Hello!
We are the Deathwives: a female-founded collective working to widen the narrative around death and dying. We teach others about the history and practices of deathwork and seek to honor sacred traditions, remove stigmas around death, empower collective grieving, and create a safe space for community, connection, and support.
Founded in 2019, Deathwives began as the passion project of funeral director & home funeral educator Lauren Carroll and death doula Erin Merelli. As their in-person workshops and educational retreats filled, Lauren and Erin began to dream about expanding their work to reach a broader audience. In 2020, amidst and in response to the unfathomable loss of life during Covid, Deathwives launched their virtual Deathfolx platform and created “Community Grief,” a pay-what-you-can online workshop to help those grieving learn to integrate their experiences and move towards personal and community healing. Deathwives was founded with a mission to uphold equity, access, and community, and as such, will continue to keep this workshop accessible to all now and in the future, to help bring healing to all who seek it.
In the summer of 2021, DeathWives’ expanded its Deathfolx community platform to include special monthly workshops and member perks, launch its foundational core courses online with revamped curriculum and expanded topics, begin one-on-one consultations, and unveil Deathwives Deathschool, an exclusive 3-month mentorship intensive where clients dive deeper into deathwork and thoroughly explore advanced topics.
Lauren Carroll
CO-FOUNDER
Lauren is a Green Funeral Director and Death Educator. She worked as a natural and holistic funeral director in Colorado starting in a corporately run funeral home to green funeral homes offering services from natural burial to water cremation, home funerals …and now Natural Organic Reduction (NOR). She has served on the board of directors for the National Home Funeral Alliance as well as volunteered with Hospice. Lauren is passionate about welcoming community and family involvement into death space, as she knows firsthand how doing so creates strong containers for the processing of grief, which is simply love without a home. When not honoring the dead or the earth we eventually return to, Lauren tends to her two children and her urban farm at the base of a mountain.
Erin Merelli
CO-FOUNDER
Erin Merelli is a Death Doula, Educator and Ceremonialist. As a Death Doula (or End-of-Life Doula), Erin creates custom care plans for dying clients. Her services range from memorial and legacy work to supporting people through physical death. As a Ceremonialist, Erin crafts funeral (and wedding) ceremonies intended to honor and authentically represent those in her care. In all of her work, she creates spaces for grief and for love.
This work gives back, and in her personal time, Erin is inspired by it to live her life fully and unapologetically. She lives in Denver, CO with her 2 children (one of whom will be out the door to college soon) and her four cats.
Yes, four.
Erin is in love with nature (mostly when it's warm out) and lives by an ethos that grief is unavoidable, but is honored by action, and balanced by joy.
