Reinventing the Obituary: Jordan and Scott Arogeti of Mi Alma 

Reinventing the Obituary: Jordan and Scott Arogeti of Mi Alma 

This week on the Grieve Leave ‘gram, we had the opportunity to sit down with Jordan and Scott Arogeti, co-founders of Mi Alma, to talk about how they’re changing the game when it comes to the modern obituary, building community, and helping people grieve. Watch our full interview at @grieveleave, or you can read the transcript below.

Mi Alma is a platform and tool designed to connect grievers with support communities, facilitate bereavement and after-death arrangements, and create a lasting legacy for loved ones. 

This interview originally appeared as part of the Grieve Leave Instagram Live Series “Grieve Out Loud” on @grieveleave.

Rebecca: Everybody welcome to Grieve Leave Instagram Live! I am Rebecca Feinglos and I’m the founder of GrieveLeave.com. I am so excited to welcome everybody today to our series where we learn from grievers and experts in grief. And, today, we are here with Jordan and Scott Arogeti, the founders of Mi Alma, which you’re going to learn all about today. 

Welcome to Grieve Leave, Jordan and Scott! I love what y'all are creating and, essentially, you’re reinventing the obituary. But, before we get into all of that and you explain everything about the platform, I want to start with how I’ve been starting every interview. And that is with unexpected chickens. 

As some of you may know, this term that I’ve invented actually has to do with my late father. So, before my Dad died, chickens were always a family inside joke. Like, you know when you’re on a road trip and someone’s like, “Oh, cows?” My dad was like that just in everyday life with chickens, for no reason. And, I feel like since he's died I see more chickens unexpectedly than I ever have. And every single time that I see a chicken, I think of my dad. And I think it's his little way of checking in on me. And I just wonder if you could kick us off by sharing what your unexpected chickens in grief are.

Jordan: My unexpected chickens would be from my grandfather. My grandfather passed away two years ago and he loved Frank Sinatra. He was a Philly boy and he grew up going to the clubs and the rat pack and all that. He actually walked down the aisle at our wedding to “Young At Heart.” And I swear, I hear more Frank Sinatra now. As time progresses I hear Frank Sinatra more and more. You think as music gets older you’d start to hear it less, but, I hear it more. It’s a constant reminder of him because in his mind that was the best that music ever got and that memory at our wedding specifically is one I always cherish. 

Rebecca: Scott, what’s your unexpected chicken? 

Scott: My story is also somewhat music related. My great grandmother passed in 2001, she was my dad’s mom’s mom and she loved music. When I was young she would play a song called “La Vie En Rose.” There’s a lot of versions of that song but I remember it was always the Louis Armstrong version. And actually, on Jordan and I’s first date, we were watching a movie and in the background “La Vie En Rose” was playing. So, I thought that was a little bit of foreshadowing and a bit of a sign. So, my unexpected chicken is “La Vie En Rose.” 

Rebecca: I love that, and that’s the beautiful thing about grief, right? It can be beautiful and it can trigger memories, even happy memories. I love that you hear Frank Sinatra all the time, Jordan. I see chickens all the time so it’s fine. 

Well, I’m pumped that you guys joined us today and I’m so excited to hear about all the amazing work that you’re kicking off with Mi Alma. So, just to start, how did y'all get into the grief business and what inspired you to start Mi Alma? 

Scott: There’s a couple of different answers to that question. The first one is that Jordan and I both had worked our careers in technology and tech startups and this was an idea that we had been thinking about for the past 7 or 8 years. We noticed there was a void in the marketplace for this. 

Another part of this is that I never met my mom’s parents, they passed before I was born and growing up in Atlanta where my dad’s parents lived it was always weird to me that I knew so much more about one set of grandparents and not the other. I had 31 years with my dad’s dad and my dad’s mom, thankfully, is still alive. It never sat right with me that there was no one place you could go to see all the pictures and read all the stories about my mom’s parents. There’s no Wikipedia page for the average person. So that discrepancy always felt a little unsettling, and a little embarrassing. Like, why is there a place that I could go? There should be a place. 

The second part is that as we got older, we knew people that had passed away, whether anticipated or sudden. Going through the standard process as a supporter or a griever, where you go to a funeral or memorial services and after a couple of weeks where the family is supported by friends or the community everyone generally moves on. We notice this kind of cruel imbalance between the needs of grievers and the availability of supporters, where in the first month the family is generally kind of numb and they’re going through things, processing things, and things aren’t normal. A lot of emotions. A lot of logistics. Then after a month they generally start to come out of their shell and establish a new routine and pick things back up, and that’s when the supporters generally move on as well. We observed that this didn’t seem right and that there was an area that’s ripe for a kind and sympathetic technology to be built to fill this gap. 

The third part of this back story is Covid, especially early Covid. Seeing all of this grief and grief in isolation. Zoom funerals. Zoom memorials. People that had to say goodbye to loved ones through glass. Or sometimes no funerals. It was heartbreaking. That was the final impetus for us. We knew that the time was right to go forward with this idea because there was a major need out there and the status quo wasn’t sufficient. 

So, we began working on Mi Alma a little over two years ago. We did a lot of discovery and talked to a lot of people. We talked to supporters and grievers and spiritual leaders and non profit heads and funeral directors, a lot of therapists and counselors and really went deep on understanding all that we could.

Rebecca: Well, let’s dig into what Mi Alma is all about. It’s amazing because in your mentioning that part of the impetus for Mi Alma was your memories of Covid and deaths during Covid… That strikes a nerve with me and I even feel myself getting emotional being reminded how hard it was to coordinate anything for my father’s death, who died on March 14, 2020, the first day of Covid lockdown here in North Carolina. And how different that felt from when my mother died when I was 13 and the normal times 20 plus years ago.

I was floored when y'all explained Mi Alma to me previously which is why I wanted to have you on. I would love for ya’ll to explain to our listeners and viewers what Mi Alma is and how they can use it whether they are facing a loss right now or they lost someone long ago. What can Mi Alma do for them? 

Scott: We call Mi Alma the place to support grievers. It’s a website, a platform, and a page that can be built for either someone that is about to pass away, recently has passed away, or passed away many years ago. The idea is that we believe there should be a place that can serve as a community wide and family wide repository of all of the content and all the pictures and stories and memories and speeches that were given at the memorial service that shouldn’t be in a Dropbox folder or all over different people’s phones. There should be a place where all of this stuff is available and easy access. 

As well as a place we call a support registry. Oftentimes when you hear of someone you know who has passed away or someone you know is going through the loss of a loved one, you want to help out and you want to know what you can do to be supportive of them. That can be a hard question to answer. We believe that there is likely some emotional fog and confusion that can set in and affect both grievers and supporters in different ways. So what we’re trying to do with the support registry, similar to a wedding or baby registry, is make it easy by having the family or someone acting on their behalf that is providing clear direction to the community. So, whether the family is looking to raise money directly to cover expenses via GoFundMe campaign or via PayPal or if they want to direct people to make donations on behalf of their loved one, a house of worship or non profit or whatever cause is near and dear to their heart. As well as food or if there’s a meal train or if they’re looking to get third more support with food or groceries. Or, there’s sometimes opportunities to volunteer time and energy. There might be someone who has lost a husband and has kids and the GoFundMe is great, the meal train is appreciate, but she needs help cutting the grass, or going through the deceased’s belongings, or watching the kids. 

We noticed that there’s this awkward gap between the grievers that need the support, who have gone through this horrible phase, and the supporters that have the will and intent but may not know where to do it or how to do it. So, we realized there’s a place for this platform that could be built and connect them both in a way that ultimately supports the grievers and also allows the supporters to feel like they’ve done something, which is also a big part. Supporters kind of want to check that mental box of “I feel good that I did something” and it’s something that they want and you can kind of bring some order to the chaos so there’s not 20 people that show up with casseroles, which is appreciated, but overwhelming.

The last thing is an intergenerational sense of connection. It’s very important for us in the same way that I never met my mom’s parents and we have three kids. If I didn't really feel connected to them and their essence and how they were as people, how would my kids feel anything towards them? So, this idea of capturing the essence and having the stories not all populated from the grievers, if they want to they can, but we want this to be someone where all of the supporters, the colleagues, the friends, the neighbors, everyone that knew that person can share their pictures and can share their stories and memories. So that the grievers are the ones that are grieving about their loved ones. It’s like a Wikipedia page in that way. 

Jordan: I would just add that in its simplest form what Mi Alma does is consolidate tools that people are already familiar with. We bring together a meal train, and GoFundMe, and Care Bridge, and Facebook, and all of these things in one place that acts as a gift not just in the moments, or days, or weeks after someone passes, but in the days, weeks, months, and years to come, because it’s something that you can continuously add to. So much of the vision of Mi Alma is changing this narrative around grief that it’s just one singular moment in time and that suddenly after the memorial service or after the shivah or after the one year anniversary people suddenly move on. We know that and it’s very well-researched that that’s not the case and there’s not a lot of resources that meet consumers in this modern world where they are. We want to be the place that people can visit in an ad free, safe, and sacred space to honor and perpetually celebrate your loved one so that you can continuously  say their name and continuously keep them alive. 

Rebecca: Your vision for this website is to meet both the practical and logistical needs with those people who show up for you in your moments of grief and who want to grieve by helping. It gives them a place to help and to build a page and manage a page for the family.

Scott: The goal is to mobilize and to have the platform make what can be made easier easier. Certainly there’s certain things that a website can’t do in this context, but what it can do we want it to be able to do. So that’s where someone, whether it's a lieutenant that’s helping to be a liaison between the family and the supporters, everyone has one place that they can go. We want to avoid a situation where someone has passed and grievers are the recipients of all of this different communication across all of these different platforms. Where people are reaching out on Facebook, and email, and text, and cards, and sharing all of these different pictures and stories or asking questions that are, at times, very redundant. So this idea is a very centralized support platform that allows everyone to come in and either learn about the person that’s passed or share their stories or help in whatever way they want. Instead of all of these different platforms, there should be one site that consolidates it all.

Rebecca: I think what you’ve described is how someone can use a Mi Alma page to coordinate immediately after a death. But, I wonder if you could speak to the other grief angles of how you might use a Mi Alma page or even one that might be set up in anticipation of a death or long after a death, in, I think you call it a legacy page. 

Jordan: There’s kind of three different faces or journeys that someone can go on. The impetus was actually my grandfather, so I’ll tell a quick story and then I’ll answer your question. 

When my grandfather died, he died in hospice. He was 90 years old, he lived a beautiful life. He was a war veteran and a true patriot. Four Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, jumped out of a helicopter, truly an American hero. In those last two weeks, I would visit him very often, pretty much every day, and I was watching him essentially wilt away right in front of me. And I, and my sisters, and my mom, we really struggled with it. Because here’s a man that symbolized and was just such strength. Like, that’s the word that I would use to describe my big pop. And, I know, he would’ve hated us to see us to see him that way, like that would have disturbed him. He wasn’t verbal at that point, he couldn’t speak, but if he could, he would’ve said, “Go away, I don’t want you to see me like this.” 

We were already building Mi Alma so this was just a catalyst to go faster and start to go harder at this. In those moments, I kept thinking there’s got to be a better way to use this anticipated grief that I’m in as an opportunity to preserve him in his prime, because I had so much energy around my big pop and I kept thinking about what I could do to honor and celebrate him. I was in his room every day, seeing his pictures and awards and medals and I had nowhere to put it all. 

So, to answer your question more directly there’s really three primary avenues or vehicles you can use Mi Alma for. One, is like I’m describing now: in anticipation. Anticipation can be hours before, it could be days before, it could be weeks or months before. If someone is diagnosed with something terminal or the health of an individual is clearly in decline, we highly recommend using Mi Alma as a vehicle to begin the collection of memories and stories. You can keep that amongst your close friends and family, or you can begin to ask for those things in advance. 

The second way you can use it is recent. Again, whether that’s hours after, days after, or weeks after. This is where that support registry element comes in. So, yes, we still do the memory collection, we still want to hear stories. I can't say this enough, but so much of what we’ve learned through the past few years is there's no better grieving currency for the family than to learn about that loved one through the eyes of everyone they’ve touched. The beauty of Mi Alma is that the onus of the work is not on the grieving family, it’s on the community. We believe, if the community has a Mi Alma page, they will absolutely take action. And, maybe that’s in the form of storytelling, maybe that’s in the form of the support registry. The most important thing is that the page gets out there, whether that’s in your church community, your country club, your old school, it doesn’t matter. So that’s one way that we of course are trying to mobilize communities.

The last, is legacy. There’s nothing that prohibits someone from building a page many, many months or many, many years later. It’s a storytelling element, and Scott and I talk about this all the time. If we can’t tell the stories of our grandparents, how are we ever going to be able to our children, or our children’s children? And, that sense of connection is so important to us and I know we’re not alone. And, there’s one single place that’s safe on the Internet that you can do that. The response from people that have done this has been overwhelmingly positive because not only are you creating this page, which doesn't seem that valuable when you just say it, but when you actually build it, you’re building that connection  with the people within your family. Now you’re creating conversations, you’re talking about your childhood, you’re uncovering things, you’re pulling back these layers, and that’s very healthy. So much of our research talking to psychologists and therapists is trying to understand if what we’re building is healthy, is it good. We wanted to be methodical and intentional with every decision we made, to say with confidence that this is something that will help you in your grief journey. 

Rebecca: It’s incredible, and your description of your two weeks with big pop makes me think about the months that I had with my late grandmother last year, who was 98 and lived a very long and happy life. I spent weeks with her going through old family photos and texting them to cousins and sharing them via email, and wouldn't it have been amazing to have a single place to share those stories and those memories in a way that gets preserved in one centralized place that my family could go to. I’d argue that it’s a way of grieving, and whether it’s anticipated or it’s after, Mi Alma facilitates people’s grieving.

Scott: It’s a way of grieving and the hope is that having a page like becomes a crutch of sorts to grievers as they go on. So, your example of your grandmother, if you were able to upload these pictures or to have your cousins were able to upload their pictures, now people are commenting on them and there’s a conversation and engagement that’s happening around these pictures and stories and that’s content that’s preserved on the site. So, now moving forward you or your cousins or anyone else that your family invites to be part of this has this now on an important day, on a random day, on an anniversary that’s important in your family, on Mother’s Day, or one a random Tuesday morning when you have a wave of nostalgia or grief because you heard a certain song or saw a picture that triggered a memory and now you’re back in that headspace. The thought is that this page and this experience is always here for you. We're not selling ads on the site and we don't care how often someone goes back to it, you're not incentivized to go back to the site every day. Our goal isn’t for people to be obsessive over this, but it’s there for you whenever you need it, and that’s the goal.

Jordan: I heard a quote recently. I was at a conference and I was able to make it a breakout session where they were talking about storytelling. The gentleman that was presenting said that when someone dies, it’s like a library slowly burning down. I thought it was so powerful because, really, in some ways, Mi Alma is a storytelling platform. It's a place where everyone can deposit their stories before they forget. 

I know i've mentioned this before, but it's super important, the psychiatrists and psychologists we talked to throughout this journey often say that there are two primary fears that someone has when they lose someone they love, especially in the case of a child, but not just in the case of a child, and that's the fear of forgetting. Forgetting their qualities, or those important stories, or those important dates, or those things that made them special. The second is the fear of being forgotten, which is simply that people will move on in this life and never say their name and never tell their stories, mostly because they’re uncomfortable. We are hoping, our goal, our vision, our mission, is that we remove that narrative, we remove that awkwardness, so that everyone feels compelled to share those stories before they forget. Because they will. 

Even in my own experience, I think to myself, gosh, if only we had MI Alma up and going when he was passing. At the memorial service, I would have uploaded all of the great stories, in his room when I'm talking to his home health aid or talking to the social worker that got to know him, I’d be typing up all of those stories. Or, a first hand approach, like you’re talking about with your grandmother. How powerful would it be to collect a first hand narrative? 

Scott: From the perspective of a supporter, of one of Jordan’s friends or colleagues that knew her grandfather was in decline and then ultimately passed. Instead of currently when they’re reaching out, very well-intentioned, with something to the effect of, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or, “How can i be helpful?” Instead they are able to go to his page to read his stories and get to know him, so that they’re able to say, “That one time in the war when he did ABCD, that’s incredible, what a hero, you must be so proud of him.” Even that act keeps him alive because now people are learning about him.

Rebecca: That’s so beautiful, what you just described is someone that hadn’t met your grandfather, or, Ii can make it personal to me, someone that hadn't met my dad can go to my dad’s Mi Alma page, read about my father because they heard that he passed and then write me a condolence that’s much more personal because they’ve been able to learn more. 

Scott: That’s exactly it. In a way, it’s you sharing your dad because I’m sure there’s so much pride for your dad that you feel, so now there's this page to put it out in the world, all the wonderful things that he was and did. Anyone that didn't meet him but meets you or meets your family and wants to learn more about your father, you now have this place to talk about your dad to those that are still here. They can even make a donation, whatever the act is, it’s learning about someone through the eyes of someone that knew them, it’s really powerful.

Jordan: You guys at Grieve Leave talk about this all the time, that so many people don’t know what to say when someone dies: “I don’t know what to say, what do you say?” What if there’s a place where you could just go to learn? And then, all you're saying are all the things that you learned and that's all people want. They want to be seen, they want to be understood, they want to feel like their person means something in the eyes of somebody else. And again, that's where, obviously, people post on Facebook, and that’s fine, but people aren’t storytelling on Facebook. That’s not the vehicle, that’s not the channel in which you are able to really describe the characteristics, not just in a single post, but in the many moments, the many elements of someone’s life. It can't be categorized in one post, there's so many levels and angles, it's everywhere. Your dad, you're reminded of him all the time, and the beauty of this, and we’ve heard this from grievers all the time, is that for primary grievers, for someone who has lost a parent, a sibling, God forbid a child or spouse, it becomes almost awkward to talk about their person on social media constantly, because they’re thinking, “Does anyone still care about this?” Mi Alma is designed to be a place where, if someone follows your page, they are opting in to hearing from you, so there’s no degree in which you should feel uncomfortable, because these are people that want to know how you're feeling, they want to see the stories, they want to know how they can help, which is different than the other tools available.

Rebecca: You’re free to grieve on the Mi Alma page. You want to encourage people to feel free to grieve, because it’s something inherently human, we all experience loss and grief but we don't feel like we have the avenues that we can talk about those feelings and Mi Alma is one of them. You used the word obituary, Scott in talking about the one way that we historically have memorialized people that have died. I've now unfortunately written three obituaries in my life and I've navigated paying for space in a newspaper and figuring out which newspaper to post the obituary in if you need to post in multiple newspapers. No one reads the newspaper anymore, I'm sorry. Not in the traditional ways, though journalism is very important. But we know that the idea of an obituary is outdated, and I wonder if you could speak to this idea of how Mi Alma is reinventing the obituary.

Scott: You’re right it’s very antiquated. It was striking talking about Jordan’s grandfather. When he passed in the summer of 2021, I helped Jordan’s mom write the obituary and we worked together one day to write all of this out. And, I was looking at this obituary and I have an obituary from my mom’s father, my grandfather who passed away in 1977. And, I'm looking at these obituaries, and one of them is a little bit longer than the other, but they’re essentially the same thing. One of them was written in 1977 and the other was written in 2021, and it was so striking to think about all of the advancements in technology from 1977 to 2021, and yet in this one pocket of society and our rituals, that everyone will go through, nothing has changed. It was insane to me. 

We talk about Mi Alma being a collaborative obituary, where the current obituary, we think, is outdated and antiquated. The obituary currently is family outward, it’s not community inward, it’s written at one point in time, there’s no V2 of an obituary, people don’t go back and edit it six months later. It’s generally informative, it's not really testimonial. We want this to be testimonial, because of what we just talked about. It shouldn't just be the person’s name, their parents and kids, or where they were born or lived, or where the funeral will be, that information is certainly important but there's so much more to someone's life than just the stats, it’s like a resume. Let’s reimagine what this is really designed to accomplish, and that is to certainly inform the community, because at the end of the day an obituary is an announcement. The family is announcing that someone has passed. But it shouldn't stop there. So that's where this notion of there should be a place that can do more than five lines of text comes from. To your point, asking a griever who's in an incredibly emotional delicate spot to write this thing and figure out where to place it, and then paying for it, which can run for a thousand dollars, is crazy. It’s crazy that there hasn't been innovation that’s scaled in this sense. Mi Alma is a new collaborative thinking of the obituary that accomplishes what the modern needs are. So that’s kind of our approach. 

Jordan: We talk about this all the time, funeral homes. They’re great at running funerals. They’re not technology companies. So, oftentimes, if you don’t publish in a newspaper its just published on a funeral home website. And those things, to say they’re antiquated is an understatement. There’s an opportunity for growth. We seek partnerships, we’re looking for partners all over because we want to empower those institutions around death and dying, we want to empower those groups that are close to people that are grieving, whether it’s anticipated, recent, or legacy. So, it’s understanding those core business functions and finding opportunities where we can partner, so that it’s mutually beneficial and valuable on all sides, because ultimately what we’re trying to do is mobilizing these communities to feel this level of support forever. 

Scott: We’re trying to meet the needs of grievers as they are in 2023, not as they may have been in 1977.

Rebecca: What you have done is created a platform that facilitates grief and grieving. It helps the griever have a repository space where someone can help them coordinate logistics in the immediate aftermath of a death, whether it’s coordinating childcare for them or getting a meal train going, those hard to manage tasks. Or if it’s having a palace to just put memories of your loved one. I'm thinking about the fact that it was just the anniversary of my dad’s death last week and I am the person who shares my family’s story all over social media, so sorry if no one wants to talk about my grief anymore, but it’s out there. I would put that grief, I would post a memorial, something mentioning that it was the anniversary of his death on a Mi Alma page where people could subscribe to those updates, because people that loved my father would love to get that update. I commend you. 

Scott: There’s two things I want to mention. One, is the ‘dates to remember.’ We have on the platform somewhere where you can input the anniversary of someone’s birth, or their passing, or their wedding anniversary, any important date when someone’s going to be thinking about their loved one. It could even be, if someone was a big fan of golf, the Master’s Sunday every year. So that way, if someone is a follower, they’re able to get those updates. Without the primary griever having to go on social media and posting, you can if you want to, but some people feel uncomfortable, so we want to make it easy for those supporters to be supportive on the page. 

One more thing I want to call out is that the platform also offers an element for messages from family, which is meant to be an efficient communication channel where the family can make announcements or requests with their community of followers, not just in the aftermath, but as time goes on. This connection between the primary grievers and those communities of support that form organically after a death can stay intact and not dissolve as time goes.

Jordan: “Today would have been,” is a really important phrase for Mi Alma, because we understand that while we certainly encourage people to share their grief on Facebook or Instagram or wherever they're comfortable where they say, “today would have been,” and Mi Alma is the place to say, “today would have been,” and then have a place to go take action. And then it’s, “today would have been, and, I would love it if you shared a picture or a story with me,” or a place to make a donation in their honor. It’s more action-oriented than simply just a declaration of something. Now the supporters in your life have the information they need to be a better community for you.

Rebecca: I love that. Again, you’re giving people more opportunities to be active in their grieving, to give space for that, to facilitate it years later. 

I could talk to you all day, and I’m sure that folks who are watching and listening would love to hear more but I'm going to wrap up with our concluding segment that we here at Grieve Leave like to call our Grief Brief. So we’re meant to be quick with our responses. I have a few questions for you to wrap us up with how you talk about your grief, in brief. 

On your lowest days, what’s your go-to way to grieve? 

Jordan: My go-to way to grieve is community and finding people who share that grief, whether that’s through texting or a phone call. For me, it’s my sisters and my mom, knowing that I'm not alone and that they're feeling those things. Because it's about saying their name. The more you say their name the more they feel alive and feel with us. 

Scott: I think for me, it’s trying to learn more about them. Part of this is my grandparents who I never met and part of it is my grandfather that passed away almost eight years ago. So whether that’s on their Mi Alma page or talking to family, just trying to learn about them. 

Rebecca: When someone you care about is grieving, what’s your go-to way to support them in their grief?

Jordan: I’m in this season of life when a lot of my friends are either pregnant or trying to get pregnant and it's an interesting space to be when something like a miscarriage takes place. For me it’s about texting them to let them know that they are loved and that they are deserving. It’s sometimes the littlest things that make the largest impact and not being afraid to say I see you, i can’t feel what you're feeling, but i'm here for you and letting them know that they can accept that love. 

Scott: For me, it’s about checking in. I think at certain times asking how are you with things, sometimes people want that and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes when they do, they want to talk and get things out, or sometimes they want me to just talk about how I knew their person. It depends on the person and how they are doing at that moment, but it's about checking in and making sure they don’t feel isolated.

Rebecca: Last Grief Brief: what’s one thing you wish everyone knew about grief and grieving?

Scott: That there’s a better way out there. As you mentioned, grief is a universal part of the human experience, everyone will go through it at different times and multiple points throughout their life. And the status quo, isn’t how it has to be. There are technology tools available, Mi Alma certainly being one of them, that are designed to make things a little bit easier and simpler. Don’t think that you have to do what everyone else has been doing. There's advancements in technology that are advancing people’s lives in the country and the world every day, and this space should be no different.

Jordan: Mine’s similar– it’s say their name. Keep them alive. Lean into it more. I think so much of the way this country tends to grieve is being very reclusive and very timid because they’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. It’s the complete opposite. Say their name, say their story, say it unprompted. I promise you, it's not going to be something that’s hurtful. It actually will make their day.

Rebecca: Y’all, Scott and Jordan, this conversation was just so powerful for me. I’ve loved learning about Mi Alma. I know everybody tuning in has just loved this conversation. Your work is going to help so many people. This platform will help people grieve, and that helps people live happier and healthier lives. So thank you for building this platform, I can't wait to watch it launch. 

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For more on Scott, Jordan, and Mi Alma visit the site: www.mialma.com and follow on social @the.mi.alma.

This interview originally appeared as part of the Grieve Leave Instagram Live Series @grieveleave.