Spurred by her own and others' experience of loss, she is producing The Death Dialogues Project - a ''performance'' of verbatim stories of the deeply personal, shared on-stage.
Those stories are not only about the pain of the personal situation; they touch on the lighter side and on ''the other side'' as well.
''There was always this issue that death was just about loss. For me, with my own experience, it was, how can I take this really traumatic pain and make something beautiful from it?'' Aud-Jennison said.
The aim of the retold stories, from interviews she did, is to ''normalise'' people's conversations about death, dying and the aftermath.
At the time she collected them she was mourning the death in 2017 of her brother, which would be followed some months later by her mother's death.
Early in 2018, Aud-Jennison, with help from Jane Cunningham and four other cast members, put a one-time taboo subject on stage in Whangārei with The Vagina Monologues, a play first played off-Broadway in 1996. Even at the grand old age of 30 years, The Vagina Monologues still delighted, surprised, resonated with and was relevant to audiences in three sold out shows.
''So many people were saying the experience changed them and I reckoned this approach might be a way through to people dealing with death and loss,'' Aud-Jennison said.
Last November, she and some supporters staged a sold-out debut of The Death Dialogues Project, highlighting the story of one mother and her young son.
''The response was overwhelming with people begging for more. People stayed afterward, they wanted to talk about the subject.
''One of the recurring themes was there is no time line for grief. In essence, what we know is the loss and the person you loved are always there, but it doesn't have to remain as 'grief'.''
The concept morphed into a grassroots movement where Aud-Jennison and others share articles and resources on social media and she also made a podcast (thedeathdialogues.net).
The stories in the verbatim ''dialogues'' to be recounted at Forum North on April 12 will become the basis for a full-length stage play, to be developed with the help of theatre consultant Laurel Devenie.
Aud-Jennison describes it as, ''Art as social action, not activism.''
While moving things along in Whangārei, she insists she is not spearheading what is in fact a global movement, a universal - (possibly Western world - rethink about death.
''It's taking back ownership of what happens with your own death, and with loved ones'.''
After her brother and mother died, Aud-Jennison closed her counselling and life coaching practice and ''cracked open the door'' to work with people who were in grief.
A former nurse who was no stranger to grief and death, her brother Max's death was the first time she personally felt ''traumatic grief''.
Earlier, when he first became ill, Aud-Jennison knitted Max a blanket which grew with love as her family and friends added ribbons, weaving and messages to it. She took it with her to the United States, to keep him warm as she helped care for him in his final weeks, but the blanket took on an even greater role.
''Little did I know when I was sitting in New Zealand in the winter that I was knitting my brother's death shroud.''
Later that year, Aud-Jennison cared for her mother who lived with her and her husband. Mother and daughter had ''the conversations''. Each knew what they wanted in the woman's care while dying and afterwards, even down to the music.
Aud-Jennison has always admired the Māori tangi, the three days of ''wholly being there, getting it all out - expressing the grief, airing the issues'.'
While her American mother had agreed with what would happen after her passing, Aud-Jennison is lovingly admiring of her mother's acceptance of dying at home and a send-off that was so very different to US white culture's norm.
''New Zealand informed me. We kept my mother here at home, we had the service here.''
And the beauty, the very soulful gifts within that pain and grief, came in many ways.
The Aud-Jennison family home sits in high in the country just south of Whangārei. The panoramic view takes in pasture, stands of trees, a few houses separated from each other by gentle, green hills and valleys, an old pioneer church sitting on its own little hillock, and the backdrop to all - the flat, sparkling south-westerly reaches of Whangārei Harbour and beyond that purple-hued harbour headlands.
This is what Aud-Jennison looked out over when it came time for her mother's body to be removed for cremation. Playing on the sound system was the Carter family country music classic, Will this Circle be Unbroken.
Aud-Jennison repeats the lines: I was standing by my window, On one cold and cloudy day. When I saw that hearse come rolling. For to carry my mother away. Will the circle be unbroken ...
''And while that song played, I watched below me the hearse, an American Cadillac, coming up the road ... and I'm in New Zealand!''
Her mother, Aud-Jennison said, was ''victorious'' in death.
''You have to work hard for it. Dying is seldom easy.''
But it is inevitable and, despite its partial removal from everyday life and the home hearth in mainstream culture, it is something every single person experiences as both the bereaved and the dying.
There are many aspects to the topic, and The Death Dialogue Project treats them as a soulful kind of art, Aud-Jennison said.
''Life is stranger than fiction. You can't make this stuff up.''
