecanvas
This episode is for you if:
You have experienced a major loss and found that the world seems to move on long before you do.
You are supporting an aging or ill parent and realizing that caregiving comes with an enormous amount of logistical work nobody teaches you how to navigate.
You are trying to build a more genuine community but keep running into the practical problem of where people are actually supposed to gather.
You work with AI or technology and are trying to distinguish useful adoption from the pressure to adopt everything.
Looking for a specific gem?
00:00 Welcome and Ariana's story
06:00 Growing up in Yonkers and how travel shaped her view of community
09:25 Why third places matter, and why they're disappearing
10:20 How Ariana turned her own rooftop into a community space
13:01 AI, isolation, and the human need for connection
16:32 The "reverse centaur": what happens when AI takes the helm
20:05 Helping businesses separate AI FOMO from actual need
24:36 When grief breaks the optimization mindset
27:03 "There's no scorecard to life"
32:14 Why "How can I help?" may be the wrong question
38:31 The two deaths of a person: physical death and the death of memory
42:57 How losing her mother changed Ariana's relationship with work and money
46:12 Wills, trusts, healthcare preferences, and legacy conversations
55:45 From professional organizing to Light and Ari
59:12 Building a concierge for the logistical side of loss
1:01:59 The vision: from Etsy shop to a physical third place for grievers
Conversation Transcript
Naomi Haile
Hi everyone! Hi everyone! Welcome to another episode of the Power of Why podcast. My name is Naomi Haile, and today I am here with the remarkable Ariana Lavelli. Ariana, how are you doing today?
Ariana Lavelli
Oh my gosh, I am better than ever, especially because I'm with you now, Naomi.
Naomi Haile
We've been talking about this episode for a good minute, and there are so many reasons why I wanted to interview you, but definitely when I first met you a couple years ago, I just remember thinking like, wow, this woman moves with such grace and light in the world. Like you, I remember when we first met in our building.
Like you ended up moving, I was moving in, and I just remember how much like joy you brought, even in our first interaction. And I'm like, yeah, Ariana is definitely like a person to spend time with and just you know get to know.
And you also have some really interesting perspectives on tech as someone who's been in the tech industry for a good minute. And we're going to be talking about a lot of heavy, you know, subjects today and topics.
And I truly believe that the things that you've navigated in life, from like grief and loss, can really speak to people who are going through things, especially today when there's truly chaos in the world.
And so, and so, this might be a different episode, but like the essence of being in your purpose and being rooted in your purpose is like all over you, and so thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate you, Ariana.
Ariana Lavelli
Oh my gosh, thank you. I feel like being given a platform to talk about something like this that I feel like is so often veiled is really important. So I appreciate you platforming something like this.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, yeah. So for the audience, I'll give you an intro, and we'll dive right in. So, Ariana Lavelli is a solutions engineer at a major technology company where she helps small businesses spot the gaps in how they work and match them to the right tech. She holds a bachelor and master's degree in accounting, which I did not know.
We both have a business background. I love this, with a minor in Spanish from Binghamton University, and got her start at KPMG before making the jump to tech.
Ariana experienced, which you'll learn more about today, a turning point in 2023 when she became her mother's primary caregiver after terminal diagnosis, and after her mother passed away, Ariana became the family's default executor, which meant she was the one untangling probate, estate administration, and all of the dynamics that grief blows open.
And then recently, she lost several more people close to her back to back unexpectedly, and learned a lot of like uncomfortable lessons firsthand. And so, on the two-year anniversary of her mom's passing, Ariana started Light and Ari. A, am I saying that right? Ari, Light and Ari. Okay.
So, on the two-year anniversary of her mother's death, Ariana started Light and Ari, a grief and end of life support company built to fill that experience gap for people. You know, it's meant to be practical, unglamorous help for grievers and executors, delivered with the same whimsy and warmth her mother always brought to everything.
Right now, Light and Ari is launching as an Etsy shop, which I would love for you to talk about more of curated goods, which she will share more about before growing her company into a full service support ecosystem with legacy planning, document organization, probate guidance, trust funding, estate and home sales, and so much more.
And Ariana is based in the great place of Brooklyn right now. Great to have you here. I'd love to start by talking more about your origin story and kind of how you grew up.
Ariana Lavelli
Sure, it's relatively boring. I grew up in the suburbs of Yonkers, New York, which, for those unfamiliar, right north of the Bronx, and it was a pretty quiet upbringing. I'm an only child, which I recognize as somewhat unique.
Lived with my mom and dad in a small house in Yonkers, and you know, did the normal school thing, did the normal extracurriculars thing.
I think a bright spot of my childhood that I think really did shape me in more ways than one is my mother had a role at a major company that allowed her to travel to the far-flung corners of the world, and I think that like really fostered in her a wonderlust that she previously didn't have access to, and then that.
Was her legacy to me was then me adopting that same wonderlust, so I did have the ability and privilege from a pretty young age of traveling the world, which was amazing.
So I say I had an average childhood, but apart from that, because I think that's a privilege I was definitely afforded relatively early, and I think the reason why I say that kind of was like blew things open for me, or like really had a hand in raising me, is because it allowed me to see how other people live, how other people have cultural norms that are very different from ours, how they support each other, how they speak with one another, how they move in the world, how their physical infrastructure lends itself to its social fabric.
Like these are all these things that you don't, as a kid, know how to verbalize, but you then reflect on later on and realize, oh, that's why I'm interested in community. That's why I'm interested in. You know how our physical infrastructure lends itself to how we move relationships forward.
Like it's all these things that I think travel really allowed me to see really early on. So I thought that was a really great part of growing up.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, yeah, and you didn't grow up too far from like where I'm sitting right now. And yeah, at the beginning when I was mentioning a little bit about how you move through the world, that's definitely a big. I didn't know that you were traveling so young. I know that you travel like in your adulthood, like you know a lot of us do.
But getting to see that as early as possible is absolutely a blessing. Travel teaches you so much about people, about life, About resourcefulness, like being resourceful person and human, and I'm really excited for people to hear that part of life from you too, which is like a very nuanced perspective to bring.
You mentioned community as a value, as a big value of yours. You're definitely top five people in my circle that make such a determined effort to bring people together, and so being around people, building like real community, especially today. How have you? What has that meant for you in this season of life?
Ariana Lavelli
That's a big one. I feel like in a world where human connection and deep relationships are receding and contracting, that makes community building more difficult, but also more important. And so I think people are pretty bought into that idea. But the big question is like the how.
Like it's really nice to have people around that can help me and get me through these different milestones of life, and vice versa. But how do you get there, especially when there aren't an abundance of third places or third spaces, as people allude to them?
As I just recently learned that a guy named Ray Oldenburg actually popularized this philosophy of first second and third places. First being for those of you who are unfamiliar, like the home, where is the place to rest? Second, being school or work, being the place for productivity, and third, being like a social public space for community.
Yeah, those things are disappearing. So whereas things used to be very easy and like happenstance and spontaneous, now you have to foster those yourself. And to your point, I make a really intentional effort to curate those experiences.
So I've actually invested in an apartment that I'm not going to lie, is it above my budget a little, but the reason I did that was because there's not a lot of third spaces or places that my friends frequent that I feel like I'll be able to intentionally have time with them, so why don't I build that third place for them?
So I have a rooftop adjacent to my building, and I use that quite frequently for potluck dinners and movie showings with a projector we just bought, and game nights, and when it's weather permitting, obviously going up on the rooftop for anything and everything, and if not, bringing it back down to my apartment.
And so I found that just finding one place, one venue, one interest, one activity that you can kind of glom onto will allow the community building to be more natural and easy and organic in a world that it feels anything but. So that's I feel like very light advice.
But if anyone wants to know more about community building, wants to get invited to my events, if you're near Brooklyn, like you're already on the invite list. Always allow people to have a plus one or a plus two or a plus three. Because there's so many people that want access to community, and you're giving them the place to do that.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, yeah, and what a place for that too. I remember the first time that I actually came across the term third place was my second job. This was like I think I was 16, and I worked at a coffee shop while I was in school for my undergrad, and they-it's a big company.
It's a big coffee shop company, and they would refer to as-they would refer to the coffee shop as being that third place after home work and school, and that definitely ended. everything about how we moved, how we engaged with guests, how we would refer to guests, you know, and then it would come through the line.
Like it informed everything around policies, behaviors, and just like the overall ambiance of the environment.
Ariana Lavelli
I think that they instilled that in you. Yeah, as opposed to just assuming that people understood that. Right,
Naomi Haile
yeah, and the client experience was like the number one thing that we focused on, like in terms of values, actually as a company.
And so I love that you brought that up because it changes your purview of how you even when you do come into a new space, like when we first moved here, when we were earlier living in Harlem, like coffee shops were 1000, and co-working spaces were 1,000% where I met like my entire community in New York, and so the fact that you've created that like so close to home is beautiful.
Is beautiful, and we miss you up here. We miss you up here. Yep. What have you? And so I'm assuming like travel has informed that the characteristics of your mom that you described has definitely informed that.
What are you seeing right now, whether it's at work or with the incredible amount of communities that are popping up and run clubs and like it's tied to everything, right? Right. And so, what are you seeing right now in terms of like your pulse on what people really need.
Ariana Lavelli
I'm seeing a huge revolution, or what I call like rejection of what I think. Sorry, not sorry. Capitalistic overlords are pushing us towards.
And I think that there's been an intentionality towards like an isolation vector, like a vacuum of loneliness that I think companies, whether or not they realized they were doing it in the beginning, realized it was happening and kept going because a population of people who are lonely are easy, like more easily vulnerable to manipulation to capitalistic like buying habits that you can buy them into.
There's so many different reasons why that's true, but I think because incentives are misaligned at the top, where like human connection and the value of society's fabric is not necessarily a priority, I think people are finally recognizing that because we're finally realizing that social media is sometimes anything but, and it's actually creating that vacuum of isolation, and then that's creating an opportunity for something like an AI chatbot to be the hero, yeah, filling that space of connection where it's 24/7, it's frictionless, it's validating, it's I don't get questioned very often by it, and that's atrophying our social muscles and our connection muscles.
And I think people are finally becoming wise to that, and they're like, \"Oh no, I'm rejecting that. I'm starting a run club. We're putting our phones away. We're doing this very physically beneficial thing together. So we're kind of habit stacking now because we don't have a lot of time. It's a good way to put it. Yeah. Right.
Like let me get my workout in and my social time all in one. I'm seeing a trend of this of like a third place is also sometimes a productivity place. Like a cafe is a place during the day where you get your work done, but it becomes a social hub.
You know, similar to what you said before, a run club is like both of those like physical and mental well-being mechanisms. So that's the trend I'm seeing, and that's a very positive one, combating a very negative, strong evolution in our technology sector.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, and that positioning. I mean, when these tools first came out, most people didn't know about them. Like back in 2022, and people were using it way be way before 2022. But the positioning of these tools as replacement, like as soon as that started to catch on, I was like, we're not going in the right direction.
Like that's actually not the most healthy or beneficial way to look at these tools, and so you being like in the heart of it, working in tech, and still having contact with business owners because that's you know the heart of what you do. How do you, as obviously like a tech forward person, I would are you techno optimist for the most part?
Like, do you see in the good of technology for the future? Like, how do you hold both, and still I guess remind people in the small moments the bigger picture that it's really about this yeah.
Ariana Lavelli
I love this topic because I'm seeing it literally unravel in real time how me and my colleagues block 30 minutes of weekly time together to just be like, what's happening?
Naomi Haile
Yeah,
Ariana Lavelli
like let's do brief. Yeah, I can't remember how to pronounce his name, but I believe it's Cory Doctorow. He popularized like this idea of the reverse centaur. Have you heard of that before?
I had never heard of it either, and I was like, \"Wait, this is such a good way of explaining the phenomenon that I'm seeing both in the work world, but also personal world. He described AI. I mean, like, for those of you who have been plugged in to AI pre 2022, we know that like the actual development of AI came from neuroscientists.
Like, they were literally neural network too. Right, like they were studying neural network. How does our brain work? How does and how can we now duplicate this in machine form? Which sounds so scary, but at the time it was like, how can we create an environment where, in my opinion, this is what they were thinking.
How can we create a tool or an environment that is helpful to humans to increase their productivity to the point that they have more time for create creativity, creation, strategy, and human imagination. Imagination, exactly.
Outside of the four walls of a like artificial neural network, like that's what I like to believe was the intention, but unfortunately, like that's what this guy Cory calls like a traditional centaur. So a centaur is a mythical being that has a horse as the body and a human as the head, essentially.
And that's like what I think the intention was with AI was like we are at the helm. The human race is at the helm. We are in control. We're the ones driving the horse, and the horse is the horsepower. It's better, faster, stronger efficiency for processes.
But like, we started to see a reversal of that, where now the machine is the head, and like we're the horse, and we're in charge of checklists and audits and tasks, and we're like, wait, weren't you supposed to be doing my dishes and my laundry, like creating a short form essay?
Now you're creating, now you're acting and you're creating music, like whoa, whoa, that's not what this was supposed to be. So we're seeing this like dismantling of, I believe the foundational intention of the tool itself, like a tool, should be measured by efficiency and productivity, but not a person.
Person, we should be measured by moments of fulfillment and joy. But now we're being measured by productivity, not just in our work lives, but in our personal lives. Like we're optimizing. We're we need the best Japan trip, or else it wasn't worth it. And how can we get the best Japan trip and the best itinerary and have movies clawed to do that?
So, me and my colleagues are really wrestling with this. And how do we come to small and medium businesses, anywhere from like zero to 300 employee businesses, if you want to like visualize who we're working with? How can we come to them and help them figure out what's next, whether that has to do with AI or not?
And I, I imagine you're doing very similar things with your clients, right? Like,
Naomi Haile
yeah,
Ariana Lavelli
what is your goal? And I think just like cryptocurrency was in 2017, AI is like this thing that people are having FOMO about, and if you don't implement AI, where you're going to be left behind, and I think people are forgetting that there are foundational layers that are required before introducing AI, like data harmonicification, right?
Garbage in, garbage out, fellas. Like yeah, need to have the right data for AI to operate the right way, so I'm seeing a lot of our customers be like, \"How do we get AI? How do we in right
Naomi Haile
now? Yep,
Ariana Lavelli
right. There's like there's a huge urgency.
Naomi Haile
Yeah,
Ariana Lavelli
there's so much urgency, and I have to be the trusted advisor to be like, let's have some AI meditation. You know what I mean? Like, what is the. Because I'll be real with you, Naomi. I see LLMs, frontier models, commodifying in the next three years or so. I see them coalescing to really the same performance and latency and cost differentiation.
In which case, the only thing that a business will be ever able to differentiate off of is what we're currently seeing is human creativity, human-focused feedback loops, and so if we're replacing those now, those companies in five years are going to be like, oh my god, scrambling to get back to that.
So that's what my job has become is almost like a AI therapist of like, is this actually what you need, or do you have a toxic relationship with it because you have a FOMO response to it? And so I think that's a lot of my job is balancing those two things while also keeping in mind, obviously, revenue is important as a worker.
So balancing those things is not easy. But speaking with my colleagues about philosophically speaking, how can we get people to what they want without necessarily going gung ho, yeah, with AI has been helpful
Naomi Haile
and measured. It sounds like, which actually is what leaders need right now, and it's crazy. Everything that you just mentioned, it's like you were in a conversation this morning with my client and I, because this is what we're talking about.
She's spent the last three months doing having conversations with C-suite executives in her network about how they're navigating. She's in the work transformation industry; has been for 3030 plus years. And AI is a part of that conversation.
It is should not be the conversation, but it is a part of that conversation when it comes to work transformation, And the pressure that a lot of these leaders are under around that's where that urgency comes from.
It's like the pressure of spending as much as possible to implement like these tools, force it down your employees' throats, and then let's see results. Like we need to see results immediately, and it takes time.
And so I think that measured, trusted advisor role that you're taking in, it's I'm sure doing wonders for those on the other end, like the clients that you're looking to serve.
Ariana Lavelli
Absolutely, they want a token max, and I want result driven consumption pricing. You know what I mean? Like we're on
Naomi Haile
the opposite side of spectrum. This human first, and I love the conversations you're having with your colleagues as well. Like if there's a moment where you folks would come together and decipher what you're seeing, I think I should implement that as well, because I tend to I think about a lot of the entrepreneurs that are in my ecosystem.
We all kind of work in isolation. Yeah, yeah, and so you know those co-working spaces earlier that you'd mentioned. That's such that was the allowed for the spontaneous conversation on the side, where we could riff for 1020, 30 minutes, and like get through a challenge together. You know, or just offer. It's huge.
It's huge, and so that's why I do my best not to cancel. Like I've had to find other ways for to have those touch points, but I do my best not to cancel those checkpoints, even if we don't have an agenda on the call with my you know entrepreneur friends, because there's it's so necessary. It's so necessary.
Ariana Lavelli
Yeah.
Naomi Haile
Mhm. Yeah. And for you, you'd mentioned optimizing. Like we're now optimizing in our personal lives, which that struck a chord to me because I don't think people even realize that they're doing that.
Some of it also might be driven by then reporting back on the things that you've done and just having this feeling of if I if it's not documented, if it's not out there, it didn't happen. You know, how do you release yourself from maxing in every avenue of your life, optimizing in every avenue of your life?
And I wanted what I'm thinking about is us leading into not having control, like being in moments where the unexplainable happens, and you can't optimize. Like you're really sitting with you and yourself. So I'd love to hear about your POV and just yeah some of the things that you think about when it comes to optimizing your life.
Ariana Lavelli
Yeah, I am the worst. The best person, depending on how you want to think about it. I was the person, still am to a certain extent, that I was like, I need to be the best at everything. I was like, am I allowed to curse?
Naomi Haile
Yes.
Ariana Lavelli
I was like the bad bitch. Like I am going to be HBIC. Like I'm gonna be up there. I'm gonna making the most money. I was very coin operated. I want to be the first, the best, the fastest, all the things. I think it took my mom's death for me to like slow down and realize I can't be the best at everything and to stop optimizing everything.
Because again, to your point, you lose control in moments like that, you realize no amount of preparation, no amount of optimization makes this feel better, and actually breeds a lot of guilt and resentment towards yourself.
So I like to think about this thing that a therapist a few years ago gave me, which I'm gonna get the name wrong, but I believe it was like the wheel. I'm gonna call it the wheel of life, which does not sound right, but you'll understand what I mean. It's essentially a visual, like literally a wheel, and it had, I believe, eight intersections.
So eight pieces of the pie, and it was romantic relationship, family, work, financial situation, et cetera, et cetera, health, well-being, mental. So there were all these different things That visually represented the different pieces of your life, and my therapist said, \"You have a bucket of 10. I said, \"10 what? Just 10. Just go with me, right?
Just 10 of anything. Think about it. 10 liters of water, whatever. And this pictorial thing is a bucket, and each section can house five liters of water. So, do you put all of your 10 liters of water in just two sections of your life?
Do you spread it across and put one liter in each section, and then spend an extra liter in some other sections, so I think it like got me closer to you can't put five leaders in every section of your life, or you will quite literally not be here anymore.
Like you just can't do it, and so I like that to both speak to myself and reflect, but also to speak to others who I find are in the grieving process or in situations where they're trying to like token max their life essentially.
To say like, hey, like there's no scorecard to life, and if you want to just like think about your input more than the output, I think that's good enough, and that'll be more fulfilling to you in the long run, is knowing you did as much as you could in the places that you wanted to, as opposed to what was the output of that.
Because a lot of times the output is out of your control, but what you can control is what you put into things. So being able to direct that is your way of gaining control over your life.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, that's so beautifully said. And for you, earlier when we were talking about the timing of this, the one of my friends she recently lost her mom, and similar to you, sort of knew it was coming in that. Well, I think for your mom, it was a terminal diagnosis that she had, and so for my friend, her mother was sick.
You know, we the last couple of years, but there's, yeah, there's no words to describe how that moment, even if you can expect it in some way, what the what will happen after, and how you're gonna feel on the other side of it, you know, and so for those who might be experiencing loss, or might be in a caregiving position, which you know in Canada right now there are over 8 million caregivers, you know people who are take care taking care of you know parents, family members with disabilities in the U.S. in terms of the U.S. works, in terms of the U.S. workforce, 26% are currently family caregivers, which is huge, massive.
Yeah. And so, what have you learned about showing up for yourself, like in those moments, like very challenging moments.
Ariana Lavelli
That one's hard because I don't know if I've figured it out yet. I will say, in my own anecdotal experience, which does not mean this will resonate with everybody.
Naomi Haile
Yeah,
Ariana Lavelli
but the anticipatory grief of. My mom's loss was almost worse than actually losing her because you are visually and every day getting a reminder 24/7 that your life is about to change, and it's like not feeling fully there. I definitely felt really numb, and the only way that I got through it was giving myself things to do.
So when my mom was in hospice, I made sure that every week we had like an activity. So one day I got someone to come and do her nails because word to the wise, like for some reason I don't know why, but healthcare institutions are not allowed to touch patient nails, so my mom was like, \"Oh my gosh, these things are so grubby and ugly.
Like, I need something or someone to make me feel and like get my dignity back, right? Like, I want to pick up my nails and I want to paint them. So the hospice graciously allowed us to bring in a vendor to do that. So essentially, like creating moments of connection that are also fun.
Like it's not against the law to smile or to laugh when you're grieving, whether that's before or after someone's gone. I think that a common cousin to grief is guilt, and it manifests in a lot of different ways. It's the guilt of not cleaning the slate before someone passed away. It's the guilt of not doing more while they were with us.
It's the guilt of, I don't know, not handling things well or not honoring them the way that they would have wanted. There's so many different reasons why someone might fight guilt, and it drives people away from whimsy. It drives people away from joy. It makes you feel like you can't hold two things at once, but you can.
So, like, I adopted a dog a week, a month after my mom passed, and he happens to have the same hair color as her. So it felt meaningful. Like during my hot girl walks, I'd normally be calling my mom. Now I'm doing a hot girl walk with my hot dog. You know what I mean? Like it just changes the way you move in the world. But you try to mimic those like joyous moments as much as you
Naomi Haile
can. I
Ariana Lavelli
think of grief. This might be a contentious way of looking about looking at it, but I think of grief as the other side of love. In that, I see losing someone as the other side of pregnancy. I know that sounds crazy, but like hold on there with me. During pregnancy, that child is becoming one with the mother, right?
And that comes with its own pain and burden and postpartum and raising that child in a way that you find to be the right way, right? There's all different things that come with raising a child, but they are you.
You become they become you, and I think grief and loss is the opposite side of that, which is why it feels so weird and hard to talk about because now they're becoming a part of you. That's what I think grief is. Is the opposite side of that is like you were their kid and now they're kind of yours. Like when you're caregiving, for
Naomi Haile
sure
Ariana Lavelli
they revert back to childlike tendencies and you're now the parent. And I think when you've lost them, they've now the grief process is them kind of becoming you, which is why when you don't process that intentionally, and you kind of like push it off and distract yourself, it could just barrel down and hit you like a rock later down the line.
So I think knowing that you're gonna feel like crap, and there's not gonna be a good way of managing it. Like you just have to come with that. Have the community around you that'll give you a multiple choice of what you need because open-ended questions are a no-go when it comes to grievers.
Either an anticipatory grief as a caregiver, yeah, as an executor, as someone who's just lost someone. Do not ask someone how can I help you? You're not a customer service representative. You didn't come there with a like with a task. This is your friend. This is your coworker. This is your family.
Give them a multiple choice and tell them that you intentionally thought of what they need, and they can just say yes or no. Like I think that's the biggest thing. I know I'm getting off topic. No, no, no. It's
Naomi Haile
not. It's not off topic.
Ariana Lavelli
Yeah. Something I definitely wanted to share with people because people are like, \"How do I help? What do I do? That's something that you can do.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, and I remember this was a couple years ago. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the book Option B, but it okay.
Cheryl Sandberg wrote it after losing her husband, and I remember reading that book because I was trying to understand how I could better show up for people in my circle who have lost, you know, like important people in their lives, and that was one thing that she mentioned in the book.
Around, like one behavior that she noticed after she came back to the office after losing her husband was like people would avoid her. They didn't want to bring up the fact that she lost her husband, and she's like, nobody can bring it up. Like it's always on my mind.
I'm always thinking about it, and so in people's not knowing what to do, it also it made her feel even more lonely and isolated, and like there was something wrong with her. And so I just remember that specifically resonated with what not to do. And so this is another really practical thing that people can think about.
Ariana Lavelli
I love it. I love that you brought that up. I'm definitely going to be running to the book cafe to get that. If people have questions about what that could look like, I mean, I'm sure there's lots of books about it. I'm also going to be putting out resources for it.
But really quick, like, hey, do you need a Spotify playlist of some things I've been listening to lately? Very low effort, very high intention, right? Are you free Friday night to go to the grocery store so we can make three different recipes together so we can meal prep for the week? Now you've helped them with the chore.
You've gotten them out of the house. You're doing something together, and you can do it silently if you want. So there's so many different ways to like intentionally show up for people. Just give them the option and do not put it on them. They already have so much overwhelm. They already have so many things they have to decide. Make one decision for them. I love that.
Naomi Haile
That's one. I love the cooking idea, the meal prep idea, because it also it gives them a it gives people just a moment to just be and to make something, create something together, and as bonus points if they we all need to eat. Okay, right, right.
I'm sure after you've you know been open about your own loss and grief with those in your circle and just like extended network, I'm sure people have also come to you about with questions and things that they're navigating and knowing that you've experienced it. Like they know that you understand.
What is what are some things that you've noticed that people have like through loss, what tends to come up in terms of how people figure out how to navigate grief loss.
Ariana Lavelli
I'll first say like how it happens is pretty interesting, which I never noticed before. I had lost so many people in quick succession. I am very open, very honest, very vulnerable, very quickly with people. Like I meet people for the first time, and I'm like, my mom died two years ago, and it basically cemented who I am as a person.
Like that is like my tagline nowadays, and it's important that people know that about me because it informs how I move in the world and how I make decisions, how I behave, etc. And as soon as I started being open about that, which was about six months after she passed, I noticed that it's like a literal magnetization to me, because not a lot of people talk about it, and not a lot of people talk about it while smiling and joking about it, and making morbid death jokes, and making people like almost making people uncomfortable on purpose for my own selfish needs, right?
Like when someone's like, you know, your mama, I'm like, I'd say that too if she wasn't dead. Ha! Like there's so many ways that I try to bring levity to the situation where people feel like it's not so much of a burdensome conversation; they can come to the conversation topic the same way they would their laundry.
Like they can come with that same composure, to me. So I feel like a lot of people are now like opening up about their stories. And what I've noticed is it's just like adding to the loneliness epidemic that already exists because of what you said before.
Not only does it create a void that can't be filled because this person is now gone, but it isolates you from others.
It creates weird family dynamics where otherwise maybe you got along swimmingly, and it creates a space between you and the people around you because there's a buffer that they don't want to breach because they don't know how you'll react.
So there's lots of different reasons why that isolation and loneliness become larger and sometimes burst into outbreaks or you know radical ways of being because they don't feel connected. And so I just think a theme that comes up is feeling misunderstood because everyone processes differently.
Some people are angry, some people are sad, some people seem fine, but they're really not. They're just like high-performance grievers, is what I like to call them. There's so.
So many different things that come with it, but I'd say like what I hear the most is a feeling of numb, a feeling of loneliness, a feeling that people don't know how to support them, and that they feel genuinely supported six months out from the loss, and after that, it's almost like the world went spinning on without them.
So it's important for people to keep people's cross anniversaries on their calendar and reach out to them every year, every sub year, every biannual anniversary to make sure that you know they know that person didn't die for you too. Like you're keeping their legacy living. I like to say that there's two deaths of a person.
There's the physical death of their you know expiration of their body, and there's the death of their memory, and just and not saying
Naomi Haile
their name, yeah.
Ariana Lavelli
Not saying their name, not sharing the stories. Like I'd say that a shared sentiment also is like I want to talk about my person, I want to talk about the good memories, but I feel like it's going to make other people uncomfortable. How crazy is it that the griefer is now managing other people's emotions?
Yeah, that seems so displaced, and so I'm trying to decouple those things, try to destigmatize talking about this stuff, so that they don't feel so burdened by those conversations. That's why grievers tend to gravitate towards each other because they tend to understand a little bit better that
Naomi Haile
there's very little explaining that you need to do for something that I feel like if you've never experienced, you probably cannot appreciate the range of emotions and feelings and guilt even that people are experiencing. You'd mentioned that your mom's loss like cemented who you are as a person. Like it was a very defining moment, understandably.
How did it change you as a person, and even like how you spend your time, like what you value?
Ariana Lavelli
Absolutely, that's like the hardest question I think thus far because I think it changes all the time. How it changed me immediately was I did not care at all about work anymore. I was like, there are more important things in this life, and I just didn't care about it anymore.
I had just when I got my mom's terminal diagnosis, I had just left New York for the first time, started a life in Denver because I just wanted to see what it would be like to move and to be apart from my family, being more independent. I had just finished hole punching my New York license for a Denver license.
I just had done so much change, and I felt like I was like gaining my independence and my freedom. My mom did the same. She initiated a divorce. She moved out of her house, our family home, which she then moved into then our building, which was next to the river, which like I knew was her dream all along, only to be served a terminal diagnosis. So I don't even remember the initial question, but I feel like how did
Naomi Haile
it change you? Yeah, how did that change? Oh my gosh!
Ariana Lavelli
Here we go.
So it changed me not only by changing my physical circumstances because I then had to uproot my life the second time that year, to move back in with my mom into an apartment that she had just moved into, only got to live in for two months, so physically exhausting, but also yes, seeing that work was not the measure of success for me, and physically speaking, didn't really eat a lot.
I still, I feel like my body responded to that grief and that loss. Like I do not eat the same anymore. I know that's such a weird thing to say, but I just don't. Like it just changed your
Naomi Haile
appetite.
Ariana Lavelli
Changed my appetite completely. Everyone was like, I ran to eat so much. Oh my god, she's never without a hamburger in her mouth. Like so, like I snack all day. It's so weird. There's very physical manifestations of an emotion that people don't even anticipate. So that, but also like the I don't give a fuck attitude that came with.
I just lost the person that was the most important to me in my entire life, she became my best friend when I turned 21, and switched from disciplinarian to best friend, and travel companion. So like,
Naomi Haile
yeah,
Ariana Lavelli
you can say whatever you want to me; it won't faze me. Like I'm literally in my IDGAF era right now because I could literally do anything; it wouldn't matter. Another big thing that changed that I feel like maybe people can resonate with if you have the privilege of thinking this way. Is I used to be so cheap, like I would save every penny.
I was not upleveling my lifestyle when I got a promo or a raise. Like I was staying where I was at, saving, saving, saving, saving, saving. After, and then I saw that after may never come, and my mom saved her entire life. Never got to cash out. Never got to her 65th birthday.
Never got to even use Medicare, which is literally what she sold in her business. Like she never got to experience the benefit of those things. So like, buy the shirt, go out to dinner, enjoy the time, have experiences. Like these were things that I felt very penny pinching about, and now I'm like, you know what?
Get the apartment that's outside of your budget because you know what? You might never be able to have a room. Yeah, yeah. So enjoy it now.
Naomi Haile
Hmm. Wow. Um, you know what's what you'd mentioned of work not mattering to you in it, like when you were saying that I'm like, oh, but remember your in your intro, you're talking about how you were always optimizing for everything, like all the raises, all the promotions.
So to go from high performer optimizer in every way when it comes to career to not giving a rat's ass about it at all, I think just shows you and makes you ask those questions of like what really matters and what do you really value, and doing that as frequently and as early as possible, you know, is something that has definitely is sticking with me, because I definitely optimize in all the career and business stuff things as possible.
But I've had a lot of moments where I'm like reflecting, especially over the summer, of what actually matters. What do I actually value? What do I want my life to look like? And how can I design that today?
And so I think for all the, I mean, this is like a very businessy show, but I think for all the folks who are listening, who are building things, yeah, ask yourself those questions as early as possible, as frequently as possible,
Ariana Lavelli
and say it loud and say it to many people because the more that the universe hears what you want, yeah, the more it's able to give it to you.
Naomi Haile
If someone listening, who maybe someone in their family or even a parent received a similar diagnosis as your mom. Like, what do you think is important for them to have in place? Like, what are the conversations they should be having? What does it look like to get your affairs in order, especially as someone you need? You were deep when I met you.
You were knee deep in the admin part of it, and like contacting banks, and there were a lot of things that you were sharing that people like. I don't know. Like people just don't know. They just don't know that's something that they need to do. And so, yeah, what would you say to someone who is who might be in a similar position?
Ariana Lavelli
I love this question because it's a question that segues really well into why I built the business that I built, which I'm sure was the intention here.
So I think it's really ironic that the only thing that people can count on-what is it-the saying that's like death and taxes-and those are the two things that no one gets taught unless you go to school to be an accountant, which I opted to do, but I do not recommend.
So it's just ironic that like these are the two things that will definitely happen to you, and you don't know how to deal with them, and that is so crazy to me that there's no social infrastructure to help you through those things. So, in answer to your question, what does it look like to actually get your affairs in order?
It's very multifaceted, depending on who is the lost loved one. In my particular example, my mom was her own business owner of a Medicare consulting practice, which meant that she was contracted with 13 separate insurance providers. When I sold that business, I had to go through six lawyers to figure out how to sell this business. I got scammed.
I got into fights. I got angry. I got sad. I wanted to give up. No one knew how to sell this business because no one understood it, and so I had to figure out the business to be able to be my own lawyer, it was insane.
So in terms of getting the affairs in order, I think it's really hand in hand with getting to know your loved one more, which actually is like that habit stacking that we talked about before. It actually can be a good thing, and in retrospect, I would handle it differently this time, and I would approach it with more of love and curiosity.
I didn't have a lot of time to prepare. I had about four months, so I elected to optimize fun time with my mom as opposed to figuring out affairs. But if you do have more time, or you do want to make sure that there's not a lot of burden on the outset, I recommend. Recommend a will, a trust, an advance directive.
That's basically how do I want my things to go to whom and how, and how do I keep my loved ones out of court? And advance directive and other healthcare-related documentation is how do I want to go, and how do I not want to go, if it comes to that, and these decisions don't need to be made at the end of your life.
Like I have submitted, I already have my will, last testament, my trust, you know, estate infrastructure set up. This was even before my mom died because my mom was a Type A. Like you have to have all the stuff done in my paperwork, I want my hand held by my loved ones when I'm dying. I don't want to be kept alive by a machine.
I don't want to be resuscitated if I am in a vegetable state. Like there are all these things that sound really morbid, but like really have to do with your dignity in your life, your last stages of life. How you live is how you die.
Ironically, so it's getting all that like morbid legal and health and medical planning done, but also even more humanly, how do you want to be remembered?
And I think this is a really good way to connect with your loved one in their late stages of life, which is like, tell me more about your life and what mattered to you, and tell me more about your valued heirlooms and who you want them to go to and why and how do you want to be remembered and what do you anticipate your legacy looking like?
What are things that you wish that you had done but didn't get a chance to?
These are all questions that you can, as a grandchild, an uncle, a niece, whoever you are to this person, ask to get to know them better, build a relationship, you know, maybe even bring up really good memories for them, but also again habit stacking because I can't help but optimize my life.
You're getting an idea of how they would want to be managed when the time comes because sometimes it's really hard to ask, would you rather be cremated or buried? It's a lot easier to watch a movie like Coco or a show like This Is Us with your loved one, and be like, what do you think about that? Like, I don't know how I feel about it.
How do you feel about that? So use very accessible means to have very difficult conversations. This is when AI tools can actually come in handy. Hey, my loved one loves this, this, and this baseball and fishing and yada. How could I make an intentional experience and broach the topic of end of life planning?
I think that's a really great way of going about it. I'll say anecdotally speaking, I asked my mom what kind of party she wanted for her memorial while she was alive, and we planned it together. Aww. So I thought that was a really good experience that I'll cherish for the rest of my life, and I would love for others to have the same.
So it's really worth it. It's super uncomfortable, especially if there's cultural and religious norms that are involved. But there are ways to broach the topic where you can make it a selfless act, and it doesn't look like a selfish act of you trying to get the will and the things and the assets.
Like this can be selfless for them, so that their loved ones are not burdened by infighting when the time comes.
Naomi Haile
Which I'm sure, like when it comes to family dynamics, there's a lot that probably comes out for the first time that you can't plan for or so un so unexpected because it changes people's behaviors, it changes their motivations so much.
Ariana Lavelli
It's crazy because people think, \"Oh, not my family, not me. No, it changed me, and I didn't even expect that. I became more callous. I even became a money grub at one point. I said, \"Get that out of there. That's not important. Like I had to intentionally teach myself that. So just know while you were going
Naomi Haile
through it.
Ariana Lavelli
While I was going through it, I found myself fighting over a few \$100, fighting with the bank, let's say. And I'm like, why am I doing this? This is like messing up with my piece. It's taking hours of my day. The opportunity cost again, optimizing my life. Like I need to move on. This is not what my mom would have wanted.
I find found myself saying that a lot. This is not what they would have wanted. Move on.
Naomi Haile
What did you have any like practices or rituals that really helped you and still do help you work through the grief.
Ariana Lavelli
Yes, I've actually productized a few of them. So, I used to like to take little. I'm not a big journaler, but I know that people kept saying like it's really good to just get your ideas out on paper, and you start to feel like
Naomi Haile
you're not a big journaler. You literally told me you journaled this week.
Ariana Lavelli
I literally journaled this week for the first time in like two years in a journal that I like wrote my last journal entry. So it was so weird to see my different mental states. Yeah, it was kind of strange. I'm not a big journaler, but I understand how important it is. And I think while I did it this week, and as I. Read what I wrote.
I'm like, oh my gosh, I should do this more. But I think that getting things down on paper for some reason activates a different emotional center in your brain. I can't talk to you about the scientific back end of it, so like, don't press me.
But I know that there is definitely something that activates that it doesn't when I speak, and so I'm such a I am talking all the time. But like, be quiet, sit in silence, and see what comes to your mind because there might be silenced parts of you that are only able to come out via the hand, via your writing.
So it was really interesting to see that, and I did actually do that while I was actively grieving two years ago, and I put the papers of things that I wanted to say to my mom in the bonfire, and that was my not only emotional release because it's something I couldn't come back to. Like I wasn't harboring it.
Like I let it go, but I also like saw it as the metamorphosis of like, oh, this message is now going to my mom, right? I'm not a super spiritual person, but I think I've become more so since her passing. And I'm like, oh, like worst case scenario, I got that off my chest. Best case scenario, she received it.
And I know we talked about like what I'm actually actively pursuing right now, and part of my business is starting an Etsy shop of like physical goods that help grievers kind of process in a more whimsical way.
So one of those things is called the Burn It to the Ground kit, and essentially kind of like a mini stove, and the ability to take fire paper, write your messages to your loved ones, or write things that you're looking to let go, put it into a ceramic pot, light it on fire, and let it go.
So these are things unlike, you know, care packages that you may have received in the past that may feel a little empty, a little commonplace, not very. very, maybe not even utilitarian is the word, but like they just didn't feel like there was a lot of thought behind them.
My intention is to create a marketplace of goods that are griever adjacent that help support people through that process in a way that brings whimsy, levity, but also usefulness to that journey.
Naomi Haile
Yeah, that like mission that you have for your company, and I'd love for you to share more about the vision and where you want to take it. But it, I just I love how it centers the griefer as it should because you're creating for them.
But if you could share a little bit more about the vision and where you hope to take your company, that'd be amazing.
Ariana Lavelli
Absolutely, I love talking about this. So the name of the business is Light and Ari, and what's funny is it's actually born out of a different business that I started, which was a professional organizing business. And so I already had the name and the socials and the domain. I already had all those things, yeah.
And then it felt so universally destined when my mom passed away, and I was searching for a way to bring purpose and legacy to her loss. She was such a helpful, philanthropic, civil-minded woman with so much seriousness, but also whimsy like built into it, that I was like, \"How the heck do I boil that down to a business? Like, there's no way.
So I started thinking about all the things that I'm good at and enjoy, and how to bring them together. I love organizing. I love physical organizing. I love digital organizing. I'm a CPA. I've gone through the litigation and legal procedures required for end of life probate and whatnot.
I have so many learnings that I've gotten throughout this journey.
Why not create a professional services organization that can help grievers and executors, which are essentially the go-to people for managing estates after loss, how to guide them through this like massive checklist, like create a framework for them of what they should do, what the urgency is of each of those things, and actually be the point person for all the different activities that they'll have to navigate.
For example, how to connect them to a legal resource?
I'll have a marketplace or like a resource center of different vetted people that I believe have the emotional capacity to bring people through these processes, and I would be there alongside them to help them take notes that they don't have to think about that, push back where needed, recite action items, do the action items.
Essentially, the logistical side of life. So, from a before loss perspective, that's like helping them navigate how to get the information out of their loved ones in a way that feels. Loving, right?
So what we talked about before, which is like, how can we have these interviews essentially to understand access to assets, whether we can downsize their house, all these things that feel very heavy. How can we navigate those conversations with a stranger, aka me, which actually makes it a lot easier.
It's ironic that a stranger being brought into it. I know. Yeah, no helps. It does. A mediator means everything.
So essentially, the ideal is to get to a state where my client is the executor, the griefer, the primary logistical person, who unfortunately tends to normally be the eldest daughter, but guiding them through what to do, how to do it, and offloading that burden to me as much as possible.
And then I'm doing this in phases, where we mentioned the Etsy marketplace. That's the first phase. While I'm still in my tech career full time, it seems like how do I make this manageable for me, but still impactful? So I plan to release three to five, you know, products in that Etsy marketplace while I start to build my brand.
I start to figure out how I want to message my services, how I want to build the brand within Brooklyn, and then ultimately throughout New York and the larger Northeast area, and then start to transition to that full-service concierge, lost concierge type model, and then ultimately, after presumed success, be able to build a community not just of grievers, but maybe even a venue to bring grievers together, have programming, have that third place.
That's just not a metaphorical third place, but a physical third place. So that's kind of the vision for Light and Ari. Obviously, there's a lot of details that we could talk about at a later date, but that's essentially like the elevator pitch for how I imagine it.
Naomi Haile
That's a beautiful, like you already see, like the physical manifestation of what it could look like to bring people together in that space from your idea right now, which is beyond beautiful, like, and the essence of love, care, dignity, and just centering people is, yeah.
Sadly, I just I don't hear a lot about that when it comes to business and business building. It's all about just getting the product out there, but you-I just love that you're understandably like taking a different approach and just centering the human, which we all need to do. Yeah, and you're going to be so successful, Ariana.
Like, I-I just-I love seeing You bring this to life with such humility, and also just you're so passionate about it as well, and you're gonna do so well from the moment you shared this idea, which was a couple of years ago.
I'm like, you need to hone in on this idea and just go into it, and I love that you're trusting, trusting yourself, and you're building it.
Ariana Lavelli
Oh my gosh, it's scary as anything. And it's scary, yeah. There are —
Naomi Haile
still avenues, Ariana. There are avenues to do. Yeah, yeah, there are avenues, especially as the work, the way the workforce is structured will change. It'll be more friendly to people like you who decide to go out on your own. So, that is the least of your worries, girl.
Ariana Lavelli
Yeah, I'm—
Naomi Haile
—glad—
Ariana Lavelli
that reality does become a reality because that could be super helpful. I think we do need to start investing in people more. Yeah. Like we said, efficiency. Because I think that's ultimately how we all get better.
Naomi Haile
Uh huh. Yeah. This is great. Thank you, Ariana. What is the best place for people to connect with you online?
Ariana Lavelli
Absolutely. I love getting reached out to you. So right now we're building our online presence. We have Instagram, the lightandari@gmail.com for my email. If you'd like to reach out to me about the business, you can reach out to my personals as well. I really don't care.
I have no segmentation of duties because it's all. But yeah, the Etsy shop will likely be called the Light and Ari as well, just to match everything and bring some cohesion. And I welcome feedback. I welcome if there's a good or a type of good or a service that you've been looking for that you haven't been. People to find. I'd love to hear that.
And if you have any grievers or executors that you don't think necessarily have the financial resources to invest into a service like this, I do want to take on a portion of pro bono professional services hours. So reach out regardless.
I want to be a helpful resource to at least give you access to other people, so don't feel like money is ever going to be the obstacle to get help.
Naomi Haile
Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you, Ariana. I'll put all the links to where you can find connect with email message Ariana in the show notes. Thank you again for being on the show, and thank you to everyone who's listened to this episode of the Power of Why podcast. We will catch you in the next one.
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