Community Highlights: Meet V (they/them) Wiley of Outside Rites, Ltd. & Corpse Pose Yoga

Today we’d like to introduce you to V (they/them) Wiley.

Hi V (they/them), so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was born and grew up in the Denver metro area. I’ve always had a multifaceted, unique perspective on the world with an arts and classical music background. I’ve also had a deep love and spiritual connection with nature and the outdoors for most of my life. I became a parent after college, taught private violin lessons, became a yoga instructor, managed a couple of yoga studios, and led several yoga teacher trainings.

In 2017, a long-time friend and mentor passed away after struggling with a degenerative disease. She had several people in her life that supported her over the time of her illness, but I was there when she took her last breath. It was the first time that I ever watched someone die. It was not an unexpected death, and she had made all of her plans and arrangements in accordance with her wishes. She was at home on hospice, with a several loved ones around her. It was one of the most beautiful and peaceful experiences I’ve witnessed.

A couple of years later, after a yoga retreat to India, I made the decision to go back to school and had been accepted into business school around the same time that I was part of a mass layoff due to the pandemic. It was after my first year of grad school when my dad got suddenly ill. He spent a month in the hospital before being discharged home on hospice. He passed away eight hours after we got him home. It was this journey that was so different from what I had witnessed before that showed me how the experience of my father’s death could have been if our family had better information. This inspired my decision to become a death doula and serve others through experiences of death and grief.

As an experienced yoga instructor since 2012, I understood the yoga philosophy from South Asia that accepting one’s mortality as part of nature is a starting place to choose how one wants to live. After my father died, I wanted to incorporate that philosophy into education and advocacy for end-of-life care and grief support. I earned my death doula certificate at the end of 2021, completed a nature therapy certificate in early 2022, and utilized my business degree to create Outside Rites, Ltd. and Corpse Pose Yoga in March of 2022.

Over the last three and a half years, I have served many clients and families in a multitude of ways as they navigate the challenges of death and grief. I have also continued my own professional development in order to fill gaps that I see in our existing care systems by becoming a certified dementia practitioner and a certified holistic integration coach. Most recently, I’ve joined the volunteer Board of Directors for the Colorado End of Life Collaborative, a 501c(6) non-profit that serves to bring together Colorado end-of-life doulas and other local businesses that provide support and resources such as grief counselors, funeral homes, and estate planners,

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The only thing more challenging than being an entrepreneur in the field of death and grief, is being a single parent and an entrepreneur in the field of death and grief. It is difficult to predict when I might get called to sit with someone in their final hours and there can sometimes be long periods between clients. Balancing my hours of availability with the responsibilities of parenting can be a lot to manage. To maintain flexible hours and meet the needs of my household, I sometimes serve as a concierge caregiver through an agency and a yoga instructor for seniors through my local rec center.

Additionally, many people are hesitant to even talk about death and dying, let alone prepare for it. The fear of tragedy often keeps people from being curious and examining how natural death is and how, perhaps – while still heartbreaking, it doesn’t always have to be a tragedy. That’s not to say that there aren’t tragic causes of death. However, the fact of death is a fact of life. Acknowledging and accepting that fact actually allows us more power and agency in the ways we choose to spend our time while we’re alive.

Personally, I’ve found that acceptance of the fact that I will die–without knowing how or when, empowers me to be the most authentic version of myself as a trans nonbinary human, even and especially when it might be easier to conform to social conventions or expectations.

As you know, we’re big fans of Outside Rites, Ltd. & Corpse Pose Yoga. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
My goal with this work is to transform perceptions and experiences of dying by facilitating conversations, activities, & practices that embrace human death as a part of nature. My work is framed in three categories: education and coaching for those curious about how their perspective on death can change their life; care services for elders and people at the end of their life; and grief support for those who have experienced loss. Loss can occur in many ways. Whether it is a loss of life (the death of a loved one: family, friends, even pets), or a loss in life (changing jobs, ending of relationships, moving, etc.) grief will affect all of us at some point. As a certified dementia practitioner, I often work with the distinct type of ambiguous grief that comes with caring for a loved one who is still alive but their memory and cognitive capacity are declining. This can be a heavy burden and feel particularly isolating for family caregivers, which is why I offer a virtual Dementia Grief and Care support group on the last Saturday each month.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
The three most important qualities for anyone doing this kind of work are:
1) Empathy to understand someone else’s experience and feelings.
2)Patience to sit in the present moment as it unfolds.
3)Willingness to be present and listen during uncomfortable moments and conversations.

Pricing:

• sliding scale $50-$150/hour
• Workshops: $50
• 6 month Integration Coaching package: $3,000
• Monthly Dementia Care and Grief Circle: no fee

Contact Info:

• Website: https://outsiderites.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outside_rites/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/outsideritesltd/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronicawiley
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@outsideritesltd.7347