Shameless Sunday Plugs: My Cemetery Show & Why It’s Ending

Brian O’Hara, myself, and Lady Grim in Valley Oaks Memorial Park for the latest episode of Creepy and Kooky Cali Vlog.

This post contains an affiliate link, so should you click it I may make a sale.

I’m in entertainment so it would be remiss of me to not on occasion share on the blog some of the happenings, announcements, or behind the scenes info behind my kooky LA life. For better or for worse, I’ve dialed a lot back professionally speaking due to trying to heal from CPTSD but I do have some things to promote here and there (and more is coming down the line). I’m trying to avoid talking about topics on specific and repeated days of the week (since there’s probably more topics I want to explore than days of the week, and some topics have more to talk about than others) but since weekends are more laidback for most people I figured Sundays would be a good day to share my Hollywood life and plug any projects. That said, for today’s post I really only have my cemetery show, Creepy and Kooky Cali Vlog to promote. I’ll list a few of the most recent episodes below but before I do I want to explain why I’m ending the series (if you didn’t know this, surprise!) but to explain that I have to explain why I even started the series.

My earliest memories are about death. A lot of relatives and family friends died when I was between 2-4 years old. I don’t remember these people but I was hyperaware that these people died also don’t remember a time where I was unaware of death. Apparently this formed a lot of my personality in ways that have only begun to make sense to me in recent years. I was the weird kid who would play house with my friends and I’d insist “someone has to die in the family though because that’s just life.” My Girl was my favorite movie. I thought all of the life and death motifs in Fantasia were realistic AF and felt seen by that movie. My favorite American Girl doll was Kirsten because she had a best friend who died. And yet, no adults thought this was weird and addressed this. ::sigh:: Sadly the older I got the more people died, including people in my immediate family, thus forcing me to continue to confront death but in more direct ways.

Some years back while still living in Denver, I started to find cemeteries to be beautiful and peaceful places. I mean, I explored cemeteries as a kid (because of course I did) but left them alone by early adulthood. I enjoyed strolling through cemeteries as a fully formed adult. I enjoyed acknowledging that these people in the cemetery, people I will never meet, existed once and they left a marker as proof of that to be remembered by. Too often we think of death and cemeteries as “creepy” and on one hand, fair enough. Nothing about death and loss is pleasant. On the other hand, the people you loved aren’t creepy just because they died- they’re just not here anymore. Cemeteries are full of people’s loved ones, not creepy people (in my opinion).

In the late spring of 2021, being fully vaxxed and ready to do life I returned to life opening back up in the most on brand way I know: by going to cemeteries with friends and filming it! Creepy & Kooky Cali Vlog started as a loose (very loose) parody of aspirational vlogs with sincere conversations and humor around the topic of death and loss. Me and my rotating co-stars would find the graves of celebrities while I would try to foster a conversation normalizing death and loss. Death is a life fact but we as a society are afraid of death. Because we are afraid of death, we do not like to talk about death. Therefore it puts those of us who have had people we love die in a uniquely uncomfortable position; we’re “morbid” if we bring it up but it’s such a big part of our lives that it’s hard not to reference here and there. There’s a whole death positive movement that’s been happening that isn’t so much about glorifying death but trying to normalize dialogues about it ranging from the emotions of grief, the practicalities and legalities of death, and how to help people cope with all of the above. Me surviving the pandemic and immediately going to cemeteries was my way of contributing to this conversation, no matter how small.

Unbeknownst to me, I was rocking a little condition called Complex PTSD. Apparently I’ve had it my whole life but by the end of 2020 the wheels were officially falling off the cart. I gaslit myself into having hope with getting vaccinated and going back to life, but probably weeks if not days after starting to film this series I was realizing that I couldn’t just fake it until I made it anymore. Something was seriously wrong and above my pay grade as my anxiety felt always spiked, my negative self talk was getting worse, my executive function was going missing, my short term memory was fried, and I had gained a social anxiety I wasn’t used to making me want to stay in despite that it was finally safe to go out. I finally realized that this was a good moment to try therapy again.

Roughly nine months later is when I was diagnosed with CPTSD. Ironically I was diagnosed an hour or two before I filmed this episode in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. I didn’t know a ton about CPTSD when I was filming, but I realized that I apparently had never been giving the correct instruction guide to my life this entire time. (Not that there is one for anyone, but this was the day I realized I was playing Uno when I thought the game was Go Fish- if that makes any sense.) There’s nothing like pondering if your whole life is a lie and how little you know about your own life while frolicking through a graveyard, no?

In a lot of ways, this series never got a fair shake. There were tons of scheduling issues in the summer of 2021 making it hard to have consistent content. Sometimes it was just life and occasionally there were flaky guests, but also once my engine wouldn’t start because my battery died when I was with Cozi Orlen in a Taget parking lot (during a pitstop en route to Mount Sinai Memorial Park) and we had to delay our ultimately doomed episode where we went to Mount Sinai for the first time. Then omicron was a thing and everyone involved decided it was best to delay filming given how close we have to stand next to each other to both be in frame. Then I was diagnosed with CPTSD and I completely froze. I stopped trusting my own instincts and considered the possibility that my entire personality was a trauma response. 2022 is my lost year. Without consciously intending to do so I tore almost everything down so I could rebuild it back up but on my own terms. I didn’t know where cemeteries fit into this and I did manage to eek out a few episodes here and there, but my executive function could not be found to save my life so I delayed editing them for a while too.

I never thought going to cemeteries was unhealthy during this process, but I also clocked how weird my Google searches were getting on months when I went to several cemeteries in a few short weeks during the peak times of filming.

How do you decompose in a mausoleum?

What are those long concrete full body covers over graves?

How much do coffins move around in the ground?

Exploding corpses…is that real and how does that happen?

I don’t think anything is inherently wrong with these searches, because again death is a life fact. People who work in mortuary sciences have to deal with these realities daily. But my head was in an incredibly dark place and my life was a huge mess, so it did stop feeling like seeking out the stars of the graves was the smartest idea for my mental health. Between that and being in complete executive dysfunction and not being up booking guests, I let the series slide more months than not.

My physical health also took a nose dive. I don’t want to go too into it in this post, but due to a dysregulated nervous system I stopped having an appetite and lost a bunch of weight throughout all of 2022 and into the early months of 2023. I didn’t have a ton of energy and was still in no mood to plan everything. By early 2023 I made one exception for my friend Kurt Deion, a fellow grave hunter from the east coast, when he made a trip to Cali with his dad looking for more graves to add to his collection. (He even wrote a book on presidential graves- check it out!) By this time my best friend who is in psychiatric nutrition had gently intervened and by the time I met up with Kurt to do a few videos I had been making a valid effort to eat (even if I wasn’t hungry- call me a hero if you must!) for roughly a week. A week is nothing after a year of barely eating. I had so much fun with Kurt and his but I was so tired. And cold, given mild temperature day (and dropping as the day progressed) with eventual clouds and wind, which made my boney self overwhelmed. Sometimes filming is technically fun because I’m with friends, but the logistics can make it miserable (like if not wind and cold but extreme heat, or other factors). Every memory of being uncomfortable for one reason or another became pretty prominent.I was no longer looking forward to going back to do more episodes. I then dragged my feet with both editing the few videos I had and scheduling new ones to be filmed thinking it was just my lack of executive function or physically it was just too hard for me at the moment. But then it hit me…maybe I’m just done.

I’ve spent my whole life preoccupied about death because in a lot of ways, my whole life has been about death. Of course I found cemeteries interesting as they were my home court. I was seeking to better understand the impossible to understand. Now that I’ve had a bit of an education in trauma, I better understand why I was always seeking answers and feeling seen in death. But after a year or so of knowing I have CPSTD under my belt it started to dawn on me that maybe exploring graveyards isn’t categorically an unhealthy thing to do, but it may not be the healthiest for me- at least at this time. And as I began to rebuild and see that progress and learn that not everything about me was a trauma response, I also started to better hear and feel what my own boundaries are organically. I’m a bit of a dichotomy, but as much as I don’t mind sharing things if it’ll help people I’m otherwise pretty private. Do I talk about my dead parents on the Internet? Yup! Am I now starting a blog to continue to talk about them, CPTSD, and some other personal things? Yup! But are there any date night photos, mentions of boyfriends or husbands, food photos, and other random personal stuff that most people share online? Not a trace in over a decade. I stay sane keeping some stuff for myself. While that’s been a longtime rule of mine, it never dawned on me that it may apply to my professional career too.

In these times of social media, most entertainers are multi-hyphanetes who are personalities even if acting or writing is their main gig. Being hired as an actor or being staffed in a writer’s room has a lot of gatekeeping, but doing funny videos, podcasts, or even thirsty Instagram photos are only gate kept if you don’t create an account. Sometimes this leads nowhere, but other times it helps round out an audience, cultivates a brand, and even can make you more marketable regarding both making an income but also getting hired to do things in Hollywood. I never thought twice about doing YouTube videos or having podcasts…until recently. I want to share things that I think will help people, but in all honestly I don’t think I’m the best person to do that on video. I hate having to be elevated so I convey energy (a must to keep an audience engaged) when talking about profoundly dark topics. It turns out that as animated as I can get, my default and preference for going through life is weirdly calm. I don’t want to be Lauren-Blair Donovan but ELEVATED and ON anymore- it doesn’t feel right and I don’t want to fake it. Also as I referenced above my memory hasn’t been the best and not only do I mistake names and actors pretty regularly on this series, I blank out on trivia I just learned about the interments, AND due to a host of reasons (all involving a misfiring brain) I have been caught saying the wrong words for things on camera in nearly every episode. I hate how dumb I come across.

So I realized I don’t feel all that natural being on camera as me, Lauren-Blair Donovan, and should that ever change that’s fine but I’d like to make that call when my memory is back. My podcast I had for a year came to a somewhat unplanned but organic and serendipitous end for me because I was also speaking in a way that made me sound dumber than I am on there and I was growing uncomfortable critiquing movies (it was a movie podcast) when I’m an aspiring filmmaker. Writing gives me a beat to think about what I’ms saying, spell and fact check, and edit (although I’ll admit right here and right now that my editing skills are in the B+ to A- range on good days…fair warning). It’s a more natural fit for me to write on here, and when I’m on camera I’ll be acting as a character (so not as myself being a personality) or be puppeteering out of frame. It’s impossible to not be on video as myself somewhat, as I need Instagram and TikTok to help cultivate an audience but I’m officially in a “less is more” phase of life with that medium. I like having space for my life to belong to me, and for now that means not capturing my life and personality on video- or at least not often.

Ironically, once I decided to end the series it got super fun. Upon releasing Kurt’s videos his pool of people found me. As this is being published I’m meeting with a funeral director to film next week’s episode. Another man Kurt knows emailed me graciously inviting me to return to Forest Lawn Glendale where he will take me on a tour of some of the locked away areas (and I can even film most of it!). I’ve had more fun filming knowing I’m ending the series, especially with this week’s episode with Brian O’Hara as he’s become an oddly important person to me as I’ve been de-thawing and returning to life. He’s also a fellow orphan and in our episode we had a weirdly breezy day getting the job done, talking serious talks while also laughing, and hell..I barely messed up any words! And tomorrow’s episode with Winston Carter is genuinely one of the funniest and most playful of the series (while still respecting the dead and talking about serious things), so please subscribe and check back for more.

So this series is ending but I don’t think it’s a sad thing. It’ll remain online and I hope it finds a bigger audience because despite that I was rocking a personal crisis throughout filming, it was funner than my memory thought it was earlier this year and I’m proud of it. My guests all brought great insight, humor, and observations and I’m very thankful for their time and candor. Maybe one day it’ll make sense to be back on screen as a persona or it won’t. Maybe I’ll do a similar series in the future with more of a foundation from within and can fix some of the mistakes made in this series (hindsight is always 20/20 so of course there’s things I wish I did differently). But also, that may realistically never happen too and that’s okay. I’m in a phase of life where I’m trying to be flexible and unmarried to outcomes without self abandoning, so truth and time will tell all. But for now, please check out the latest episodes from this summer and check out the master list on this site to find more episodes you may enjoy.

Until next time, please come back and check out my social media for updates (buttons to my profiles are at the top of the page if on a desktop and bottom if on you’re phone) and…stay alive until next time!