Reclaiming Our Relationship With Death – Free Class with Olivia Bareham
Death is one of the few experiences every person will eventually encounter, yet many of us reach it with little practical knowledge about what choices are available. When someone we love is dying, uncertainty about hospice, funerals, after-death care, and what families are allowed to do can leave us feeling far less prepared than we would like.
Death midwife and end-of-life educator Olivia Bareham offers another way to approach this universal transition. She invites you to reconsider inherited assumptions about dying and death care while reconnecting with practical knowledge and traditions that once helped families participate more directly in caring for the dying and the dead.
You’ll explore common misconceptions about hospice, embalming, home funerals, final disposition, and meaningful ritual, along with choices that can help you approach end-of-life decisions with greater awareness of your wishes, values, and beliefs.
Olivia will also guide a gentle completion ritual focused on someone you’ve lost, creating space to imagine them fulfilling dreams, milestones, or purposes they did not have time to complete. Together, the practical teaching and reflective practice offer a more conscious way to engage with dying, death, grief, and remembrance.
Why Attend “Reclaiming Your Relationship With Death”
Most of us receive far more preparation for major milestones such as marriage or retirement than we do for dying and death. When a loved one reaches the end of life, unfamiliar decisions and long-held assumptions about what must happen can make an already significant transition feel even more overwhelming.
Olivia Bareham teaches that some of our fear around death grows from being disconnected from the practical knowledge and traditions that once helped families care for their dying and their dead. Her approach brings those questions back into the open so you can better understand the choices surrounding hospice, after-death care, funerals, disposition, and ritual.
Olivia brings more than 20 years of experience guiding people through conscious dying and supporting families after death. Her perspective bridges practical death-care knowledge with spiritual practice, offering a way to engage this subject with greater curiosity, participation, and intention rather than treating death as something that can only happen to us.
What You’ll Learn
In this session, you’ll begin by looking at several common beliefs about dying and after-death care, so you can distinguish familiar assumptions from the choices families may actually have. Olivia will address hospice, embalming, home funerals, disposition options, and the role of meaningful ritual.
From there, you’ll explore how practical knowledge can change your relationship with end-of-life decisions, which means considering how your wishes, values, and beliefs might inform the way you prepare for death or support someone you love. Olivia will also discuss ways families can participate more directly in care after death.
Along the way, you’ll take part in a guided completion ritual focused on someone you have lost, so reflection and remembrance become part of the learning rather than remaining separate from it. The practice invites you to imagine that person completing dreams, milestones, or purposes left unfinished and to make space for your own experience of connection and remembrance.
- Why entering hospice does not necessarily mean “giving up”
- What Olivia teaches about embalming and when it may not be required
- Why home funerals and family-led wakes are important options to understand
- Choices beyond conventional burial and flame cremation, including green burial, water cremation, and human composting
- How spending meaningful time with a loved one’s body can become part of a natural goodbye
- Why thoughtfully created funeral rituals can serve as meaningful rites of passage
- How practical end-of-life knowledge can help you participate more consciously in decisions around dying and death
- Ways to create a sacred container of presence and care around someone who is dying
- A guided completion ritual for reflecting on someone you have lost and what remained unfinished in their life
Who This Is For
This event is for anyone who wants a clearer, more conscious relationship with dying, death, and after-death care. It may be especially meaningful if you have felt uncertain about what choices families have, want to think more intentionally about your own end-of-life wishes, or hope to support someone you love with greater practical understanding.
The session may also resonate with people interested in death doula work, home funerals, conscious dying, grief, ritual, spiritual care, or environmentally conscious disposition options. Those already working in caregiving, healing, spiritual, or end-of-life settings may find Olivia’s combination of practical and spiritual perspectives particularly relevant.
- People who want to better understand their choices around dying and death care
- Anyone thinking more intentionally about personal end-of-life wishes
- Family members supporting someone who is dying or preparing for after-death decisions
- People interested in home funerals, family-led wakes, or alternative disposition options
- Those exploring grief, remembrance, ritual, and conscious dying
- Death doulas, caregivers, spiritual practitioners, and others drawn to end-of-life service
About Olivia Bareham
Olivia Bareham is a death midwife, interfaith minister, master teacher, and founder of the Sacred Crossings Institute for Conscious Dying and Sacred Crossings Alternative Funeral Home in the Los Angeles area.
For more than 20 years, she has dedicated her work to guiding individuals toward a conscious dying experience and supporting families as they care for loved ones after death through vigils and funerals at home.
Olivia is known for her Death Doula and Death Midwifery training programs. Sacred Crossings also publishes The Advance Death Care Directive, an online advance-planning booklet focused on funeral and final-disposition wishes.
Her work brings practical knowledge about end-of-life and death care together with longstanding spiritual practice. In this event, that perspective supports an exploration of death not simply as something to fear or avoid, but as a transition that can be approached with preparation, participation, compassion, and intention.
Endorsements
“I have loved every part of Olivia’s training. The information is vital for us all to know for our personal rights and those of our loved ones. I feel prepared to help my friends and family walk through the process of dying and funerals after this training. Eternally grateful for this knowledge.”
“Caring for the dead and those left behind is a gift and honor. Thank you, Olivia, for showing us all the ways we can help empower those left behind in this process.”
“I am so appreciative for the spiritual aspect of Olivia’s training. The attention to ritual and ceremony, and helping familiarize attendees with some concrete ways to open up deepening conversations with dying persons (and to ask/invite ourselves to do the same).”
“Olivia is at the forefront of the Conscious Dying Home Funeral movement and has a wealth of information — both in practice and with the spiritual aspects — from her years of service. I would like to be of service to family and friends as they approach the end of their lives and I would never have known how without Olivia’s workshops. This training will assist you personally as you contemplate your end-of-life wishes and you will find yourself reaching out to advise friends who want to know more.”
“This insight, this empowering journey into the grave, is something everyone should experience.”
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- Sep 19 2026
- 9:00 am - 10:00 am
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Sep 19 2026
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
More Info
- Worldwide
