Begin with your own.
Whether you're planning for yourself or learning to walk beside others, the honest place to start is your own plan — at whatever pace grief allows. Here are the resources we trust most, gathered in one place. Pick one; the rest will keep.
Workbooks & guides we trust
The Conversation Project
A Conversation Starter Guide from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement — built for exactly this: getting your own wishes clear, then talking them through with the people you love. The gentlest doorway in. There's a Boulder County chapter, too.
theconversationproject.org north_east Book · the warm oneA Beginner's Guide to the End
By BJ Miller, a palliative-care physician, and Shoshana Berger. The warmest, most complete practical guide to planning your own death — the paperwork, the healthcare system, and the questions you're afraid to ask. It reads like a steady friend, not a form.
Miller & Berger · Simon & Schuster north_east The documentFive Wishes
When you're ready for the document itself: a values-first advance directive in plain language, which its publisher says meets legal requirements in all 50 states, in 33 languages; check your state’s witness or notary rule. This is the part you'll complete and share with the people who will speak for you.
Aging with Dignity · fivewishes.org north_east For doulas · the lineageGoing With Grace
Alua Arthur — death doula, attorney, and founder — built an end-of-life plan and a doula training rooted in a person's whole humanity. If this work is calling you, doing her own plan first roots your practice in the lineage many doulas train through.
Alua Arthur · goingwithgrace.com north_east A speech · on attentionThis Is Water
David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, published as a small book in 2009. It is about the default settings of the mind, and the daily choice of what to notice and how to treat the person in front of you. It is not about dying, and it is not clinical guidance. We list it because presence at a bedside is a practice of attention.
Open Culture (audio and text) north_east For the caregiver · eight pagesNobody Talks About Dying
A free zine by Sarah Richards, a death doula, for the person doing the caring: questions worth asking at the bedside, hospice basics, how to ask for help, and words to look up when you are ready. Short enough to read in one sitting, and worth printing.
Sarah Richards · free PDF north_eastHow to Live Given the Certainty of Death
One lecture from Shelly Kagan's course Death at Yale. The guides above help you plan. This one asks the question they all rest on: if you only go around once, what is the time for?
He asks you to choose between two lives. Which would you take?
These belong to their creators, not to us. We gather them because they are the best places to begin — and pointing you to the best, ours or not, is the whole point.
And here — guided, and yours to begin.
If a blank workbook feels like too much right now, CareGoals takes you through the same questions at your pace — and hands you a plan in your own words at the end.
Start at CareGoals
The questions your family can't ask — no account, and as slow as you want.
Advance directives, explained
What they are, what your state requires, and how to make yours real.
Palliative or hospice?
The difference, explained plainly — so you can ask for the right thing.
Find an end-of-life doula
A trained person to sit with you through it — directories to start from.
After a death: grief
What is usually true, when to ask for more help, and where to find a person.
Legacy & after-death
Letters, stories, an ethical will — what you want to leave, and how.
Doula training
A sourced self-study course, conversations to practise, and how doulas fit in a health system.
For doulas
If this work is calling you — how doulas here are paid, held, and never alone.
Current research
Working while grieving? A researcher is listening.
Most people who lose someone are back at work within days, with little support — and almost no research asks what that's actually like. A doctoral researcher at the University of Georgia is studying exactly that, so workplaces can do better by the bereaved. If you work full-time and lost someone you love within the past year, your experience is what she needs to hear.
What it involves: a 5-minute eligibility screener, then two 20-minute online surveys about three weeks apart. Completing both earns a gift card. The study is IRB-approved, participation is optional, and you can stop at any time.
Take the eligibility screener north_eastThis is the researcher's study, not ours — we point to it because being heard matters, and so does building the evidence that gets grieving workers better support. Recruiting through fall 2026.
Be gentle with the pace.
If you're learning this while carrying your own grief, that is a lot to hold at once. None of it has to be finished this month. Start with one. The rest will still be here next week.
If you are in emotional crisis or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), any time, day or night. In a medical emergency, call 911. Nothing on this site is medical, legal, or crisis care.