When Death is Coming

How to prepare yourself and your family to meet death well

Learn to meet death in a conscious, meaningful way

A course for dying people, caregivers, death doulas, and others


Honour death as an important part of your soul’s journey

Learn practical ritual tools for healing and connection

For Dying People and Caregivers

If you’re facing your own upcoming death, or the death of someone you love, this course is for you.

Perhaps treatment has stopped working, and doctors have given just a few months to live.

Maybe aging and decline have progressed and it’s clear that death is coming sooner, rather than later.

There’s a distinct and sobering moment when death knocks on your door and says, “I’m coming soon. Get ready.”

When death knocks, it changes everything.

There’s a huge reorientation.

If you’re aging or ill, you may have tried hard to maintain or regain your health. Now, instead of moving towards more life, you’re moving towards your death.

If you’ve been a caregiver, you’ve worked to keep your person safe, comfortable, and alive. Now, you still want them to be safe and comfortable but, instead of trying to keep them alive, your job is to help them die.

Most of us have never been taught how to die, or to how help someone we love die.

Bringing healing to death is a learned skill.

Preparing for your own death, or being a caregiver for a dying loved one, calls for a particular set of practical, emotional, spiritual, and community skills.

But mainstream culture doesn’t teach us those lessons.

It’s hard to meet death well if you’ve never been taught how to do it.

Death is hard and sad, but it can also be grace-filled and heart-opening.

You can’t control how old or sick someone is, or how or when they die. But you can shape the experience to create as much love and beauty as possible.

In times of heartbreak and tragedy, there are ways to connect more deeply to each other, to the web of life, and to the sustaining powers of grace and compassion.

For Death Doulas and Other Practitioners

If you support dying people and their families in a formal or informal way, this course is for you, too.

For those already in practice, you’ll learn to bring more soul-based approaches to helping your clients and patients prepare for death.

For aspiring or new practitioners, you’ll take a deep dive into this important stage of the dying process.

  • Gain confidence offering meaningful spiritual and soul-based guidance in the time before active dying.
  • Find language for initiating and facilitating death-planning conversations.
  • Learn ritual practices to help your dying clients honour and complete their relationships in this world and say goodbye to life in a body.
  • Hear ritual stories of family and community ceremonies that help grief and love flow more freely.
  • Deepen your relationship with transformative powers of death and loss.
  • Strengthen your ability to hold space for your client’s spiritual growth.

Create a sacred container that can hold pain and sorrow, as well as joy and celebration.

This accessible, video-based course is a handbook for conscious death preparation. You’ll learn the steps to meet death in a meaningful, connected, and open-hearted way.

1. Find the courage and support to be with what’s true

When you’re able to accept what’s happening, you can make good choices about how to navigate it.

2. Get clear on your values and priorities

When you can identify what matters to you and your family, you can make a death plan that amplifies those qualities.

3. Connect more deeply with who and what really matters

When you can really connect with each other, and with the beauty of life, your heart will open and expand, even as it’s breaking.

4. Create ritual opportunities for love and grief to flow

When you bring meaningful ritual practices to the time you have left together, you’ll find the soul-support you need for the journey.

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Dr. Sarah Kerr, PhD

I’ve been a death doula and ritual healing practitioner since 2012. I have a doctorate in Transformative Learning and I’ve been a student of spiritual and systemic healing practices for almost three decades.

My clients and students understand that death and loss are important parts of their spiritual journey, but they may not have a spiritual map to guide them through these experiences. I bring a map rooted in energy medicine, systems thinking, sacred sciences and ancient wisdom traditions.

I’m honoured to share what I’ve learned from my teachers, clients, and direct experience. I’m grateful to be part of a larger community of people who are working to do death better and I hope this course is helpful to you, as you deepen your sacred deathcare skills.

Learn to Bring Healing to Death

The course includes 2.5 hours of lecture and Q&A, filled with practical information, stories and examples of lived rituals.

You’ll learn sacred deathcare practices for meeting an upcoming death in a meaningful and conscious way.

All material is available as closed caption videos.

Participants will receive a Certificate of Completion, suitable for submission for CE’s or CEU’s (licensure dependent.)

Financial assistance is available. If the price is a barrier, please get in touch.

Broaden your knowledge
Deepen your skills   
Grow your confidence

$169 CAD (~$124 USD)

This is not a certification program, but participants will receive a Certificate of Completion, suitable for submission for CE’s or CEU’s (licensure dependent.)

Financial assistance is available. If the price is a barrier for you, please get in touch.

Student Reviews

Wisdom and practical skill-building

Sarah’s class was an amazing experience, containing tremendous depth and breadth of wisdom and practical skill-building. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!

~Maxine S.

Amazing, positive, specific, detailed, practical information

This class, this wealth of information, it felt like a cornucopia, just overflowing with amazing, positive, specific, detailed, practical information. I feel like it answered all the questions I had, and even ones I didn’t have. It just opened up my mind to so many more possibilities. Yes, I have more questions, but that’s a good thing. It was excellent, and Sarah is a wonderful teacher.

~Julie S.

Academic and shamanic at the same time

Thank you for being both academic and shamanic at the same time- that is your gift! I really felt you were so articulate and heart-centered, it was amazing to me! Thank you for helping me really relax even deeper and with more clarity in my medicines.

~Olivia K.

Compared to other end-of-life doula trainings

I have been dabbling in end-of-life doula trainings and you are the most enthusiastic, real person I have yet to encounter. Keep up the good work and I look forward to taking your other courses.

~Cindy P.

A fundamental teacher for me

Thanks, Sarah. You have been and continue to be a fundamental teacher to me through your work and sharing. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

~Samantha R.

I’m leaving with lots more confidence

I’m leaving this class with confidence – a lot more confidence. I’ve been waiting since I was 5 to actually be able to talk to people about death, people who don’t shy away. Usually I can feel their energy moving away from me, and I haven’t had that today. And that’s the first time. Even at funerals, It’s very, very rare. Even with other spiritual practitioners that don’t deal with death; they deal with life and they have a hard time talking about death. The only other group that I’ve ever been able to communicate and to find the pure joy surrounding death is with animals. So I am beyond grateful for this class.
Thank you.

~Leah J.

Come on in, let’s explore this together

Sarah is very talented and inspired and brings a very vast body of knowledge into a form that you can dive into, and understand in a an easy way. But she’s not definitive. She’s pulling you in. She’s got lots of expertise, but she’s not the be-all, end-all. She’s saying, “Come on in. Let’s explore this together. I’ll be your leader.” But she’s not saying, ‘I’m all of it. I know everything.” Which is—it’s inspired— because she’s trying to create a collective consciousness around this space and this community.

~Marie L.

Sacred and soulful connection to the mysteries of life and death

I recently watched Sarah’s course ‘Awakening the archetype of the Deathwalker’ and there is something magical about the space that Sarah creates. Even though I was unable to make the live call, I most certainly felt connected to the field of containment that she created with the group.

There are few people in the current circles of the death community that bring pause and contemplation to a group field and I am grateful to experience that with Sarah’s course. I am inspired and cracked open to something more soulful and more alive in death. Sarah is authentic in her language and action.

The sacred, soulful and connected ways to the mysteries of life and death through the lens of an ancient newness are present in Sarah’s ways of teaching.

~Evamarie P.

When you approach death with reverence and intention, it can become a portal to profound healing.