ERIN

Death Doula | Educator | Ceremonialist | Public Speaker

Erin Merelli is a death doula, educator, and public speaker dedicated to guiding individuals, families, and communities in meeting mortality with intention, courage, and care. Based in Colorado, Erin has spent over a decade expanding the narrative around death and dying, offering accessible education, meaningful ceremonies, and compassionate support at life’s final threshold.

As the co-founder of Deathwives and founder of Death Ed with Erin, she has created over 20 programs and trained over 1,000 death doulas in the last six years. Her work explores death’s role in individual, communal, and environmental contexts, touching on themes of grief expression, green burial practices, hands-on deathwork, and the diversity of deathcare across cultures and history.

Erin’s insights have been featured on TEDxMileHigh, PBS, Forbes, Comedy Central, and numerous publications and podcasts, where she shares her message: “Our dead belong to us, and the care we give them matters.”

Her path to deathwork was shaped by sacred transitions—first in birth work as a certified birth doula and later as a wedding planner and celebrant, officiating over 100 ceremonies. These experiences revealed the threads that connect life’s great transitions: the entry and exit of the soul, the wondering why, and the ceremonies that hold it all.

Erin’s work is deeply informed by personal loss. A profound series of early-life grief experiences began when her first love died in a car accident during high school. In 2022, Erin lost her sister to suicide—an ongoing heartbreak that deepens her understanding of grief and love, reminding her that none of us have to carry it alone.

When not teaching or tending to others, Erin feeds her soul where she feels most alive: in the mountains of Colorado or the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, where the wise sea and wild shores inspire her. She is the proud mother of two nearly-grown children, who remind her every day of the art of loving deeply and letting go gently.