Friends from Wild Places

Unexpected Roads: A Mortician's Leap into Social Media

• Shireen Botha/Tanya Scotece ft Kari Northey • Season 3 • Episode 19

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What if you discovered your true calling through a seemingly mundane job as a teenager?

Join Shireen Botha and Tanya Scotece on "Friends from Wild Places" for an illuminating conversation with Kari Northey, a dedicated funeral director, mortician, and social media educator. Kari shares her remarkable journey from her first job at a funeral home to becoming a beacon of guidance for families navigating the funeral process. Learn how the biblical quote from Esther 4:14 has profoundly influenced her life, and gain insights into the world of mortuary science that you never knew you needed.

Kari Northey


In this heartfelt episode, Kari reveals how her mother’s career as an aftercare coordinator shaped her path and how an apprenticeship cemented her passion for funeral services. Discover the unexpected twist that led her to become a popular YouTube influencer and business consultant, educating people about the funeral industry. As Kari discusses the power of online communities, you'll hear touching stories of meaningful connections formed in virtual spaces, proving that friendship and support can thrive even without face-to-face interaction.

Join us as we support Patriot Guard this month!

Tune in to celebrate the incredible individuals in the realm of mortuary science and be inspired by Kari’s dedication and compassion.

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Voiceover:

Tales from the wild, stories from the heart. A journey into the mind and soul of fired up business professionals, where they share their vision for the future and hear from a different non-profit organisation every month as they create awareness of their goals and their needs. Dive into a world of untamed passion. As we join our host, S shireen Bo tha, for this month's episode of Friends from Wild Places.

Shireen Botha:

All right, welcome back, S shireen, here, your virtual boutique bookkeeper and QuickBooks advisor. Are you a business owner drowning in a sea of paperwork and numbers? Let Shireen's bookkeeping services help you stay afloat with our bookkeeping solutions. By keeping track of your financial transactions, we can provide you with valuable insights into your business's performance and help you make informed decisions. Say goodbye to late nights spent poring over receipts, and let us take care of the numbers so you can focus on growing your business. Bookkeeping isn't just a necessary task. It's a crucial tool for success. So go check me out at www. shireensbookkeeping. com and allow me to keep your books clean so you don't have to. Shireen's Bookkeeping Services, your bookkeeper for the future. Welcome, welcome back. We are so excited to have you here. You are listening to Friends from Wild Places with your host, S hireen Botha, as well as my beautiful co-host and friend, not to mention mortician, Tanya Scotece. Tanya, I'm so excited about these next few episodes because this is your wheelhouse, so we get to know a little bit deeper about what you do. So, nonetheless, before we get into the death industry, how are you feeling, Tanya?

Tanya Scotece:

Oh, doing great this morning. Shireen, you're so complimentary, so always a pleasure to host the podcast with you Sitting here right outside of Miami. Temperature is good, internet's not so much, but all is good good. So we'll see how everything is happening. But, yes, I'm super excited to shed light on our deaf care industry, and today we've invited Kari the mortician, and Kari, I'm super excited to meet you. Finally, I don't think we've ever met. I mean, I show your YouTubes in class, but outside of that, I don't think I've ever met. I mean, I show your YouTubes in class, but outside of that, I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to meet you.

Kari Northey:

No, not yet. Thanks for having me. Thank you Awesome.

Shireen Botha:

Yes, so Kari Northey is a funeral director and mortician in the United States, specifically Michigan. She is a licensed funeral director, business consultant, embalmer, influencer and educator, with almost three decades of experience in the funeral business. She has a passion to help others maneuver through the funeral process and help families find the comfort, peace and transparency they are all seeking. So welcome again, Kari. We are so excited to have you. Thank you, yeah. So I think the first thing we're going to jump into is we always have the quote of the day. We should have, like a little song, you know, a little lyric quote of the day quote of the day and you made a theme song for that, um, but nonetheless, we do have a quote, and this quote comes from the bible, from E esther 4, verse 14, and it says perhaps this is the moment for which you were created. Let me say that again perhaps this is the moment for which you were created. So, Kari, tell me what does that specific scripture mean to you?

Kari Northey:

I think there is so many moments that we wonder like why are we put in this situation? Or why am I here? Why did I, you know, get this put on my plate? And I go back to that a lot and I have it hanging in my house in a couple places. That's one of the next tattoos I want to get. Is the just those words? I think it's just good to remember that we are put in places for a reason. It doesn't even have to be a religious or spiritual thought, but just we are in specific situations for specific reason. It's not just by chance, I feel like. And so I just try and remember that when I've had a hard day at work or when I'm with my kids or have a hard day with the kids, I'm meant to be the one that handles them in the situation that we're in. So I just try and reflect on that and kind of remember that when I'm going through different situations.

Shireen Botha:

That was a really good quote.

Kari Northey:

It's one of my favorite.

Shireen Botha:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's such a wonderful reminder for all of us, really. Yeah, because there are times when we wonder you know, what on earth is going on and whether we're in the right place at the right time. And but we are, and for every single person that's listening, you are. You are exactly where you're supposed to be and possibly this moment is exactly what you were created for. So thank you very much for sharing, Kari. We really appreciate that. Okay, we always have this part. We have a passion here at Friends from Wild Places. It's true crime. Tanya and I absolutely love all the different ongoing cases right now, and there are a few really interesting ones happening right now. Like I can't get into all of them because then we might as well dedicate an entire episode or three episodes to all the ongoing very interesting criminal cases that are going on, so we'll just stick to the one that seems to have calmed down quite a bit. I haven't heard as much of it lately, but basically, S sean Combs, P-Daddy, puff Daddy, you know however you want to call him as, S sean Combs. That case is still ongoing and at this point it is still all just alleged crimes. He is up for and correct me if I'm wrong but he is up for drug trafficking, gun trafficking and sex trafficking, or human, I think it's just sex trafficking. There's a difference, apparently. But those are his alleged crimes. But this is not the first time I think people have suspected. We're going to call him Sean Combs, because his name has been flying about since the death of Tupac and even before then. So I think a lot of people have always suspected him but never had the proof, and so they are saying that he's like the epstein case, but in level 10 kind of thing, and that's quite scary. Yes, beat epstein yeah, that's scary enough on its own, let alone times 10, right and so Right now, for what we know, his two homes were raided on the two coasts, one in Florida and one in California. They came in and they hopefully got what they needed, and so he's not behind bars, he's still walking freely. There is a lot of since that raid, and actually just before the raid, there was a sexual abuse case that came up against him from an ex-girlfriend and it started splintering and a lot of more women started coming through and accusing him of such, and it's just blown up to full proportion and we don't know, you know if it's true or not, but I guess let's just, you know, hear from you guys. Do you think he, you know? Do you think he's innocent? Do you think he's, you know, you think he's innocent? Do you think he's, you know, not even close. He would never do something like this. Or do you think he's guilty? And do you actually believe he's going to be caught or do you think he's going to get away with it? You know. So what are your thoughts, Kari?

Kari Northey:

my thoughts I think it was seeing some of the pictures from the news. They're like bringing in these tanks not full tanks but you has a presence around him that we're not aware of. That is a heavily guarded, a weapon carrying presence that maybe they are concerned they're going to encounter if they do enter there.

Shireen Botha:

And I feel like, if you're going to be surrounded by that kind of a presence.

Kari Northey:

There must be something going on besides. Hi, I have a clothing line and I'm a rapper and have you know kind of a business for musicians and stuff. I feel like that's a whole different level of security, for something beyond. Good for him for being an entrepreneur in some ways. Good on you. But yeah, it's hard to know what really is going on there. Who's jumping on the bandwagon to be part of the news story? Whose claims are legit? You just don't know until they weed it all out. And will they ever? Probably not. Unfortunately, I think with a lot of these people of that level and these type of stories, you never are going to fully get the full truth, because there's there's too many layers and I think there's too much seedy under stuff going on there, right?

Shireen Botha:

right, good point. You brought up a very good point like they I mean they weren't just go in there with guns blazing and massive tanks like that if they didn't have something you know something yeah agreed. Good point tanya yeah.

Tanya Scotece:

so my take appreciate your words, Kari my take is appreciate your words, Kari. My take is when you know, especially in the United States, when cases are of that magnitude as far as what the crime is potentially there to be, the investigation sometimes are done differently. So it's not handled in a regular and it's kind of you don't really hear anything. I mean it's very interesting because you're in South Africa and seem to have more knowledge about it than we do right here. I'm local and so I think sometimes my experience my background is in criminal forensics is that those crimes, when they're involving any suspect of trafficking, sexual abuse, sexual trafficking they're handled differently and mass media is not on it like it would be for a regular case. So that's my take on this specific topic.

Kari Northey:

Yeah, when it gets to a certain level. I've got some family that are FBI and stuff and that's you know. They say what you see is you're not going to see the big, huge stuff. There are so many things that happen just in our country the kidnappings, the everything. I've also got friends that do. They're those people like you call when somebody gets kidnapped. You give them a whole bunch of money. They have their team, they go in, they extract the person they're like. We do more of that in the United States than we do outside, you know. So I think there's a lot of things that happen we are very blind to in our country or in the world and it's not up for everybody to see. We're shown only what we're supposed to see, and so I think there's always going to be far more going on than we will ever have knowledge of going on, yeah and I think it's intentionally done too.

Tanya Scotece:

Yes, it's showing yeah.

Shireen Botha:

So we'll keep on track of that case because it is still ongoing and we're not sure what's going to happen there, so it'll be interesting to see. But before we continue, I just want to jump in here and just do a little blurb about Buzzsprout, the platform that Friends from Wild Places is currently using. But podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners and the team, and Buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed. Join over 100,000 podcasters already using Buzzsprout to get their message out to the world. When I started using this podcast, I didn't know where to begin and was quite overwhelmed, but using Buzzsprout made it so much easier and straightforward. So, to start your own podcast and get a $20 Amazon gift card, follow the link in the show notes. This lets Buzzsprout no, we send you and it does help support the show. So, buzzsprout, let's create something great together. So, Kari, let's begin.

Shireen Botha:

I have so many questions I'm so excited to dive deeper into. It's just, it's not a common. It's not a common industry that people know a lot about, and when you know, when one talks about funeral directors, morticians, embalmers, it's like taboo because no one really wants to like. I don't know if everyone agrees with me out there, but it's like a spooky side of things Imagine having to deal with dead bodies and death in general. So I'm excited to dive a little bit deeper, break any false ideals about the industry and get into the real crack about what you ladies do. So first of all, let's get straight into it, kerry. What exactly do you and Tanya do?

Kari Northey:

We are licensed funeral directors and embalmers, which is a mortician. So the mortician word covers when you are a funeral director and an embalmer. It's a dual license essentially. You know there's there's multi areas that you can work in within the business which a lot of people don't realize. I call it front of the house, back of the house, kind of like a restaurant, where, front of the house, we're dealing with the families, we're on the phones, we're answering price shopper calls, we're working with families pre-need after, we're running the services, walking folks in for viewings and things Kind of. The back of the house is more where you're caring for the deceased. You're doing the embalming, the cosmetizing, the casketing, getting people ready to go to the crematory, getting them in the boxes, kind of all of that side of it. So all of that together is what a mortician does. But depending where you work, you may only do certain areas, you may compartmentalize. If it's a larger facility, you may be in one area only.

Kari Northey:

But there's so much to what we do that most people, I think, don't even realize.

Kari Northey:

I get a lot of emails from people that say, hey, I want to be a funeral director and I say, okay, well, you need to go shadow a funeral home and they're like, well, I just know I went to a funeral and it was so great and I want to do that and I'm like, yeah, that was like 5% of what we do. You got to see the other 95%. Like the three hours I spent on the phone with insurance companies yesterday, do you want to do that? Is that on your bucket list kind of thing? It's the full experience of what we do and it does, I think, creep some people out. But I think, because of the presence of how many death care people are on social media and out there now, it shows the curiosity of what we do and that people do want to know more to answer some of their own personal questions. So I think it is becoming not trendy, but it's becoming okay to be interested and ask questions and not feel like you're morbid for lack of a better word to do so.

Tanya Scotece:

Yeah, Kari, where, if you don't? Yeah, I just want to ask, Kari, where? Give us a little history about your background, so, like you know. So you're in Michigan, right, and where? What's your history as far as, and how did you get the calling, or did the calling get you in the funeral world?

Kari Northey:

I just no calling really, I feel like, but I think you always have that moment. So I grew up my mom was a pediatric nurse and she transferred into working at funeral homes and she was an aftercare coordinator. And when I turned 16, I needed a job and so my mom's like, hey, do you want to work at the funeral home? This is back during pager era. So for a small town funeral director to go be with his family in the evening, you had a sitter. So you had someone that was at the funeral home from like eight to nine, like 8am to 9pm, something like that, that helped answer phones. Sometimes it was little old ladies, a lot. Or you know somebody that lived right next to the funeral home that walked over, sat with the phones and then walked home. That allowed the funeral directors to have a life outside the funeral home. So I worked evenings, I'd do visitation or calling hours, depending on what you call that event, and did a lot of vacuuming chair setup, typing of documents on the typewriter back in the day still use typewriters. So you know I did all of that through high school and then went to college and had no anticipation of that being a vocation for me and then tried some other areas, realized I suck at some other areas, and so I was like, huh, well, I'm going to go to psychology. And so I was going for my bachelor's in psychology love forensic psychology, love forensic anthropology, love kind of the criminal mind and all of that. So we could go down that rabbit hole all day if you wanted to, which we can't, but I love talking about that stuff.

Kari Northey:

During my junior year of college, I did my apprenticeship. The summer after, at the funeral hall, my mom said why don't you try this? You love it, you're comfortable. And it took about, oh, three, four weeks, and I was like all right, this is it. And I had those some very clear moments. I was standing with a mother whose daughter had had she had had like three or four open heart surgeries at the age of I think eight and died just because of a lot of health conditions. And I'm standing there at the casket putting her little Girl Scout ring on her finger with the mom and you know, just having this moment between us and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, and it was kind of one of those okay, this is, I can do this, I want to do this Like this is a good moment for me and it just kind of grew.

Kari Northey:

So I, after my junior year and after my senior year, I did my apprenticeship. I split it, which you can't really do now, back in the day, way back in the day we could. And so we did a lot of tragedies during those two summers. I don't know what was in the water, but man, we had a lot of car accidents, plane accidents, just a lot of like 20 to 40 year old deaths, a lot of children. It just was intense and I loved it. I didn't love, obviously, the death, but I loved what I could do for people and so I was hooked, went to mortuary school, I went to Cincinnati and then came back.

Kari Northey:

I worked for one funeral home for several years and then did some freelance. So I filled in. Think of a small town funeral home. You have one funeral director and their family for them to go on a trip or go away or get away or do anything Someone's got to cover. They can't just shut the door for a couple of days. So I would go literally move into the residence or into an apartment or whatever they had and I would live there for the weekend or for a week, however long, and I would run the place. I would do.

Kari Northey:

You know, small town you may only have, like some of them were the funeral director and his wife. That was it. So if they leave town, I was it. I was the removal staff, the embalmer, the funeral director, the video editor, the folder maker, so I was doing all of it. So it takes knowledge going into that to be able to do that kind of a fill in. So I did that for several years and it was great. I loved it. It was a good learning experience. Got to learn how different communities work, the things I like or don't like about different funeral homes. I think I counted once and I worked in 30 different communities doing that, which is a lot and it's a lot of interaction with different walks of life in different ways, and so that was a good experience and I still.

Kari Northey:

I then was at one funeral home for years while I was having kids and doing all that and being pregnant and you know kind of that part of life. And then I've been freelance now the last six, seven years again, and then doing my YouTube channel the last six, seven years. I think I'm in my seventh or going into my eighth year and doing my social media and I've been teaching for a mortuary school also for the last. I think I'm doing my fifth semester right now for a mortuary school. So it just keeps expanding. And I do public speaking and continuing ed speaking for funeral directors, and so it's all these little areas that add up too many balls in the air many days with all of it. But I try to keep up. It's fun and I feel like I'm a better funeral director for having all these areas, because then I don't get bored with what I'm doing because I get bored too easily. So that's kind of my history into where I am and what I do. So it's pretty versed, well-versed in in different areas of of things.

Tanya Scotece:

How did you get inspired to start your own YouTube channel?

Kari Northey:

It was literal boredom, not going to lie. I had left one funeral home and was like what am I going to do? I didn't realize at the time I was in a super rut. I was. I was kind of jaded with the business a little bit and it wasn't because of the people I was working and helping, it was the management and businesses. And it wasn't because of the people I was working and helping, it was the management and businesses. And I say that to a lot of students and new funeral directors don't leave the business. If you've worked at one place and you had a bad experience, it's not. It's not the business as a whole, it's, it's the place. You can get bad schedules, you can get bad managers, you can get bad employees that you're working with. So try somewhere else. But I think I was a bit jaded and kind of stepped back.

Kari Northey:

And at the time my husband at the time he had man long, crazy, round story, but he did pond installations with his business that he had they had just done a pond at Logan Paul's house or one of the Paul brothers, I can't remember with the big, the big organization they worked with. And so YouTube was kind of a topic because that was at the time that Logan Paul or whichever Paul brother it was was super popular and doing a video a day and crazy before he had his suicide forest debauchery that he kind of went off the grid for a while. But so my husband said, well, why don't you do like YouTube videos or something about death, care for a little bit and see where you go with it? So I did a Facebook post and just said hey, what do you guys want to know about what I do for a living? To just my friends, family. I got about 15 questions. I did 15 Facebook lives with them, which is terrifying If you have never gone live that first couple of times you go live. You're watching the little eye at the top that says how many people are watching you and the number goes up and down and you're wondering why they leave or why they're coming back. And if they leave then, oh my gosh, am I saying the wrong thing? You're like consumed by it the first couple of times. So I did several of those and posted them. And then I had people saying, hey, I wanna share this information with my mom. Hey, I wanna share this with so-and-so, and so I didn't wanna just make my Facebook public. So I dumped it all to YouTube and figured, all right, that's the end. And then people started commenting and then I had a hundred subscribers and then a thousand and I was like what is going on? So then I was like, well, I'll do some more videos answering these questions.

Kari Northey:

And it just very organically kind of went. It was never intentional. From the beginning I said I don't want to be sensationalistic with this. I'm never showing bodies, I'm never talking super, super specifics. I don't want to be gory, I don't want to go for clickbait and I've tried to never do that. People, of course, claim that you're trying to do that. I've never tried to. It doesn't benefit me. Like. People think you're doing this for money. Youtube does not pay that much. Guys Like it really you don't. And they've demonetized everything and so I am not doing anything for money, clearly, because I'm not making hardly anything from any of the social media. So it just very organically grew and I saw the need for education and for calming fears and I've had so many people that have written and said hey.

Kari Northey:

So when I was younger and we're talking 70 year olds when I was younger I went to a funeral and I saw this and I've wondered about it my whole life. Or hey, I was told this when I was a kid from like 80 year olds they're. They're writing because they want to know and they're like, oh my gosh, thank you, I need it, like I just needed that answer. And I can never tell them exactly why so-and-so looked a certain way, but I can give a best guess from experience whether it's right or not. Who knows? I don't know what that person looked like before or after or whatever, but so just giving some kind of a logical reasoning behind maybe what they saw, what they felt, helps them, and so I saw that as a need and just keep going with things.

Kari Northey:

And I've had people that have literally watched and commented on every video from the beginning and I'm at over a thousand videos, and so those are like my people. And you go through the people that are mean to you and that attack you and the trolls. I don't even have to deal with them anymore because my people jump in and are like you go away, you leave her alone, and it's kind of fun and so and I've gotten to know some of them personally and text with them and like to that level because they've become friends and I've never met some of them but they send me Christmas cards and you know we check in with each other and it's just been kind of a nice organic thing to meet people in this way and genuine, good people that I would have never met working in the business or doing anything outside of. You know, my little bubble here it's just beautiful, it's amazing the people I've gotten to meet.

Tanya Scotece:

Tune in next week for part two from friends from wild places.

Voiceover:

You've been listening to friends from wild Places with Shireen Botha. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast from the links to catch every episode and unleash your passion.

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Shireen Botha

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Tanya Scotece

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