Dying Together
The Art of Community Death Care
Will be published approx. on 1. December 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-77406-038-4 (ISBN)
Description
What if death was not something to fear-but one of life's greatest teachers?
In modern culture, death is often hidden from view, outsourced to professionals, and experienced in isolation. Yet for most of human history, dying, grieving, and caring for one another at the end of life were woven into the fabric of community life.
In Dying Together, death educator and community practitioner Lee Warren explores how reconnecting with death can help us reclaim something many of us are longing for: deeper belonging, stronger relationships, and more meaningful ways of caring for one another.
Drawing on more than three decades of experience in intentional communities-including her years at Earthaven Ecovillage in the Southern Appalachians-Warren shares a compassionate and practical vision for bringing death back into the center of community life.
At the heart of the book is a remarkable period known within Earthaven as "The Death Years," when six community members died over the course of two years. What emerged was a living curriculum in communal death care-one that revealed how mortality can become a powerful teacher, helping people cultivate connection, resilience, and collective wisdom.
Combining personal stories, practical guidance, ritual, reflection, and community-based approaches to caregiving, Dying Together offers a path toward a more conscious and life-affirming relationship with death.
What You'll Gain
Practical tools for community-based death care and end-of-life support
Guidance for creating meaningful rituals around dying, grief, and remembrance
Greater confidence navigating grief, loss, and mortality
A deeper understanding of death literacy and death-positive culture Insight into home funerals, green burials, and community-centered mourning practices
New ways to foster connection, belonging, and mutual care during times of loss
A grounded framework for creating more death-aware and compassionate communities
Death and Grief Were Never Meant to Be Faced Alone
Rather than treating death as a private event or medical problem to be managed, Dying Together explores village-inspired approaches that bring caregiving, grieving, and remembrance back into community life.
Through stories, contemplative practices, and real-world examples, Warren demonstrates how facing mortality together can strengthen relationships, deepen resilience, and help communities rediscover their capacity for care.
This is not simply a book about preparing for death.
It is a book about learning how death can teach us to live more fully, love more deeply, and belong more completely.
A Different Kind of Book About Death and Dying
Many books about death focus on individual grief, medical planning, or spiritual theory.
Dying Together takes a different approach.
Rooted in the lived experience of intentional community, it explores how death can become a catalyst for connection, collective healing, and cultural transformation.
By weaving together death literacy, community caregiving, ritual practice, ecological awareness, and embodied wisdom, Warren presents a vision of mortality that is both deeply practical and profoundly human.
Who This Book is For
Caregivers and end-of-life companions
Death doulas and death educators
Readers interested in conscious dying and death-positive culture
Community organizers and intentional community members
Those exploring grief, ritual, and collective healing
Sustainability and resilience practitioners
Readers seeking practical and spiritually grounded approaches to death and dying
Anyone longing for greater belonging, connection, and care at the end of life
About the Author
Lee Warren is a death educator, somatic practitioner, and end-of-life preparation guide with more than 30 years of experience living in intentional, land-based communities. Drawing on decades of work in community caregiving, grief ritual, green burial practices, and death education-including her years at Earthaven Ecovillage-she helps people develop a more conscious, compassionate relationship with mortality.
Dying Together is an invitation to see death not only as an ending, but as a teacher, a gift, and an opportunity to strengthen the bonds that make us human.
In modern culture, death is often hidden from view, outsourced to professionals, and experienced in isolation. Yet for most of human history, dying, grieving, and caring for one another at the end of life were woven into the fabric of community life.
In Dying Together, death educator and community practitioner Lee Warren explores how reconnecting with death can help us reclaim something many of us are longing for: deeper belonging, stronger relationships, and more meaningful ways of caring for one another.
Drawing on more than three decades of experience in intentional communities-including her years at Earthaven Ecovillage in the Southern Appalachians-Warren shares a compassionate and practical vision for bringing death back into the center of community life.
At the heart of the book is a remarkable period known within Earthaven as "The Death Years," when six community members died over the course of two years. What emerged was a living curriculum in communal death care-one that revealed how mortality can become a powerful teacher, helping people cultivate connection, resilience, and collective wisdom.
Combining personal stories, practical guidance, ritual, reflection, and community-based approaches to caregiving, Dying Together offers a path toward a more conscious and life-affirming relationship with death.
What You'll Gain
Practical tools for community-based death care and end-of-life support
Guidance for creating meaningful rituals around dying, grief, and remembrance
Greater confidence navigating grief, loss, and mortality
A deeper understanding of death literacy and death-positive culture Insight into home funerals, green burials, and community-centered mourning practices
New ways to foster connection, belonging, and mutual care during times of loss
A grounded framework for creating more death-aware and compassionate communities
Death and Grief Were Never Meant to Be Faced Alone
Rather than treating death as a private event or medical problem to be managed, Dying Together explores village-inspired approaches that bring caregiving, grieving, and remembrance back into community life.
Through stories, contemplative practices, and real-world examples, Warren demonstrates how facing mortality together can strengthen relationships, deepen resilience, and help communities rediscover their capacity for care.
This is not simply a book about preparing for death.
It is a book about learning how death can teach us to live more fully, love more deeply, and belong more completely.
A Different Kind of Book About Death and Dying
Many books about death focus on individual grief, medical planning, or spiritual theory.
Dying Together takes a different approach.
Rooted in the lived experience of intentional community, it explores how death can become a catalyst for connection, collective healing, and cultural transformation.
By weaving together death literacy, community caregiving, ritual practice, ecological awareness, and embodied wisdom, Warren presents a vision of mortality that is both deeply practical and profoundly human.
Who This Book is For
Caregivers and end-of-life companions
Death doulas and death educators
Readers interested in conscious dying and death-positive culture
Community organizers and intentional community members
Those exploring grief, ritual, and collective healing
Sustainability and resilience practitioners
Readers seeking practical and spiritually grounded approaches to death and dying
Anyone longing for greater belonging, connection, and care at the end of life
About the Author
Lee Warren is a death educator, somatic practitioner, and end-of-life preparation guide with more than 30 years of experience living in intentional, land-based communities. Drawing on decades of work in community caregiving, grief ritual, green burial practices, and death education-including her years at Earthaven Ecovillage-she helps people develop a more conscious, compassionate relationship with mortality.
Dying Together is an invitation to see death not only as an ending, but as a teacher, a gift, and an opportunity to strengthen the bonds that make us human.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Gabriola Island
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
363 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77406-038-4 (9781774060384)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lee Warren is a death educator, end-of-life preparation guide, and somatic practitioner. She is a cultural pioneer and leading voice in reimagining intimacy with death as a pathway to ecstatic aliveness. With over 30 years of experience living in intentional, land-based communities, Lee draws deeply from life at Earthaven Ecovillage in Southern Appalachia, where she co-created regenerative systems for home-building, food production, renewable energy, and progressive self-governance. Immersed in exploring more reverent ways to live, Lee also participated in collective approaches to death care, gaining firsthand knowledge of caregiving in a cooperative context, including at-home death care, home funerals, green burials, and community-based grief rituals. Her work bridges the practical and the mystical, weaving embodiment, contemplative inquiry, and culture repair into a recipe for empowered living and dying. Lee is the founder of ReclaimingWisdom.com and QueenofDeath.org, platforms offering education and resources. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Content
Table of Contents
Forward
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Song Death Taught Us to Sing-Together
Section I: Reclaiming Death's Wisdom
Introduction to Section I: When Death Becomes the Enemy
Chapter 1: The Queen of Death
Chapter 2: The Loss of Death's Wisdom
Chapter 3: Death As Teacher, Death as Gift
Chapter 4: Getting to Know Death
Chapter 5: How Nature Sees Death
Chapter 6: Where Death Still Belongs-Wisdom from Intact Cultures
Section II: The Villagers Guide to Death & Dying
Introduction to Section II: Keeping Company with Death
Chapter 1: Setting the Stage for Dying Together-The Ecovillage Context
Chapter 2: Walking Each Other Home-Kimchi's Dying Process
Chapter 3: Caring for Our Own at Death-Alder's Story
Chapter 4: Intimate Farewells-Reimagining Wakes & Vigils
Chapter 5: Honoring Our Beloved-Creating an Authentic Funeral
Chapter 6: Returning the Vessel-From Form to Earth
Chapter 7: The Healing Potential of Shared Loss-Community Practices for Grieving
Section III: Befriending Death by Preparing to Die
Introduction to Section III: Learning to Die Before You Die
Chapter 1: Planning Your Departure-The Essentials of External Preparation
Chapter 2: The Case for Minimal Intervention-Why Less is More at the End of Life
Chapter 3: The Right to Die
Chapter 4: Turning Inward-The Foundation of Internal Preparation
Chapter 5: Courting the Infinite-Finding Our Source
Chapter 6: The Many Faces of Death-Archetypes as Allies
Chapter 7: Cultivating the Qualities of a Good Death
Chapter 8: Embodiment Practices
Chapter 9: Entheogens-Death Practice with Medicine
Section IV: Following the Breadcrumbs to Community-Based Dying
Introduction to Section IV: Skeleton Woman
Chapter 1: Anatomy of Our Transformation
Chapter 2: Find the Village, Build the Village, Die in the Village
Chapter 3: Nurturing the Emerging Village
Chapter 4: From Caregivers to Care teams-Tuning into the Medicine of Death
Chapter 5: The Four Guiding Pillars for Community-Based Death Care Models
Chapter 6: The Art of Dying
Forward
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Song Death Taught Us to Sing-Together
Section I: Reclaiming Death's Wisdom
Introduction to Section I: When Death Becomes the Enemy
Chapter 1: The Queen of Death
Chapter 2: The Loss of Death's Wisdom
Chapter 3: Death As Teacher, Death as Gift
Chapter 4: Getting to Know Death
Chapter 5: How Nature Sees Death
Chapter 6: Where Death Still Belongs-Wisdom from Intact Cultures
Section II: The Villagers Guide to Death & Dying
Introduction to Section II: Keeping Company with Death
Chapter 1: Setting the Stage for Dying Together-The Ecovillage Context
Chapter 2: Walking Each Other Home-Kimchi's Dying Process
Chapter 3: Caring for Our Own at Death-Alder's Story
Chapter 4: Intimate Farewells-Reimagining Wakes & Vigils
Chapter 5: Honoring Our Beloved-Creating an Authentic Funeral
Chapter 6: Returning the Vessel-From Form to Earth
Chapter 7: The Healing Potential of Shared Loss-Community Practices for Grieving
Section III: Befriending Death by Preparing to Die
Introduction to Section III: Learning to Die Before You Die
Chapter 1: Planning Your Departure-The Essentials of External Preparation
Chapter 2: The Case for Minimal Intervention-Why Less is More at the End of Life
Chapter 3: The Right to Die
Chapter 4: Turning Inward-The Foundation of Internal Preparation
Chapter 5: Courting the Infinite-Finding Our Source
Chapter 6: The Many Faces of Death-Archetypes as Allies
Chapter 7: Cultivating the Qualities of a Good Death
Chapter 8: Embodiment Practices
Chapter 9: Entheogens-Death Practice with Medicine
Section IV: Following the Breadcrumbs to Community-Based Dying
Introduction to Section IV: Skeleton Woman
Chapter 1: Anatomy of Our Transformation
Chapter 2: Find the Village, Build the Village, Die in the Village
Chapter 3: Nurturing the Emerging Village
Chapter 4: From Caregivers to Care teams-Tuning into the Medicine of Death
Chapter 5: The Four Guiding Pillars for Community-Based Death Care Models
Chapter 6: The Art of Dying