Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,

are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

+ Mary Oliver In Blackwater Woods

Death is a portal, a space where the veil is thin and no person who enters its gates leaves unchanged. Death and birth are two sides of the same coin, for every death ushers in the birth of a thousand selves, a thousand ways of being and of knowing, a thousand ways of relating. As swiftly as it asks you release the former, it initiates you into something new: a new love, a new ache, a new orientation to your world.

Grief comes in many forms and most often without our consent. The death of someone we love, the loss of identity or community, a divorce, or multigenerational griefs we carry due to the ongoing legacies of colonization, white supremacy, eco-decay, patriarchal wounds and queerphobia.

Death support through Doors can look like the following:

  • Supporting a family through the known upcoming loss of a loved one (through hospice, a terminal illness, or other circumstance)

  • Sessions to move stale or unprocessed grief through your body for past losses

  • Co-creating ceremonies, rituals, and liturgies to move through loss (of a loved one, a family pet, a season of life, etc.)

  • Informing you of your options as you move through clinical systems that may not create space for the emotional or spiritual transmutation and integration of death