Wake May Death Cafe

A Death Cafe is a social gathering of people, often strangers from many walks of life, organized for the purpose of discussing death, without any formal agenda or commercial pressures. Anyone can attend and chat informally about different aspects of death, ideally over tea and cake, with a goal of making the subject less taboo and scary. Death Cafes were pioneered by Jon Underwood in the U.K., based on the work of Swiss Sociologist Bernard Cretaz. First held in the U.S. by Lizzy Miles, they are now popular all over the world.

Register to receive the link to join us online! Because we will be engaging in a personal conversation with one another it's imporant that participants login promptly at the start time. We will "close the door" to new entrants about 5 minutes after we begin and won't be able to allow anyone else into the call. We ask that you come willing to 1) grant this conversation your full attention, 2) introduce yourself and 3) listen and engage with an open mind. There is no formal agenda for this conversation but the facilitators will make efforts to keep the conversation productive and participatory.

Wake's September Death Cafe is facilitated by Laurie Dietrich and Leslie Runnels:

Laurie Dietrich (she/her) is New Orleans-based artist, ritualist, and deathworker. She holds multiple certifications in death doula work and thanatology, and has a background in hospice. She is passionate about education, agency, and empowerment, for the dying and their beloved community, at the end of life; believes this work is inherently activist, in a death-phobic and grief-illiterate culture; and thinks Death Cafe is a great place to start, because talking about death won't kill you.

Leslie Runnels (her/shey) is from New Orleans and finishing up seminary to become a Unitarian Universalist minister, with dreams of finding or building a co-led anti-racist ministry focused on collective liberation, hopefully in the south.  Her interest in death and dying comes from an understanding of what white supremacy culture and other oppressions have done to our ability to interact with death and dying in healthy ways.  She sees Death Cafes as a way to work on the undoing of that harm.