Along with Doughty, members include Sarah Chavez,[5] Director of The Order of the Good Death,
Megan Rosenbloom, Director of Death Salon, and Amber Carvaly, Director of Undertaking LA. Other notable members are artist and monument-maker
Greg Lundgren,
TED speaker Jae Rhim Lee, alternative funeral home director Jeff Jorgenson, artist
Landis Blair,[5] forensic pathologist
Judy Melinek,[5] author and photographer
Paul Koudounaris,[5] and other death professionals, artists and academics.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
The term "death positive" was popularized by
Caitlin Doughty as a play on the term
sex positive. The death-positive movement is a
social and
philosophical movement that encourages people to speak openly about death, dying, and corpses. The movement seeks to eliminate the silence around death-related topics, decrease
anxiety surrounding death, and encourages more diversity in
end-of-life care options available to the public.[18]
However, the ideas behind the movement have existed much longer.[19] The Order of the Good Death website lists the beliefs of the death-positive movement as being that cultural censorship of death and dying does more harm than good, that open discussions about death should be accepted as a natural human curiosity, that families should have full rights to care for the bodies of their loved ones without intervention from funeral businesses, and that end of life care should be diversified and performed in ways that cause less damage to the environment than our current practices.[20] The movement also strongly encourages participants to speak to their families about their own end of life wishes, even if they are young and healthy, and is critical of the commercialized funeral industry.[21] It also encourages people to express their feelings about death through art.[22] Other organizations such as Going with Grace,[23] founded by
Death midwife Alua Arthur, are contributing to the movement through their online courses and End of Life Training Program.[24] In 2021, Arthur and Doughty launched a new online course, Mortal,[25] giving an opportunity for students to explore their own mortalities. End Well,[26] founded by physician and film producer
Shoshana R. Ungerleider,[27] hosts an annual conference and media platform to highlight solutions to make the end of life experience more human-centered.[28] Death Over Dinner,[29] founded by restaurateur and author Michael Hebb along with Angel Grant, is an organization that encourages people to have dinner parties to talk about mortality which has facilitated more than 200,000 dinners.[30]
^Washburn, Michael (March–April 2013),
"Decomposure", University of Chicago Magazine,
archived from the original on December 27, 2014, retrieved December 28, 2014
^Natural Burial, The Order of the Good Death, August 24, 2011, archived from
the original on April 28, 2017, retrieved May 8, 2017
^
abcd"Order Members". The Order of the Good Death.
Archived from the original on February 18, 2020. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
^About us, The Order of the Good Death,
archived from the original on January 7, 2015, retrieved December 27, 2014, The Order was inspired by several historical concepts of the good death, including the medieval Ars Moriendi (Art of Dying) and the Tibetan Bardo Thodol. The name itself is taken from the 19th century Brazilian sisterhood of African slaves, Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, or, Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death.