Death Chats with Cera
Death Chats with Cera
My Very Personal and Public Funeral
You are invited to this 'very personal and public' living funeral for myself.
DISCLAIMER: This episode contains sensitive content. Listener discretion is advised. Alcoholism, suicide, abuse and other difficult topics are discussed.
This episode was prerecorded on August 23rd of 2025 which marked the fifth year without my dad, the fourth year for my small business, and three years for having this podcast.
I am Cera, the founder, owner, and creator of CC Oddities by Cera and your host of 'Death Chats with Cera', the podcast normalizing grief and openly discussing death related topics.
Join me for a very unique season finale where I let it all out for the whole world to hear as I lay multiple past versions of myself to rest once and for all to help create the space to open up to what is next...
This episode contains a lot of deep and vulnerable insights to what has led me to becoming the person I am today and what has empowered me to become so passionate for creating space for others to connect, grieve, and heal.
Here are some links to people that I mentioned in the show that have helped me along the way to get to this point-
Sanctuary for Spirit: Folk Temple | folk medicine
Podzilla Productions - Audio Engineer
Witchcraft Mentor | That Witch Next Door
I also have multiple events that I am hosting if you local to the Denver area that are linked if you are interested and would like to see what is next on the calendar!
CC Oddities by Cera Events - 3 Upcoming Activities and Tickets | Eventbrite
Check out my website to shop my art, ritual tools, oddities, and curiosities created with a gentle reminder of our universal experience with grief, loss, and death.
Follow me on Instagram @ccodditiesbycera and subscribe to my email newsletter.
Turn on notifications for the show on the home page to never miss a new episode!
Hey, y'all. We are back again for another episode. And by we, I mean me. It's just me today. And wow, it has taken me some time to get here, but it feels so good to be back. Today is August 23rd, 2025, which if you're familiar with me and my story, today is August 23rd, 2025. is my dad's death date. And today marks five years without him. And I think it really hit me when I stumbled upon the verbiage of half a decade. And just knowing that it's been half a decade without him, when it ultimately feels... Sincerely, like it was just yesterday. It's surreal, for sure. But I'm also happy to celebrate today being the fourth year for my business. It's my business's birthday. We turned four today. I launched my business and officialized everything one year after my daughter's birthday. on his death date to help relieve the pain that today brings. And then the third year without my dad in 2022 is when I started this podcast on his death date. So it really only felt right to... circle back and sit down on this day to get back into this podcast. It's something that I've been wanting to get back into. I truly do enjoy creating the content and in full transparency. I am sure I mentioned this in previous episodes, but it's that editing that has just been bogging me down. And I have really worked into leaning into opening my heart up this year to help and letting people in and With that being said, that means that I've got myself someone that's going to help me edit these. So that way I can stick to the part that I enjoy about it, which is sitting here creating the content and not have to bang my head against the wall for hours trying to fine tune all the details and listen to my voice for hours and hours and hours. So this is no... I know means sponsored in any way, but shout out to Podzilla Productions, Jared, my friend at that witch next door, Danny. It's her husband and it's his podcasting editing company. And I'm just so happy to support another small business and also get some help for mine. So yeah, with all of that being said, let's go ahead and get into it then. If this is your first time listening, welcome to my show. I just want to make a small disclaimer that we do not hold back here. This is a safe and open space for grief, community, compassion, and empathy. This is Death Chats with Sarah, the podcast normalizing grief and openly discussing death-related topics. I am your host, Sarah. Sarah with a C. And today I'm going to dive a little deeper with you into my own personal grief Some of the experiences and choices I've made in my life that have led me to here. Some definitely better than others. The many versions of me that have existed already. And truth be told, if you've listened to my first episode on this podcast, I am still keeping this one as season one. It's the episode 10. It is the finale. Kind of just rounding out this first part of this podcast for me, the first 10 episodes. I was kind of just briefly listening and going through my first ever episode of this podcast earlier this morning to just kind of refresh my memory of where I was at that time. And It feels so many versions ago, that girl speaking. But she's still a part of me. She's still inside of me. But who is sitting here today recording now is someone completely different. So I'll be getting a little more personal. And I'll be opening up a little bit more about myself and my soul. For all of you on this show, I'm actually labeling this episode as my very public funeral. It's a funeral for myself. It's a funeral for the versions of me that have existed that led to the version that's here now. Couldn't have done it without all of them. But I know it wasn't easy. And... uh after three years of therapy i'm feeling a little ready to share i think that if by sharing my story by sharing my pain by sharing my loss if it can help even one person feel stronger and more confident in their own personal story then it's worth it and That's literally all that I want from this. Oh my God, I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not sorry. Take it back. Sorry, not sorry. I cry. I cry a lot. I actually talk about sometimes in person how I did not cry. I feel like, you know, there's moments when I was a kid and obviously I cried, but then I feel as I moved into my adolescent years and then into my early twenties, life was getting really tough. It was really painful. It was And I feel like if I had allowed myself the capacity to cry, perhaps it wouldn't have been as hard. But I also think that I may have not survived. But I definitely am making up for lost time nowadays in my 30s crying at literally everything. And I'm not ashamed of it at all. I embrace it. And if you are familiar with my show, you know that there is lots of it here. So... circling back and getting back into it. I've experienced pet loss, family members, such as my grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, all when I was younger. Then as I got older, I experienced child loss with a stillborn. My dad died in 2020. And since then, now I've lost three friends to drugs and alcohol. I have also struggled with alcohol for 20 years. Um, And that's another big part of it that I am here to share. I am so proud to be Over two years sober from alcohol, it was probably the toughest relationship for me to let go of. It definitely was the longest relationship I've ever been in and quite debatably the most toxic, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah. So I recently decided to remove alcohol from my life permanently. And I will be using this platform with all of you listening and at this point of accountability for myself as well. While also taking this opportunity to put all the past versions of myself to rest once and for all. They need some peace. I often feel a lot of shame for the kind of person I've been and who I used to be. It was definitely something I had to work through. and forgive. It has been tough to teach myself that I am not those versions anymore. And to give myself any credit, really, for the work I've done to be the person I am today. But with the help of my therapist, shout out, Sierra, I'm getting there. And I have really learned to slow down and be present and celebrate my little wins because those ultimately equivalent to, you know, the bigger victories. So here I am with a little of reminder for all of you as well. Don't forget to celebrate your little victories. Take the time. You're worth it. I also believe that grief can come from not only people literally dying, but losing what once was, what you once knew, and it becoming what will no longer be. I've experienced loss in love, friends, and in business. Grief is literally daily when you really sit with it. If you're living, breathing, existing, being a part of this human experience, then you are grieving. Whether you're present and sitting with it or not, it's a constant thing we learn to live with. It changes us forever, how we act, what we want, what we do, and how we do it. My biggest message I love sharing is that the weight of your grief doesn't have to be carried by you just alone. Allowing myself to open up to the community, my community, all of you, when I know I would usually shut down and shut out the world, has truly started feeling like a superpower. During all my difficult times in the past, alcohol was always my constant. It was who I thought was my only friend. And boy, was I misled, as a lot of us are, you know, based on the popularity of alcohol in our society and how it's marketed and pushed on us. I think that the first time I tried alcohol, I was around eight years old. I saw a cup in the living room that I thought contained apple juice, but Quickly came to realize the yellow liquid in that cup was, in fact, a beer. It was about four years after that that I found myself interested in the substance again. And this time I was going for something harder and more intentional. I had found my brother's hidden stash of gin and other hard alcohol out in our patio area. I think he was trying to be sneaky and hide it, but I found it and I took the gin. That same night... I locked myself in the bathroom with gauge stretchers that I bought from Claire's in one hand and the bottle I had just found in the patio in the other. I stretched my ears at the age of 12, taking sligs from the bottle while also using it to sanitize the jewelry like a real psychopath. Did I mention I was 12? I kept all of this to myself. And when my mom asked about my ears, I told her that they were just those fake pages that Claire's also sold. If you know, you know. Now, by the age of 13, reflecting back, I would consider myself pretty much a full-blown closet alcoholic. Finding any outlet or source that I could utilize to get my hands on some alcohol if it wasn't hidden somewhere around my house there was my childhood friend's parent stash asking my older brother I even remember one time me and my childhood best friend we stumbled upon some very old bottles of wine at a yarn sale and we convinced the people to sell them to us for literal pennies and we drank it I can still taste the dry core dust in my mouth when I think about it. So gross. I began to make friends with all the wrong groups of people that helped me to enable this new bad habit and drug experimentation was not that far after. I felt numb but alive and I loved it. Now to everyone around me, I am not entirely sure that they had any idea just how hard I was struggling with alcohol and other bad habits that I have found myself in at that time. It didn't fully come to the surface until around the time that I was 16. I remember showing up to my English class fully dosed with a mixture of pills I had found in my mom's cabinet that I had found from other friends. Who even knows where I found half of this shit, to be honest. and an unlabeled water bottle full of vodka, of course, that I had been taking swigs of in the hallway on my way to class. I was starting to really hit rock bottom, and I was beginning to have suicidal thoughts. I would carve things on my skin using razor blades, and eventually I used them to try to cause more damage. Never had any luck. I never cut deep enough. I can still see the scarring of the words, I hate me, carved on the lower bottom of my stomach. The pain grew more intense and I tried turning to the pills to numb the pain to the bottles of alcohol I found. I took too many on purpose. And that was my final scream for help. That scared me of how I finally reached my parents and finally sort of started to see what was going on, come to light, come to the surface. And they sent me to therapy. But at that time, all that meant to me and all it really felt like was that I must be certifiably crazy. But I knew that I needed help. Family wounds began to heal. And I began to really realize what I could have lost. Alcohol continued to be an on and off relationship into my adulthood, but I always remained pretty grateful to have gotten what I assumed at the time to be some of the lowest lows out of the way at such a young age as I started college and saw all my classmates and friends just beginning their exploration with drugs and alcohol. It was around the age of 23. I was going to school out in Santa Monica and I had just gotten a job at a locally owned sports bar near the coast that had been around for a while. It's still there. This place became... a home to me for the next couple years. The staff was my family, and I had made some of the most significant adult friendships of my life there. Alcohol was also still my friend, or so I thought. Drinking on the job was encouraged, as long as you kept it fun and didn't get too sloppy. I was drinking at the pier in between classes and drinking after hours constantly. I was also doing some of the best drugs the city had to offer. Life was chaotic, hazy blur, but I felt that I was living. But I can now see I was merely surviving. I still had so much pain and trauma that I had not dealt with and continued to acquire more along the way. I didn't expect to live long, if I'm being honest. I see that now for being why I lived unapologetically reckless and so careless. I wanted to be young, wild, and free because the present was all I felt that I had. At this point, I had drowned out friendships and other relationships using alcohol as my crutch to lean on when things began to get hard. I loved how it would send my body into autopilot and I didn't need to consciously be there anymore. It seemed like it was my sweet escape. I have been guilty of calling alcohol the tool that loosens me up to be more social, to take the edge off, to have a good time. Alcoholism also runs in my family. One of my uncles died of liver failure and I remember his son getting a DUI when I was young. My mom has never cared for alcohol and I have never ever seen that woman have more than two drinks. Never have I seen her get drunk, which I guess has only really happened once when she had gotten married. My dad would have an occasional beer or two growing up, but never anything too much or it would upset my mom. It was around the age of 25 that I started to see alcohol as the problem in my life that it really was. I had used it as something to hide behind for so long. I was in denial that it was even an issue for a very long time. I started to distance myself from those who influenced my bad decisions, but that didn't leave me hanging out with a better crowd. I started a relationship with alcohol and with an alcoholic. Now, this wasn't my first time being in love with someone who loved to drink too much. The relationship before the one I'm about to talk about was even worse for different reasons, but we won't be getting into that today. I was in a relationship for five years with someone who knew how to be the life of the party, make the most out of a dollar, and live how I had been living since I was a teenager. Late nights, wandering the streets, bar hopping, shooters in the alley, beers at the brewery. When I think about it now, I must have had alcohol constantly in my system. I started to notice that what used to be a good time was turning into some sort of living nightmare. It was like an out-of-body experience watching myself destroy my own life. I never will blame anyone in my life for my problem with alcohol, for my relationship with alcohol, for my alcohol abuse. I take full responsibility for all of it. I loved it. I sought it out any chance I could. Every drunk night that led me to claiming to never drinking again in the morning always led to another drink by the afternoon. And that was very much so my doing. I also think that misery loves company. So some people in my life thought that the same as me and as birds flock together, we would drink. I was starting to black out more frequently. That version of me on autopilot was growing to be mean to others. And I was turning into a version of myself I no longer liked and didn't recognize anymore. And also didn't know about, except through the stories that other people would tell me about the night before. I was drowning again. I needed help, but I didn't know who to go to or how to ask for it. I acknowledge still to this day that sometimes I can feel too independent for my own good. And it leaves me feeling like I'm alone when I'm not. At that point, I also might have fully recognized how lost I had gotten and how much I needed help. Fast forward to 2020, I had moved to another state, had my dream career, and my dad was sick. He was battling stage four cancer for some time now, and I knew he was growing really tired. With much anticipated grief, the morning I got the call, I had already mentally prepared myself that it was his time to go. The grief I felt after, and still to this day, it continues to surprise me. And I have made peace that it will never fully go away. That same year, 2020, my relationship of five years came to an end. A messy, chaotic, stressful end. I felt like the life I had grown to now was literally just being pulled beneath me like a rug. It was. I was so lost and was feeling all the loss. I was unhealthily skinny. the most unhealthy I probably have ever been and drinking way too much. Earlier that same year, one of my close friends from the bar job in Santa Monica went missing for a week and was found dead of an overdose. Just to add to the pain of that year. When my boyfriend left, he took our dog. I remember not wanting him to leave. I remember begging and yelling for him to stay. I thought I was going to marry that guy. He had asked my dad for my head in marriage, and a part of me will always mourn that he was the only one that will ever get to do that now. And he left. I did feel abandoned at the time. But now I see it for the hidden blessing that it truly is and was. This shift in life, this big change, it was just another disguised opportunity for me to grow when I otherwise maybe wouldn't have. Life truly does work in mysterious ways. I have learned to grasp that truth harder and harder as I get older. I began to let go of the idea that I never expected to be alive this long and that I was being given second chances in more than one way. I started to view the loss I had experienced up to that point as a reason to live life to the fullest. I started to truly face my demons head on in a way that I've never had before. I was finally ready for the awakening of my own spirituality and my own purpose. It was in 2021 that next year, this whole time while the world around me was caving in, I had been so grateful for my career and the store that I call my safe place and my home. And that came to an end as well. I had started to see these endings in life and with people as new beginnings for myself. And part of me also feels like I have to, to survive. And I have to continue to survive. I sat heavily with the fork in the road I'd come to with my work and I felt evolved and ready for a transformation. And it felt like the universe was ushering me into that direction anyways. I found my first career longing to help others while helping myself. And I was feeling ready to do that on a bigger scale with some big reflection. How would I go about doing that? I made a list, which I have mentioned on this show before, that shifted the gears and the direction of my life permanently, forever. Which has ultimately also led me to here, with you, speaking today to share my story for literally, possibly the whole world to hear. I realized I wanted to pursue a death care career. I had an interview with a funeral home and I got the job. I worked there for a little over six months and quickly learned so much. I also suddenly realized that wasn't the job that I wanted specifically, but it was definitely a step in the right direction. I wanted to explore other options. In so many ways, the death care industry feels like an unexplored realm with endless possibility. Or maybe it's just because it's not talked about enough. During my time working for the funeral home, I got the news that another one of my friends from the bar in Santa Monica passed away from liver failure. She was 29 and going on to turn 30 that year. But unlike me, she never got to. I remember being out on a call for work. I was a transfer driver and I was getting updates all throughout the day from one of our mutual friends about her being touch and go in the hospital. I think it was then that I finally realized I needed to turn my life around. And I needed to quit with all these goddamn excuses. If I didn't turn things around, this life that I had finally started coming to terms with as far as me being here and for a purpose... I deserved to take care of and nurture this flesh suit that I had been allowed to rent and borrow to roam this earth and create that life that I want to live. And I was finally starting to accept that was also fragile and could end literally at any time. My newfound appreciation for life needed to now be reflected through my actions and my life choices. I needed to do it for those that I had loved and lost and for myself. I've always been the kind of person that learns lessons the hardest way possible. I am stubborn that way, I guess. But one thing I'm grateful for is that the lesson is always learned. In the beginning of 2022, when I was working at the funeral home, I had made the decision to be sober from alcohol. I made it a little over seven months when I was on the 4th of July. I went to my first baseball game in my new state that I called home. And with the smell of hot dogs in the air, I wanted a beer. And my excuse was that my dad would have loved a hot dog and a beer. I was doing it for my dad. But my dad definitely wouldn't have wanted what happened next. Doing that basically gave me permission to throw in the towel on all the previous months I had been sober and I was drinking again. Since the age of 12... That was the longest I had been sober. And quickly, with drinking being back in my life, the darkness started to swell over me again. As much as I would like to think I was in control of my drinking, the drinking would quickly take control of me. And it does every time. I had now fully gone in my own direction with my death care career. And in a way, I was carving out my own path of what I wanted that to look like. But lurking over me was the drinking and all the demons that came with that. In 2023, I went to meet with the owner of this new local plant bar for a business transaction and stuck around for a drink to take a moment to celebrate my first rather large wholesale order through my own small business. That one drink led to a longer night out than I had anticipated and more drinks than I can remember. I drove myself home that night and I really should have not even ever gotten in the car. I don't remember much, and there was a crash. No one else was involved, and I didn't get hurt. But all of that could have played out very differently. I was arrested, went to the hospital, and I spent the night in jail. I was reminded that that it can all change in one second. I became determined to change my life and stop making any and all excuses for myself. I was going to be sober. I was going to be free of alcohol for myself and for those I had loved and lost and for the future I now saw for myself at this point. I wasn't going to let alcohol take that away from me and I won't let alcohol be the end of it all. It is now 2025 and I am proudly in recovery and free of alcohol for two years and three months now at this point. I'm surrounding myself with others who realize the power of being sober and I am hoping by sharing my journey to sobriety that it will help others or maybe even help someone who has felt similarly to myself to know that they're not alone. It took me so long to realize I am only alone when I push those that I love and that love me away. The feeling of not wanting to burden someone else with my problems needed a perspective shift to being open to finding help so that those feelings don't turn into the unhealthy habits and the coping mechanisms that they were in can become. I'm still very much in the initial phases of my healing journey and maybe in the future I could record another episode just checking in with y'all and how it's been going. I still have a lot of growing, learning, healing, and transforming ahead of me. I'm still just the beginning of this process. But I'm still here. I'm still on this planet, alive and breathing with so much love in my heart and curiosity in my mind. I've learned to be so grateful and so loving and appreciate this life in a way that I never have before. I'm present with my own body and my mind, my feelings and the others that are around me. I'm truly looking forward to my future now and couldn't tell you exactly what's next to come, but I can definitely assure you it will not be fucking boring. So with that, another episode is coming to a close. Thank you everyone that is listening. Thanks for checking in. You can turn on the notifications for my podcast and never miss an episode because best believe we're going to be recording more frequently from now on. And if you would also be so kind and leave me a review if you enjoyed this episode and the content of my show so far. I just want to thank you again for being in this space with me, this safe and open space to grow, learn, experiment, create, and just see what our relationship could be and what it could look like. And how we can make it better and stronger and not feel so alone. For more information about me and my small business inspired by death and all of my social media pages and any other links from today's podcast will also all be included in my show notes for you to check out. Thank you again for being here with me. Till next time.