A death midwife supports individuals and families through the dying process, including final disposition of the body. They guide conscious dying experiences and empower families to create meaningful home funerals. A death midwife's mission is to empower families to care for their deceased at home through rituals, preparing the body, and final burial or cremation. They provide spiritual and emotional support to increase comfort and find beauty and meaning in death.

1. Sacred Connections
DEATH MIDWIFERY

2. • A death midwife supports a person through the dying process.
The dying process is believed to extend to the final disposition
of the body…
• A death midwife guides individuals toward a conscious dying
experience; supports loved ones in after-death care of the body
• Empowers families to create personal and meaningful funerals
at home…
DEATH MIDWIFE

3. Mission of a Death Midwife
• Empower families to exercise the right to care for their own
deceased
• Death midwives do not define after death care
• It is believed that families and friends experience a meaningful
transition in caring for their deceased
• Mid Wives are GUIDES…

4. Spirituality and Conscious Dying
• Emotional and spiritual support
• Increase beauty, contentment, and meaning
• Demystify the stages of dying
• Engage in conversation about death
• Honor another’s belief’s and humanity
• Bedside Attendance…….-no one dies alone

5. Conscious Dying
Is choosing to experience the dying process as an
opportunity to be fully present, to create a loving and healing
experience, to realize a spiritual awakening and to die with
grace…

6. Home Funerals and Death Midwives
• Home funerals are a family response to death and after death care
• Most state laws support family care for their own departed
• Families play an empowering role in:
• Planning and carrying out after death rituals
• Preparing the body for burial or cremation
• Transporting the individual to place of disposition
• Facilitating final burial: digging of grave in natural burial….

7. Some of the Services of a Midwife
• Assessment of family needs
• Preplanning with hospice care and social workers
• End of life guidance and support
• Location of cemetery or crematorium
• Provision of all supplies for after death care of body
• Creating sacred space to lay body in honor
• Delivery and creation of casket for burial or cremation

8. Midwife services cont….
• Assistance with creating altars and personally sacred
rituals
• Guidance in bathing, dressing, and anointing of the
body
• Daily visits to over see dry ice preservation

9. Why a Home Funeral?
For a few days following a death…there is a window of
opportunity to experience the deepest meaning of life….As we
stand in the presence of the body of a loved one, boundaries
dissolve, personal differences diminish, and we are often open to
profound healing…

10. A Vigil
A home funeral and vigil provides the opportunity to keep this
scared space open, allowing time
to care for the body; accept the death, mourn,
celebrate and gently integrate the loss into our daily lives…

11. Did you know?
• In almost every state, it is legal for a family member to act as the
funeral director when a loved one dies…
• Refrigeration is not necessary, embalming is not required by law…
• A family member can complete all of the necessary end-of-life
documentation…
• The body of your loved one can lie in honor in the home until burial or
cremation…
• You can create, decorate, and transport a casket to the disposition of
your choice…

12. A Way to Go…

13. Moving On

14. A Personal Story…

15. All Inclusive!

16. www.sacredcrossings.com
1-310-968-2763
Email:
sacredcrossings@gmail.com
Facebook: Sacred Crossings
TRAINING
Rev. Olivia Bareham