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Published: May 09, 2026

After We’re Gone: Preparing for Your Digital Life After Death

 Marc D Malamud

Transitioning Doula

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Published: May 06, 2026

Reclaiming the Body at the End: Women, Deathwork, and the Radical Freedom of Decomposition

Long before hospitals, funeral homes, and sealed caskets, death lived in the home.

And women were the ones closest to it.

 

Just as women have historically been closest to birth—as those who give birth and those who once guided it as midwives and caregivers—we were also the ones who tended the dying, washed the dead, and shepherded families through grief. Death was not outsourced. It was intimate, embodied, and communal. This labor, like so much care work, was largely invisible, unpaid, and profoundly human.

 

Today, we might call this role an end-of-life doula or death doula—a non-medical companion who supports people and families emotionally, spiritually, and practically through dying and early grief. While the title is modern, the work is ancient, and it has deep roots in women’s bodies and hands. [inelda.org], [inelda.org]

When Death Left the Home

Men have always been part of deathcare too—but historically, often as the muscle. Digging graves. Building coffins. Transporting bodies. The word undertaker itself comes from the idea of someone who “undertook” the logistics.

 

That balance shifted dramatically in the mid-19th century. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, his embalmed body was transported across the country for public viewing. The visibility of his preserved body helped normalize embalming during and after the Civil War, especially as families sought to bring fallen soldiers home. Death began to move out of the home and into the hands of professionals.

 

What followed was the rise of the modern funeral industry—a professionalized, male-dominated field that reframed death as something to be sanitized, concealed, and managed. The corpse, once cared for by women, was cleaned, sealed, and placed just out of reach. Grief became quieter. Bodies became less visible. Death became something to avert our eyes from.

 

 

The Return of Deathwork

Nearly 150 years later, something is shifting again.

 

Grassroots movements, green burial practices, and the resurgence of death doulas signal a return to death as a human, relational experience. And once again, women are leading the way.

 

The rise of human composting, also known as natural organic reduction (NOR), is one of the clearest examples. Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose, helped bring this practice into legal and cultural reality—offering an alternative to cremation and conventional burial that returns the body to the earth as soil. Caitlin Doughty—mortician, author, and founder of the Order of the Good Death—has been instrumental in reshaping public conversations about death through education, advocacy, and cultural critique. [inelda.org]

 

Together, and alongside thousands of others—death doulas, hospice nurses, social workers, chaplains, doctors, funeral directors, and activists—they are part of a larger death-positive movement that asks a simple but radical question: What if we were allowed to face death honestly, on our own terms?

 

Decomposition as Bodily Sovereignty

In From Here to Eternity, Caitlin Doughty offers a striking reframing: decomposition as a form of freedom.

 

While visiting Katrina Spade during the early days of the recomposition project, Doughty observes that many of the people leading this work are women—scientists, anthropologists, architects, lawyers—women using their education and privilege to challenge a system that has long denied us agency over our bodies.

 

Katrina notes how relentlessly we are taught to resist aging and decay—especially those of us socialized as female. To soften wrinkles. To shrink. To preserve. Against that backdrop, decomposition becomes a radical act. A final refusal to perform.

 

Doughty writes of the freedom found in a body that becomes “messy, chaotic, and wild.” A body no longer under surveillance. No longer optimized. No longer judged. In death, decomposition offers a kind of bodily sovereignty that many women are denied in life.

 

A Woman’s Many Endings

Women are experts at endings.

 

Our lives are marked by cycles of transformation: menstruation, pregnancy or its absence, shifts in identity, caregiving, loss, menopause. We move through many small deaths long before the final one. And all the while, our bodies are managed—by beauty standards, reproductive politics, medical systems, and the ever-present gaze of others.

 

So perhaps it makes sense that death, too, would be a place where we seek agency.

 

If decomposition is the ultimate freedom—returning to the earth without pretense—then end-of-life choices become a final expression of values. A way to say: This body was never meant to be controlled forever.

 

Today, regardless of how you identify, notice the moments you try to manage your body into being more acceptable—smaller, smoother, quieter, more palatable.

 

And consider this:
What might bodily sovereignty look like for you in death?

 

Marc D Malamud

Transitioning Doula

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Published: May 01, 2026

Grief Is Not Only About People

By Jess Wakefield

There is a narrow story we have inherited about grief. In the dominant Western frame, grief is treated as a private, human-to-human rupture. A death occurs. A relationship ends. The bereaved are expected to process, adjust, and eventually return to normal. Even our language reveals this assumption. We speak of “closure.” We ask when someone will “move on.” We quietly measure resilience by how quickly the visible signs of sorrow recede.

Photo by David Thielen on Unsplash

But many Indigenous worldviews hold a much wider understanding of what grief is and what it asks of us. Grief is not confined to the loss of a person. It is relational. It is ecological. It is communal. It is the work of continuity. Scholars such as Shawn Wilson describe knowledge itself as relational, embedded in networks of accountability between people, ancestors, land, and story. To exist is to be in relationship. To lose is to experience a shift in that web, not its disappearance. In that understanding, grief is not an isolated emotional event. It is the ongoing labor of reweaving connection.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes of land as pedagogy, as teacher and relative. The land holds memory. It carries language. It sustains identity. When harm is done to the land, something relational is broken. When a person dies, that rupture extends beyond the individual body. It touches place, lineage, community, and future generations. The web trembles. Grief, then, becomes a practice of tending what remains and restoring balance where possible.

Similarly, Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, invites readers to reconsider the language of resources and replace it with the language of relatives. Plants, rivers, and animals are not commodities; they are kin. If we accept that premise, environmental destruction is not only a regulatory failure or economic miscalculation. It is relational loss. It is grief. Entire communities carry sorrow not only for loved ones but for waters polluted, forests cleared, species gone. These are not abstract policy debates. They are broken relationships.

This wider frame challenges the modern funeral industry in profound ways. If grief includes more-than-human ties, then funerals cannot be reduced to contracts, timelines, and transactional exchanges. They become moments of communal recalibration. A green burial is not merely an environmentally preferable option. It is an act of relational continuity, an acknowledgment that the body remains accountable to soil and ecosystem. Natural organic reduction is not only technological innovation; it is participation in a cycle that understands human life as part of a larger regenerative system. Even the decision to plant a tree or return compost to a meaningful landscape reflects a desire to maintain belonging, not sever it.

You have seen this in arrangement rooms. Families often speak of wanting to “bring them home.” That home is sometimes literal, but often it is symbolic. It is the mountain where they hiked. The river they fished. The grove of trees where stories were told. Beneath the logistics, what they are expressing is a longing for continuity. They do not want the relationship to end. They want it to change form and remain woven into place.

The Western emphasis on closure can inadvertently shrink grief’s moral horizon. When we confine grief to private emotion, we overlook its ethical dimension. Continuity work asks something of us. It asks us to remember ancestors not only in sentiment but in practice. It asks us to care for land that holds the stories of those who came before. It asks us to consider how our disposition choices affect future generations. It asks leaders to measure success not only in margins but in relational impact.

This is where your environmental advocacy and your leadership research converge. If leadership shifts in funeral service prioritize efficiency over relationship, then both people and place feel the strain. Burnout increases when care work is stripped of meaning. Environmental harm increases when land is treated as a disposal site rather than a relative. A relational worldview reframes both crises. It suggests that professional sustainability and ecological sustainability are not separate challenges. They are intertwined.

To expand grief beyond human-to-human loss is not to romanticize or appropriate Indigenous traditions. It is to listen carefully to what those traditions have preserved: an understanding that life and death occur within a web of accountability. Death does not erase relationship; it transforms it. Grief becomes the practice of honoring that transformation with integrity.

If we allowed ourselves to hold this wider view, funeral service would look different. Cemeteries would be designed as ecosystems, not storage. Corporate decisions would weigh environmental impact alongside financial return. Ritual would extend beyond the day of service into ongoing acts of stewardship. Families would be invited to see memorialization not as an endpoint, but as participation in continuity.

Grief is not shrinking in our time. It is expanding. We grieve loved ones, yes, but also landscapes altered beyond recognition and futures made uncertain. The question is not whether we will grieve. The question is whether we will treat grief as something to contain or something to tend.

Continuity work is slower. It is less marketable. It does not promise closure. But it offers something deeper: a way to remain in a relationship with those who have died, the land that sustains us, and the generations who will inherit what we leave behind.

With You, Until.

 Marc D Malamud

Transitioning Doula

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Published: April 25, 2026

Green Deathcare Isn’t a Trend. It’s an Infrastructure Problem.

By Jess Wakefield

Green deathcare has become the funeral industry’s favorite promise. It is presented as an evolution. A more ethical choice. A way to honor someone you love without harming the planet they lived on. The language is hopeful: return to the earth, reduce your footprint, leave something better behind.

But families do not experience green deathcare as a promise. They experience it as an obstacle course.

Photo by Stephanie Ecate on Unsplash

Because the truth is simple: availability is not evenly distributed. Eco-friendly deathcare is not an open menu. It is a patchwork. It depends on your state, your county, your proximity to a facility, and your ability to afford the added complexity. It depends on whether the option is legal, whether it is operationally accessible, whether your local providers will coordinate it, and whether your grief can handle the logistics.

This is the part of the conversation we skip. We talk about composting, aquamation, and natural burial as if they are choices. But for most families, these are not choices at all. They are privileges of location, regulation, and income.

Green Burial: The Option People Assume Is Accessible

Green burial is often treated as the most attainable eco-choice. It does not require expensive technology. It does not require a specialized facility. It is often framed as a return to simplicity: no embalming, a biodegradable container, the body placed directly into the earth.

In reality, green burial is not simple. It requires a specific infrastructure that most regions do not have.

Green burial requires land that is legally authorized for burial and designed to function long-term. It requires a cemetery that understands natural burial practices and can/will support them in a way that is not improvisational. It requires staff and policy and clarity. It requires a commitment to permanence. That might sound like a given, but it is not. Many families are shocked to learn how few cemeteries actually allow fully natural burial, even when they claim to support “green.”

In many states, families must travel significant distances to find a true green burial ground. In others, they can find a cemetery with a small “green section,” but it may still include restrictions that undermine what families are seeking. A cemetery might allow no embalming but still require a vault. They might allow a shroud but require an outer burial container. They might allow natural burial in theory but discourage it in practice. They might market themselves as green while offering an experience that is still highly industrial.

So even when green burial exists, access is uneven. And when it does not exist, families are rarely told. They are steered back to conventional burial or cremation with the quiet assumption that those are the only workable options.

Aquamation: Legal Does Not Mean Available

Aquamation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis or hydrolysis, is one of the most compelling eco-alternatives to flame-based cremation. It uses water, heat, and alkali rather than combustion. It can reduce emissions and avoid many of the environmental concerns attached to traditional cremation.

It also exposes one of the biggest failures in how we talk about “choice” in deathcare: legality and access are not the same thing.

Aquamation is legal in some states and illegal in others, but even where it is legal, the option may not truly exist for most families. A state might approve it, yet have no facilities. Or the nearest facility may be hundreds of miles away. Or local funeral homes may not be willing to coordinate it. Or families may not know it exists at all until it is too late. Sometimes it is not a matter of family preference. It is a matter of whether the infrastructure is present and functioning. A strong example of this is California, aquamation is legal here in California. However in a state where over 160,000 deaths occurred in 2023, there are only 4 facilities that have been permitted and licensed to provide it.

Aquamation also faces a distinct problem: community misunderstanding. It is still new enough that it triggers public fear, moral panic, and resistance during zoning and permitting processes. In some areas it is treated as unsettling or disrespectful, not because it is actually harmful, but because it challenges what people are used to. It forces the public to admit what cremation already is, which is a body transformed through a system. People tolerate flame because it is familiar, even though it is far more environmentally intense than aquamation. They resist water because it is unfamiliar, even though it can be gentler.

That tension matters. It reveals that our barriers to eco-progress are not always technical or financial. Sometimes they are emotional. Sometimes they are political. Often, they are both.

Human Composting: The Option With the Most Hype and the Least Access

Human composting, or natural organic reduction, is the option people talk about like it has already arrived. In reality, it is still highly limited. It is legal in a growing number of states, but legality again does not guarantee access. Even in states where it is permitted, composting may be available through only one provider, in one region, with long transportation distances required for most families.

Composting is also one of the most expensive options in many markets, partly because the facilities require specialized buildout and oversight, and partly because the service remains niche. Families who want it may need to pay not only for the service but for transport. They may need to navigate a process that many local funeral homes are not trained in. They may need to coordinate between providers. They may need to advocate for themselves during the worst week of their lives.

This is where the access inequity becomes impossible to ignore. Families with money, flexibility, and education can figure it out. Families without those resources often cannot. And the result is brutal: the most environmentally responsible option becomes available primarily to those with the most privilege.

The Geography Problem Nobody Wants to Admit

Deathcare is local. It always has been. That is part of what makes it sacred. Death happens in communities, and funeral service has historically been shaped by geography, culture, and proximity.

But eco-options reveal the darker side of that truth.

If you live in a dense, progressive metro area, you are far more likely to have access to aquamation, composting, and green burial. If you live rurally, your options shrink dramatically. If you live in a state with strict political resistance to reform, your options might not exist at all. If you die in the “wrong” county, the law might block it. If your family cannot afford transport, the option disappears. If your local providers cannot, or will not coordinate it, the option becomes invisible.

This is not theoretical. This is happening every day.

Families who want to honor someone with eco-alignment are often forced into a choice that does not match their values. Not because they failed to plan, but because the system did not support that plan. Eco-options require infrastructure, but infrastructure in the funeral profession is still built primarily around conventional burial and cremation. That means a family’s moral intention can be overwritten by the limits of a marketplace.

In other words, “green” becomes something you do only when it is convenient and available. And that is not a moral failing of families. It is a structural failing of the industry and the regulations that shape it.

Green Is Not Yet a Choice. It Is a Barrier.

There is an uncomfortable truth hiding inside the eco-funeral conversation: green deathcare is not expanding fast enough to meet the demand, and the demand is not being met equitably.

When we market composting, aquamation, and green burial as “available options,” we create the impression that families have freedom. But what they often have is frustration. They have a desire and no access. They have a plan and no provider. They have values and no infrastructure.

And when they are grieving, they do not have the time or emotional bandwidth to fight a system.

This is why green deathcare is not only an environmental topic. It is an access topic. It is a regulation topic. It is a geography topic. It is a justice topic.

Until these options are integrated into more regions, normalized through education, supported through policy, and made financially accessible to more families, we need to stop pretending it is a simple menu. We need to stop pretending it is universally available.

Because right now, it is not.

Right now, green deathcare is a privilege.

And the more we refuse to name that, the longer it will stay that way.

 Marc D Malamud

Transitioning Doula