Where women's work meets grief, memory and reinvention.
Real Women's Work Podcast puts women's voices first, and its conversations stay close to loss: engraved gifts timed to death anniversaries, monthly 'death over coffee' gatherings, the Gravestone Girls, and Salem through Rebecca Nurse. The tone is warm and admiring, and the interviewer admits to having known the witch trials only secondhand before these conversations.
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Real Women's Work Podcast calls itself a podcast and platform for women's voices, and its interviews go well beyond job titles. What stands out is where the conversations keep landing: grief, dying, gravestones and the Salem witch trials. None of it is played for shock. The grief episode gives plain advice: silence and absence hurt more than any wrong word, so send the text, send the gift, make the call. A guest there describes a service that delivers engraved heirloom gifts of crystal and carved wood on holidays, wedding anniversaries and the anniversary of a death, and presents it as a way of keeping Darius's legacy alive. With Laura Cleminson, the subject is dying itself. The episode describes monthly community conversations called 'death over drinks' or 'death over coffee', where one dialogue starter replaces a ninety-minute free-for-all and people sign up months ahead. One line sums up the approach: every conversation on dying has to do with living. History gets the same seriousness. The Rebecca Nurse episode sets the people who once stood outside to hear the accused condemned beside the people who stood outside to hear her commemorated. It also covers how the Rebecca Nurse Homestead was bought in the early 1900s by citizens who wanted to preserve the house and its story. The interviewer admits to having understood the trials only through other people, and says they now bring nothing but sadness and disbelief. Brenda Sullivan, founder of Gravestone Girls, has a conversation that runs to a Part 2. She describes leaving a 'soul-sucking day job' at a multi-billion-dollar company, then corrects her own advice to just leap: there was a lot of planning first. Her test is hard to forget. If you cry all the way home from work, it is time to change your seat. She also calls herself a wild woman and admits she wanted to be Stevie Nicks. Linda Ugelow, a speaking confidence coach and author of 'Delight in the Limelight', moves the talk toward healing and the weight of the 'psychic closet'. The interviewer confesses to expecting a public-speaking book and finding it was about much more. The register is warm and openly admiring. One guest is told she is 'the warmest soul', and another is praised for showing up as herself in a corporate job. Episodes close by thanking listeners for helping 'raise the tide for all of us'. For practical help, start with the grief episode. For a story of reinvention, start with Brenda Sullivan.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants warm, admiring interviews with women whose work touches grief, dying, history and personal reinvention, and who prefers hard subjects handled gently rather than sensationally.
What sets it apart: It treats mortality as ordinary conversation: grief gifts, 'death over coffee' gatherings, gravestones and the Salem witch trials sit beside career reinvention and speaking confidence, all handled with warmth rather than morbidity.
Women are powerful. This is how we work.
The gravestone expert might be the one who makes you reconsider your day job.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical, warm conversation about staying present when grief makes connection harder.
Grief is framed here as both a private sorrow and a social absence, the kind that reveals who keeps showing up and who quietly fades away. Kelly Edmondson, a nurse executive, grief counselor, and founder of Timely Presence, speaks from the loss of her son Darius, turning that…
A thoughtful episode about Rebecca Nurse, Salem, and the responsibility of preserving painful memory.
This episode approaches the Salem witch trials through the question of how a life is remembered after violence has made it symbolic. It begins with Rebecca Nurse herself, sitting with the sadness of her death, before widening into a more reflective conversation about why the…
Brenda Sullivan turns a corporate escape story into a clear-eyed look at mystery, evidence, and easy supernatural answers.
Brenda Sullivan, founder of the Gravestone Girls, recalls the strain of staying in a soul-sucking corporate job and the practical planning that let her leave.
A corporate exit becomes a lively case for welcoming people back into cemeteries.
Brenda Sullivan's shift out of a nasty corporate job and into fuller work with the Gravestone Girls gives this single-episode review a clear shape: the change was planned before it was brave.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
SaaS operators on scaling, pricing and AI, metrics included.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Real Women's Work's 'How to Show Up for Someone in Grief (When You Don't Know What to Say)' centers Kelly Edmondson, a nurse executive, grief counselor, and founder of Timely Presence.
Rebecca Nurse's 1692 case drives this Real Women's Work conversation with Catherine Rutkowski, president of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, who treats the 71-year-old Salem woman as a specific person rather than a Halloween symbol.
Real Women's Work speaks with Laura Clemonson, a death doula and founder of the Pre-Dead Social Club, about why "every conversation on dying has to do with living." Laura argues that there is "no expert on death" and that words like titles or hierarchy can make mortality feel more exclusive than it needs to be.
["Real Women's Work's part-two interview with Brenda Sullivan, founder of Gravestone Girls, opens on her decision to leave a \"soul-sucking\" corporate job so the business could grow.", "She ties gravestones to preservation, Victorian family history, and a childhood spent in an antique-dealer household and the family cemetery.", "Brenda talks about a 24-foot silver hearse with purple flames, a blue-hair threat from her mother, and a stubborn refusal to let labels like \"goth girl\" define her.", "The conversation ends with modern burial, green burial, aquamation, Mount Moriah, and her oral-cancer survival, which turns the interview into a practical talk about mortality."]
Brenda Sullivan says she left a multi-billion-dollar corporate job after spending years building Gravestone Girls as a side business.
Real Women's Work host talks with Wendy Pierce, vice president of sales at Alnova, a 600-acre leadership and team development retreat in Kensington, New Hampshire.
At 40, Trisha Gudka says she could not face another 40 years with depression and began looking for a way forward.
Cheryl Holling describes how her podcast '19 Stories from Fear to Hope' began in March 2020 as an audio journal of COVID-era creatives, after she had sat on a 'Thrive After 55' idea for five years.
Sasha Graham says her podcast Sports Will Save Us All grew from her love of sports, conversation, and a feeling of disconnection after writing two children’s books.
Kathryn Rutkowski, board president of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, tells the story of Rebecca Nurse, who was 71 when she was accused in 1692, and says she was convicted despite a neighbors' petition.
Linda Ugelow discusses how healing past wounds can free you to enjoy life and overcome fears like public speaking.
Master welder Patrice Frazier discusses her work and her company Weld Jointed, which trains youth in welding to address the welder shortage.
A therapist discusses how parenting during Covid-19 should focus on safety and security rather than rigid schedules.
A workshop on impostor syndrome featuring award-winning game writer Crystal Mazur, hosted by Jen Keefe on the Real Women's Work podcast.
An interview with Nadia Alawa, founder of NuDay Syria, discussing her work delivering humanitarian aid to Syria and maintaining hope amidst suffering.