Death-Positive Movement & Resources

Death Over Dinner, Order of the Good Death, We Croak, Caitlin Doughty, Atul Gawande — the cultural-and-conversation half of estate planning.

The legal forms only get you so far; the harder part is the conversation, the cultural framing, and an honest relationship with mortality. This page is the cultural / conversational companion to the legal estate work. Most resources here are free. For the legal forms see Wills & Online Will Services, Power of Attorney & Advance Directives, End-of-Life Wishes; for funerals see Funeral Planning & Pre-Need; for the broader index see Estate, Will & End-of-Life Planning.

Conversation frameworks (free ★)

★ Death Over Dinner — free; a structured dinner-conversation framework with curated readings / videos / prompts; tens of thousands of dinners since 2013; great for adult children + aging parents.
★ The Conversation Project (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) — free; conversation-starter workbook; pairs well with End-of-Life Wishes [Stanford Letter Project Letter].
★ PREPARE for Your Care (UCSF) — free; interactive walkthrough; videos + decision aids.
Coda Alliance Go Wish cards — paid (~$10) deck; sort-cards exercise to surface what matters at end of life; clinically used.

★ Order of the Good Death — free; founded by Caitlin Doughty; resources on death acceptance, alternative dispositions, mortician-led education.
★ Ask a Mortician (YouTube) — free; Caitlin Doughty's long-running channel.
Death Cafe — free; in-person + Zoom gatherings worldwide; informal conversation about death.
Reimagine — free + paid; festival / events on living + dying well.
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) — free educational resources.

WeCroak — paid (~$3 one-time); five mortality-reminder quotes per day; based on a Bhutanese saying.
Quote-of-the-day widgets, Stoic apps (Daily Stoic, Stoic), Headspace mortality meditations — paid + free; same family.

★ Being Mortal (Atul Gawande) — paid; the book to give your aging parents and adult children; medical-ethics + practical end-of-life decisions; widely cited.
★ Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (Caitlin Doughty) — paid; mortician's memoir; readable, funny, honest.
From Here to Eternity (Caitlin Doughty) — paid; cross-cultural death practices.
The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) — paid; grief memoir.
When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi) — paid; neurosurgeon's memoir, written while dying of lung cancer.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Sogyal Rinpoche) — paid; Buddhist framing.
On Death and Dying (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross) — paid; the original five-stages text.
Modern Death (Haider Warraich) — paid; cardiologist on the medicalization of dying.
Final Gifts (Callanan & Kelley) — paid; hospice-nurse perspective.
The Five Invitations (Frank Ostaseski) — paid; lessons from the dying.

Reimagine Death, Death, Sex & Money, End of Life University, Speaking of Dying, Mortician's Apprentice — free; varying takes.
★ The Conversation Project podcast — free; companion to the workbook.
NPR's Fresh Air, Hidden Brain — frequent episodes on grief, mortality, end-of-life.

★ What's Your Grief — free articles + community; well-respected.
★ Refuge in Grief (Megan Devine) — free + paid; "It's OK That You're Not OK" author.
GriefShare — free + paid; faith-based group support; widely available.
Soaring Spirits International (Camp Widow) — paid retreats + free community.
Hospice bereavement programs — free; usually open to non-clients of the hospice; underused.
Modern Loss — free articles + community.
The Dinner Party — free; peer-led grief community for 20s/30s/40s.

NEDA (National End-of-Life Doula Alliance) — free directory; growing field 2020–26 of non-medical end-of-life companions.
INELDA (International End of Life Doula Association) — paid training; free directory.

★ Medicare-covered hospice — free for the patient (Medicare Part A); 6-month-prognosis criterion (renewable). The most under-used benefit in American medicine.
Palliative care — free + insurance; symptom-management at any disease stage; not the same as hospice.
Get Palliative Care — free directory.

Death Over Dinner, Conversation Project, PREPARE, Order of the Good Death, Death Cafe, NHPCO, What's Your Grief, Modern Loss, hospice bereavement, NEDA directory, Get Palliative Care: free.
WeCroak, Coda Alliance Go Wish, Reimagine paid tier: paid.
Books: paid (cheap used / library free).

Have not had The Conversation: Death Over Dinner or The Conversation Project workbook.
Aging parents: read Being Mortal, then have the conversation.
Want a daily reminder: WeCroak, or print out a quote and tape it to your monitor.
Recent loss: What's Your Grief + Refuge in Grief + a hospice bereavement group (free).
Curious about the death-positive movement: Order of the Good Death + Caitlin Doughty's books.
Children grieving: Dougy Center.
Approaching end of life or supporting someone who is: Medicare hospice and a palliative-care consult; both are massively under-used.