Along with Doughty, members include Sarah Chavez,[5] Director of The Order of the Good Death,Megan Rosenbloom, Director of Death Salon, and Amber Carvaly, Director of Undertaking LA. Other notable members are artist and monument-makerGreg Lundgren,TED speaker Jae Rhim Lee, alternative funeral home director Jeff Jorgenson, artistLandis Blair,[5] forensic pathologistJudy Melinek,[5] author and photographerPaul Koudounaris,[5] and other death professionals, artists and academics.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
The term "death positive" was popularized byCaitlin Doughty as a play on the termsex positive. Thedeath-positive movement is asocial andphilosophical movement that encourages people to speak openly about death, dying, and corpses. The movement seeks to eliminate the silence around death-related topics, decreaseanxiety surrounding death, and encourages more diversity inend-of-life care options available to the public.[18]
However, the ideas behind the movement have existed much longer.[19] The Order of the Good Death website lists the beliefs of the death-positive movement as being that cultural censorship of death and dying does more harm than good, that open discussions about death should be accepted as a natural human curiosity, that families should have full rights to care for the bodies of their loved ones without intervention from funeral businesses, and that end of life care should be diversified and performed in ways that cause less damage to the environment than current practices.[20] The movement encourages participants to speak to their families about their own end of life wishes, even if they are young and healthy, and is critical of the commercialized funeral industry.[21] It also encourages people to express their feelings about death through art.[22]
Organizations such as Going with Grace,[23] founded bydeath midwife Alua Arthur, are contributing to the movement through their online courses and End of Life Training Program.[24] In 2021, Arthur and Doughty launched a new online course, Mortal,[25] giving an opportunity for students to explore their own mortalities. End Well,[26] founded by physician and film producerShoshana R. Ungerleider,[27] hosts an annual conference and media platform to highlight solutions to make the end of life experience more human-centered.[28] Death Over Dinner,[29] founded by restaurateur and author Michael Hebb along with Angel Grant, is an organization that encourages people to have dinner parties to talk about mortality which has facilitated more than 200,000 dinners.[30]
The creators of the video gameDeath and Taxes identify with the death-positive movement.[31]
^Washburn, Michael (March–April 2013),"Decomposure",University of Chicago Magazine,archived from the original on December 27, 2014, retrievedDecember 28, 2014
^Natural Burial, The Order of the Good Death, August 24, 2011, archived fromthe original on April 28, 2017, retrievedMay 8, 2017
^abcd"Order Members".The Order of the Good Death.Archived from the original on February 18, 2020. RetrievedFebruary 7, 2020.
^About us, The Order of the Good Death,archived from the original on January 7, 2015, retrievedDecember 27, 2014,The Order was inspired by several historical concepts of the good death, including the medieval Ars Moriendi (Art of Dying) and the Tibetan Bardo Thodol. The name itself is taken from the 19th century Brazilian sisterhood of African slaves, Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, or, Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death.
