DEATHCRAFT
Journal
Palliative Care vs. Hospice Care: What’s the Difference and How to Access Each
Palliative care and hospice care both focus on comfort, dignity, and quality of life—but they serve different needs at different stages of illness. This guide explains how each type of care works, who qualifies, and how to access these services for yourself or a loved one.
Grave Tending: A Sacred Act of Care, Connection, and Continuity
Grave tending is one of the oldest and most meaningful ways to honor our dead. From gentle cleaning and seasonal upkeep to ritual offerings and moments of reflection, tending a grave creates continuity between the living and the dead. Whether you visit personally or hire a grave tender, this practice preserves the beauty of the burial site while nurturing emotional and spiritual connection.
Death Planning for the Overwhelmed: Your First 10 Minutes
Feeling overwhelmed by death planning? You don’t need to map out your entire future today—just begin. This gentle guide offers three tiny, doable steps you can take in under ten minutes to start building a meaningful, empowered death plan. Small actions matter, and they make the next steps easier.
Honoring Veterans: Reflections on Service, Sacrifice, and Mortality
Veterans Day is more than remembrance—it’s an invitation to reflect on service, sacrifice, and how we hold space for those who faced death in the line of duty. As deathworkers, we can help families bridge military traditions with deeply personal acts of mourning and remembrance.
When the Veil is Thin
Every Samhain, we hear the phrase “the veil is thin.” But beyond poetic imagery, what does it really mean — and what are we meant to do with it? This reflection explores the spiritual and practical meanings of the veil, why this season is sacred for deathworkers, and how to honor the connection between the living and the dead as we move deeper into the dark half of the year.
When the Veil Opens for Our Animal Companions: Honoring Beloved Pets on Día de Muertos
As the veil thins, the spirits of our animal companions are said to return before the ancestors. This Día de Muertos, honor your beloved pets with a candle, a photo, and a whispered name — a gentle ritual of remembrance for the ones who still pad softly through our dreams.
Building an Ancestor Altar for Samhain: A Sacred Practice of Remembrance
As the veil thins at Samhain, creating an ancestor altar becomes a sacred act of remembrance. Learn how to craft a meaningful space to honor your loved ones, connect with your lineage, and celebrate death as part of life’s cycle.
Honoring Balance at the Autumn Equinox
The autumn equinox invites us to honor balance, ancestors, and the cycles of life and death. Explore rituals for the occasion rooted in deathcare, grief work, and sacred remembrance.
The Grave Grl — Grave Tending and Headstone Cleaning in Shepherdsville, Kentucky
Grave tending is a timeless act of love and remembrance. Through The Grave Girl at Deathcraft, I now offer grave tending services in the Louisville and Shepherdsville, Kentucky area—gentle headstone cleaning, floral offerings, and seasonal care to honor and remember your loved ones.
Honoring National Grief Awareness Day
Grief is not something to “get over”—it is love transformed. On National Grief Awareness Day, we pause to honor the many shapes grief takes and to remember that tending to loss is a sacred part of being human.
National Make-a-Will Month: A Love Letter to the Living
August is National Make-a-Will Month — a reminder that creating a will isn’t just legal paperwork; it’s sacred, death-positive care for your loved ones. Whether you’re preparing for your own peaceful transition or supporting others through theirs, writing a will is a radical, loving act of clarity in a world that often avoids talking about death. Let this month be your invitation to begin.
Lughnasadh: The First Harvest & The Sacred Art of Letting Go
Lughnasadh is more than just a seasonal checkpoint—it’s a sacred portal into ancestry, impermanence, and the quiet power of ripening. In this post, I explore the meaning of the first harvest sabbat through the lens of my Celtic roots and offer reflections and rituals to help you celebrate this potent time of year with heart, history, and magic.
International Self-Care Day: Tending the Temple in a Dying World
Self-care isn’t a luxury—it’s a sacred responsibility. On International Self-Care Day, we’re reminded that tending to ourselves is not separate from deathcare, grief work, or spiritual practice. It’s all connected. Whether you’re holding space for others or quietly unraveling in your own shadows, you deserve rest, ritual, and reverence. This is your invitation to come back to your body, your breath, your beating heart—and remember that you are worthy of care, too.
How a Death Doula Can Support You and Your Animal Companion at the End of Life
When a beloved animal companion is nearing the end of life, the grief can feel all-consuming. A death doula can help you navigate this sacred transition with compassion, presence, and ritual. From preparing for euthanasia to creating a peaceful farewell and honoring your pet’s legacy, a doula walks beside you every step of the way—so you don’t have to face it alone. At Deathcraft, we believe our pets deserve a good death, just like the beautiful life they shared with us.
Disability, Death, and the Sacred Art of Slowness
Disability Pride Month reminds us that worth is not measured by productivity. In a culture obsessed with output, disabled bodies teach us sacred slowness — a rhythm that echoes the cycles of death, grief, and rebirth. This is an honoring of disabled wisdom, of liminal living, and of the dignity inherent in all bodies, exactly as they are.
Summer Solstice: Embracing the Turning of the Wheel
The Summer Solstice marks the height of light — and the beginning of its decline. In this radiant turning point on the Wheel of the Year, we are reminded that even at the peak of life’s abundance, change is already unfolding. To live in rhythm with the Earth is to accept that every season contains the seeds of its opposite: life and death, growth and decay, light and shadow. Embracing this sacred cycle helps us not only celebrate life more fully, but also meet death with reverence, knowing it, too, is a natural part of the turning.
The Importance of Pre-Planning for the LGBTQIA+ Community
For LGBTQIA+ folks, pre-planning for death isn’t just practical—it’s protective. It’s how we safeguard our identities, honor our chosen families, and ensure we’re remembered on our own terms. In a world that too often tries to erase or rewrite our stories, making end-of-life plans is a powerful way to say: This is who I am. This is how I want to be cared for. This is how I want to be remembered. Death doesn’t get to undo our truth.
How the Modern Funeral Industry Impacts Our Environment
Explore the hidden environmental costs of conventional funerals—embalming chemicals, metal caskets, concrete vaults, and more. Learn why greener alternatives matter.
A Brief History of Deathcare: From Sacred Rituals to Industrialized Death
Explore the evolution of deathcare from ancient sacred rites to the rise of the funeral industry. Understand how cultural shifts transformed how we care for the dead—and how we might reclaim it.
Why Choose a Home Funeral?
In a culture that often hides death behind closed doors, more families are choosing to care for their deceased loved ones at home. This practice—known as a home funeral—offers a sacred, empowering, and deeply human alternative to conventional funerals.