Eterneva celebrates the lives of remarkable people, and is a death wellness company for the living.

We make diamonds from ashes, but moreover, we support grief wellness and the destigmatization of the difficult conversations and hard moments that must be experienced in the days, weeks, months, and years after someone you love passes away.

The Dying Well Movement

The death care industry doesn’t have an innovation problem. There are amazing organizations in the space that are doing everything in their power to encourage conversations (Death Over Dinner), plan for end of life (Trust & Will), answer all of the questions we are too afraid to ask out loud (Ask a Mortician), and make sure that our end of life care experiences are second to none (Honor).

At Eterneva, our focus is on the living –– those who are grieving –– and helping them to remember and celebrate a remarkable life lived.

The way we see it is simple: everyone is going to experience this kind of deep grief, and no one’s path will be linear nor alike. Deep grief is complicated. It has highs and lows.

We’re here to help those going through these times memorialize their loved ones, keep their legacies alive through both personal and community projects, and honor the life that was lived to inspire those of us here right now.

No one knows what is on the other side of death, and few of us are willing to look at what is on the other side of grief.

Our goal is to help people talk about the people who changed their lives, and to open up lines of communication within families and among friends.

Why a Memorial Diamond?

We’d make something that wasn’t a diamond if it accomplished our goals, but it just so happens that a diamond is already special to us, is already something that we cherish.

And a memorial diamond takes that one step further.

The process to grow a memorial diamond takes 7-11 months. During that time, communication with our team becomes therapy as friends and even family get back to their lives, while our customers’ lives remain forever changed.

Our goal is to teach folks that grief and joy aren’t mutually exclusive. That you can and should talk about your loved one regularly, and move that grief to a place of action that honors their life and how it affected yours.

To do this, Eterneva has created rituals of our own:

  • The Inauguration Tradition: Every Tuesday & Thursday at 1 p.m. CST, we inaugurate new people and pets to our Eterneva family. The goal is to tell the world about these remarkable souls, how they lived life, and the love they gave. It is inspiration for us as the living, and it is tribute to those who have passed.
  • On-Going Tributes: We use our vehicles of communication to tell the world about the amazing people and pets who become diamonds. Through press and our blog, our social media channels, including YouTube, we’ve gotten to share tales of unbounded love in The New York Times, The Most Expensivest, and more. These tributes reshape how we see our world –– one that can so often feel overwhelming. Instead, these stories prove that love is in the details, in the everyday, and that it is around us –– all the time.
  • Legacy Project Support & Participation: Legacy projects are projects you take up in the name and honor of your loved one. They are a fantastic way to put action to your grief, but so many don’t know what to do. Some start charities, others write books. Some use hashtags, others go on spiritual hikes where wifi can’t reach. And Eterneva participates and supports them all, donating where we can, showing up where we must, and sparking ideas in the minds of those at a loss for what to do next.

Mainstream Culture is Our Biggest Competition

In so many ways, mainstream culture is our biggest competition.

The current wellness conversation is incredibly utopian. Real wellness isn’t perfect. It isn’t always happy. Sometimes, real wellness looks like sitting together in silence, letting the lows of life exist.

What we do know helps in grief wellness, and this we’ve learned from more than 350 customers, are the following:

  • Practicing gratitude: It’s hard looking for the little things you’re really grateful for, especially when you’re so pissed that the one thing you were really grateful for is gone. But once you get used to it, you see if everywhere. Gratitude takes practice. It requires training. And on the 7-11 month memorial diamond journey, we help customers reclaim their ability to see the beauty in the smallest of things.
  • Legacy projects: Putting action to your grief helps bring community together, and gives you a space to talk openly about your loved one with those who are bought in and ready to help. Legacy projects come in all forms and durations. One Eterneva customer walks in at least 4 Susan G. Koman 5Ks a year, raising money for breast cancer awareness in honor of a late wife. Another customer ended up chatting up a stranger in an Uber Pool about the loss of their loved one and their incredible determination in life –– up the very end. It’s spawned an up-coming documentary from the Disney producer who leaned in and listened that day in the car. Another customer went to walk the Camino de Santiago, where it is said “You never walk the Camino alone.” It was the first time she could truly feel the presence of her late husband, and share a new experience with him with her friends and family. We help customers identify options, encourage them to get started, and even participate (and spread the word!) when we can.
  • Mourning rituals: Rituals define our life and retrain our brain. After an important loss, rituals help the brain cope, relieve stress, and give you time to embrace the suck. One customer writes to his late husband every night, always ending with the same phrase he told him before he passed: “I love you with all my heart and soul, you're my world and I'm very, very proud of you." Another customer makes breakfast for herself every morning, and eats in silence to remember and honor her brother, who used to call her every morning during breakfast. Even our co-founder, who wears her business mentor Tracey’s diamond every day, will rub that diamond during difficult business consultations as a source of remembrance and strength.

The Next Chapter Poses an Important Question

The point is that after someone incredibly important to you passes away, you have to figure out who you are going to be. And it’s going to be hard.

But the ritualization of something, being active about grief, and doing what you can to honor their legacy can help. This gives you guardrails and a bit of an action-oriented itenary at a time in which you aren’t sure what to do.

Eterneva goes the extra mile to help with monthly checkpoints and a hands on approach. Our customers often call us family. We invite them to our Austin, Texas offices –– and our new memorial diamond lab, and soon we’ll be able to have customers put their loved one’s ashes into the machine themselves.

We believe fiercely in transparency. We cry a lot. We laugh all the time. We have all experienced the deep grief of loss, both expected and tragic, and know that there is no end in sight, but instead a changed you –– one who makes space for the grief, appreciates the love, and goes out to create more connection in the name of those who made us who we are.

Ultimately, we’re flipping the script on a pragmatic experience: a person you love will die, is dying, or has died. What are you going to do?

For some, a memorial diamond and Eterneva feels right. For others, we can be there too, and help point you in the right direction.

Death is as important as life. The shadow it casts is long, but so much can grow when not in direct sunlight.