weaving loss into life
Grief House Death Care
Steward Offerings
Meeting death, whether your own or a beloved's, can feel disorienting and overwhelming; it's hard to do alone. Though our culture distracts and disconnects us from this process, we do, still, live in communities with people who can meet and hold us as we learn to walk this path. When we or someone we love comes face to face with death, connecting with support, understanding what different death care workers have to offer and what needs we hope for them to meet can be too much. Sometimes we need help getting help.
In both Atlanta, GA and Portland, OR we have Death Care Stewards who are familiar with resources and supports, both within our Death Care Collective and beyond. They use our Earthly Houses and Moon Cycles to locate your particular needs, now and upcoming, and work to support you in finding individualized follow up care with practitioners.
Presence, Guidance, Planning & Connection
We offer three structures for meetings with our Death Care Stewards, with increased levels of support, to get you connected to a death care plan that works for each individual situation.
Presence & Guidance
An in-person or virtual meeting (up to 3 hours) to get to know your and your family's particular needs, resources and gaps in care. During this meeting, using the Moon Cycles and Earthly Houses as guides, your Death Care Steward will help you see and share your fears, worries, strengths and wishes and help you begin to develop a plan for support.
Standard rate: $250
Community (our discounted) rate: $200
Pay It Forward rate: $300
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Presence, Guidance & Planning
Presence Guidance & Planning is a good option for people who are looking for a concrete structure they can use as a guide. It includes the Presence & Guidance meeting, then goes further, offering additional organization and planning support.
After your meeting your steward will summarize their notes, highlight important discoveries, compile a resource list, and offer concrete next steps you can take to enact the vision you have for this major transition.
Standard rate: $350
Community (our discounted) rate: $300
Pay It Forward rate: $400
Presence, Guidance, Planning & Connection
This offering includes the Presence & Guidance meeting, a care plan with a summary of notes from your meeting that highlights important discoveries, a resource list, and concrete next steps, then goes on to identify, with you and your family, the specific practitioners who can provide the care you need, contact and connect you with those practitioners and help you get set up with them for ongoing support.
Standard rate: $450
Community (our discounted) rate: $400
Pay It Forward rate: $500
Below are some areas you can find care, that may be discussed in these meetings and carefully considered for each individual situation:
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Identifying needs around your or your loved one’s diagnosis and its likely progression
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Plan how to share and/or support sharing the news with loved ones and community
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Provide companionship for family members experiencing a range of different reactions
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Provide companionship for your own feelings, unburdened by worry of scaring or hurting a person you love
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Explore ways to ground and center your body, mind and feelings. This might include breath work, guided mindfulness, physical movement, sound and body work
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Identify and connect or re-connecting with spiritual practices/philosophical teaching that feel useful to you and your loved ones
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Identify and establish care with mental health professionals
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Get basic end of life paperwork filled out and filed
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Consider how you would like your body to be held in the hours and days following your death and make necessary arrangements
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Consider how you would like your body to reconnect with the earth after your death and make necessary arrangements
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Record memories, write letters, organize photographs or in other ways prepare to pass along the story of your experience
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Consider how you’d like material items to pass into new hands including identifying and connecting with professional support to draw up legal documents
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Identify and procure home mobility aids like rails and walkers, if you aren’t using hospice services which provide them
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Consider physical supports - like food, sleeping arrangements, bedding and clothing, noise levels - feel most supportive/provide help readying them
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Consider who you would like to have present at and after your death and invite them
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Consider any readings, songs or prayers you and your loved ones might like to hear while or after you die
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Invite and facilitate visits from your family and friends
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Facilitate important outings
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Make food, walk dogs, run errands, and make phone calls
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Sit with you and your family one-on-one or in groups to talk, breath, cry, laugh or be quiet during active dying
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Wash and tend your body with or for your family after death
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Organize and hold an in-home funeral
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Move your body to a funeral home
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Organize and plan memorial ceremonies