Death Work Cannot Be Contained: On Definitions, Culture, and the Harm of Universalizing Care

I’ve been sitting with something for a long time, and honestly, I think it needs to be said plainly:

Death work causes harm the moment death workers stop describing their experience of it and start defining everyone else’s.

When a death doula or death worker gets on social media and says, “This is what a death doula is...” they are universalizing their own cultural location and positioning their version of death work as the definition, limiting what death workers elsewhere are allowed to offer or become.

Death work in Ojai, California is going to look very different than death work in Detroit.

Death care changes depending on what people are living through. Communities are shaped by very different realities. A Lebanese death worker in Ohio may be called to death work in ways that look very different from a white death worker who grew up in Portland, Oregon.

People respond to the realities surrounding death and grief in the communities they belong to. This is one of the most beautiful depths of death work.

When a death doula gets on social media and says, “A death doula is someone who provides non-medical support at the end of life,” that definition can unintentionally narrow the reality of death work.

What about the death workers tending grief outside of hospice rooms?

The problem, for me, is the word is.

I would love to see more death workers speak in terms of what death work can be instead of declaring what it is.

The people I want to access my care may need something very different than what is being defined online.

There is the harm.

Death work can be art.

Death work can be activism.

Death work can be crisis management.

Death work can be available for sudden loss, quick decision making, and grief support for all sorts of losses.

Death work can be neighborhood organizing after collective tragedy.

Death work can be creating strange and beautiful spaces where people remember how to feel human again.

Empire loves to smash living, artful, community-shaped practices into fixed roles and clean definitions.

And I understand the desire for clarity, but sometimes, in the process of making things legible, we erase entire ways of caring.

I don’t want to define what your death work is.

I just ask that you don’t define mine.

Not only for my sake, but for the people who may be searching for the kind of care that I offer.

The Nine Keys School of Death Arts death worker training program is not a certification course. It’s a confrontation course. The death workers within and graduated continue to inspire me, educate me, and blow me away with their creativity.

They are from different cultures, socioeconomic realities, abilities, disabilities, and locations. And because I’ve been working with them one-on-one for over five years, I know what death work can be. 🌸❤️🌸