What Is the Death Positive Movement?
By CRYSTAL BAI •
The short answer: The death positive movement advocates for open, honest engagement with mortality — countering the modern tendency to avoid, medicalize, and sanitize death. Most associated with mortician Caitlin Doughty and The Order of the Good Death, it encourages people to make informed choices about dying, complete advance directives, and engage with death as a natural part of life.
What Is the Death Positive Movement?
The death positive movement is a cultural and social movement that advocates for open, honest, and informed engagement with death and dying — in contrast to the dominant contemporary Western tendency to avoid, medicalize, and sanitize mortality. Death positivity does not mean celebrating death or pretending it is not painful; it means refusing to pretend death is not happening, and choosing to engage thoughtfully with mortality while alive.
Origins and Key Figures
The death positive movement as a contemporary phenomenon is most associated with Caitlin Doughty, a mortician who founded The Order of the Good Death in 2011. Doughty's books — Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (a memoir of her first years as a mortician), Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and From Here to Eternity — and her YouTube channel Ask a Mortician brought rigorous, dark-humored, and genuinely informative content about death to millions of viewers. Other key figures include:
- Jon Underwood — founder of the Death Cafe movement
- BJ Miller — hospice and palliative care physician, TED speaker, co-founder of Mettle Health
- Atul Gawande — surgeon and author of Being Mortal, which brought end-of-life quality-of-care to mainstream conversation
- Joan Halifax — Zen Buddhist teacher, founder of Upaya Zen Center, author of Being with Dying
- The broader death doula profession, which emerged as a formalized role in the 2010s
Core Death Positive Principles
While the movement has no single manifesto, common threads include:
- Mortality awareness: Engaging with the fact of your own death — not as morbid obsession but as grounding, clarifying reality
- Informed choice: People should have the information they need to make meaningful decisions about how they die and what happens to their bodies
- Bodily autonomy: Individuals should have the right to choose how their body is cared for before and after death
- Community engagement: Death should not be hidden away; community presence and participation in dying and mourning is healthy and humanizing
- Honest language: Using direct language — "died," "death," "dead" — rather than euphemisms that distance us from reality
- Environmental consciousness: Awareness of the environmental impact of conventional death care and openness to alternatives
Death Positivity and End-of-Life Planning
Death positivity is not just philosophical — it has direct practical implications. People who engage with their mortality proactively:
- Are more likely to complete advance directives before a crisis
- Have more conversations with family about their wishes
- Are better prepared to advocate for themselves in medical settings
- Tend to make more values-aligned decisions about treatment and disposition
- Report less existential distress when illness becomes serious
Criticism of Death Positivity
Critics note that death positivity can sometimes reflect the privilege of those with access to good hospice care, green burial, and death doulas — and may not adequately account for traumatic, violent, or premature death, or for communities for whom death carries specific historical trauma. A fully realized death-positive approach takes these complexities seriously rather than offering a one-size-fits-all framework.
Getting Started
Entry points into the death positive movement include Death Cafes, death doula consultations, books like Being Mortal and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, advance care planning workshops, and hospice volunteering. Renidy's network includes death doulas who can help you begin an intentional relationship with your own mortality.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who started the death positive movement?
The death positive movement is most associated with Caitlin Doughty, a mortician and author who founded The Order of the Good Death in 2011. Her books (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity) and YouTube channel Ask a Mortician brought death-positive ideas to mainstream audiences.
Is the death positive movement anti-religious?
No. The death positive movement does not oppose religion or spirituality. It does challenge the medicalization and sanitization of death and the resulting loss of personal and community engagement with dying. Many religious traditions have historically been deeply engaged with death — the movement supports reconnecting with those traditions as well as secular alternatives.
What does death positivity mean for how I die?
Death positivity encourages you to engage with your own mortality proactively: complete advance directives, have conversations with family about your wishes, consider your values around dying and disposition, and make informed choices rather than leaving everything to default. It does not prescribe any specific way to die.
Is death positivity the same as being OK with dying?
Not exactly. Death positivity is about cultivating an honest, open relationship with the fact of mortality — not suppressing or denying it. It does not mean being unafraid of death or pretending death does not involve real loss and grief. Fear and grief are normal; denial and avoidance are what death positivity challenges.
How can I get more involved in the death positive movement?
Attend a Death Cafe, read death-positive authors (Caitlin Doughty, BJ Miller, Atul Gawande), complete your advance directive, talk with a death doula, attend a green burial workshop, or volunteer with a hospice organization. Start with what resonates most.
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