Current trainings and events.
Death Doula Trainings – for Lay and Professionals
IN PERSON COMBINED Levels 1 & 2
Conscious Dying, End-of-Life Doula Practice, and Preparation for End of Life
Death Doula/Midwifery Care, Green Burial, Home Funeral Guidance
Embracing End of Life Monthly Educational Series
Natural Organic Reduction 101
Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 6 PM Pacific Time
Presenter: Mandy Stafford, Pre-Planning & Partnerships Manager
Mandy brings nearly 16 years of experience as a licensed funeral director, dedicating her career to compassionate, personalized death care. Her journey into green death care began with developing natural burial offerings and grew into a passion for sustainable practices
This passion ultimately led her to Return Home, where she now serves as a pre-need coordinator, helping families plan for eco-friendly, meaningful end-of-life care. In 2024, Mandy returned to the family farm in southern Minnesota, where she balances rural life with her dedication to the funeral profession. She continues to contribute her expertise to advancing green death care and supporting families through their unique journeys with Return Home. When not working, Mandy enjoys spending time outdoors—fishing, hunting, camping, and traveling with her family and friends.
Embracing End of Life is a free monthly event brought to you by Final Passages, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. We invite you to consider a gift to Final Passages when you register for this event – all donations are tax deductible. Please remember to also register under general admission to ensure you receive the zoom link for this event.
Contributions are directed to provide scholarships for our training programs, for reproducing and developing educational materials, publication of our book about home and family-directed funerals, and other community and national outreach programs, including this monthly online series. Started in 1995, Final Passages was the nation’s first non-profit, educational institute and resource center dedicated to conscious dying, and a holistic, green, compassionate and dignified alternative to conventional funeral and after-death practices. We are also the first nationwide organization to create a death midwifery and home funeral guidance training program.
Conversations on Dying, Death, and Grief
usually the 3rd Wednesday, every 2 months at 7 PM Pacific Time
Wednesday, April 1, 2026 at 7 PM Pacific Time
Dear Friends and Supporters of Final Passages,
Think back to the last funeral you attended.
Maybe it was beautiful — respectful, orderly, well-meaning. But maybe, somewhere in the quiet between songs or eulogies, you felt it too: a sense that something deeper wanted to happen.
Most modern funerals follow a script. They run on a schedule. We sit in pews. We listen. We file out quietly. Everyone is doing what they’re supposed to do.
And yet… something in us knows there could be more. More connection. More sharing. More space to grieve together, not just as observers, but as a community.
What if we turned back the clock to a time when death wasn’t outsourced, but witnessed? When families, friends, neighbors, co-workers (even strangers) gathered in someone’s home to wash, dress, and honor their loved one together? When grief wasn’t hidden, but held?
That’s the heartbeat of Final Passages.
As we approach our 30th Anniversary on December 10th, Final Passages has been pioneering a return to dignity, agency of family, personal and sacred connection at the end of life. As the nation’s first nonprofit dedicated to conscious dying, home funerals, and green burial, we’ve educated hundreds of students and presented to thousands at conferences, community events, hospitals, hospices, and many other organizations worldwide on how to reclaim death as a natural, love-filled part of life. Our work was featured in a PBS documentary, “A Family Undertaking,” the front page of the Wall Street Journal, in the NY Times, on CNN Headline News and on ”Coast to Coast” Radio to name a few.
Each conversation we have, whether in person around a kitchen table with a family, or online in sacred virtual space becomes a living classroom where hearts remember how to hold one another. The past 10 years Final Passages brought free education to the public through monthly death focused films and an on-line series, “Embracing End of Life” with speakers on a myriad of death related topics, now archived on our website.
Through our community-based three-level certification program, students learn how to prepare for their own end of life as well as assisting others, the practical ancient and sacred ways of creating meaningful home funerals, facilitating eco-conscious burial options and meeting death with confidence and compassion.
Today, Final Passages stands at a threshold of its own. The demand for this work has grown faster than our small team can sustain. To carry this mission into the next generation, we are launching a Legacy & Renewal Campaign to raise $300,000.
We’ve already received a few generous donations to launch our campaign. We are so grateful knowing that our community loves and supports our valuable offerings and believes in the necessity of this movement and the need to continue on with vibrancy and renewal.
These funds will allow us to:
- Modernize our curriculum and materials for both in-person and online learning.
- Re-film and update our training videos to preserve the warmth and wisdom of our courses.
- Build a new website and digital infrastructure for registration, communication, and donations – replacing the outdated system that we’ve relied on for nearly 15 years.
- Digitize and archive 25+ years of teachings, photos, and ceremonies.
- Develop a new course that offers renewal and nurturing to those who work at the bedside such as Nurses, Hospice and Social Workers, End of Life Doulas and Caregivers.
- Create a model death education program for public schools.
- Provide scholarships so students and families of all backgrounds can attend our trainings.
- Hire part-time administrative and communications support to sustain daily operations.
Our goal is to ensure that this wisdom — and this way of meeting death — continues to reach families, communities, and future educators for generations to come.
You can make a donation online
or with Venmo @Final Passages
or mail a check to: Final Passages, P.O. Box 1721, Sebastopol, CA 95473
For three decades, Final Passages has reminded the world that death can be met not with fear, but with love. Together, we can preserve and expand this lineage of courage, tenderness, and community so that when the time comes, each of us can say goodbye in a way that truly feels like us.
With heartfelt gratitude,
Jerrigrace Lyons, Founder and Director, Final Passages
P.S. Whether you give $25 or $25,000, your gift helps change the way we meet death — from distant to deeply human.
Thank you for being part of this movement.
Imagine…
- Facing death with far fewer fears
- A funeral ceremony being held in a home or a private, intimate setting; allowing for a longer and more personal good-bye
- Bodies being respectfully cared for by family and friends, not by strangers
- Family and friends decorating or building a casket or urn as a healing act of closure
- Environmentally conscious final disposition
- Children learning that death is a natural part of the lifecycle by participating in a home funeral
- Knowing more affordable options compared to conventional methods
Started in 1995, Final Passages was the nation’s first non-profit, educational institute and resource center dedicated to conscious dying, and a holistic, green, compassionate and dignified alternative to conventional funeral and after-death practices. We are also the first nationwide organization to create a death midwifery and home funeral guidance training program.
Celebrating more than 30 Years in Death Doula/Midwifery and Home Funeral Guidance!
Our work serves the needs of community members who come from a variety of cultural, economic, and religious perspectives. Final Passages is an active participant in the National Home Funeral Alliance.
In the News
Up until last week, it has been a grey area what End of Life Doulas and Home Funeral educators were legally allowed to do. Now a California court case recently decided that End of Life Doulas don’t have to be licensed to help with home funerals. They have the right to educate families about home funerals, and can receive compensation for their guidance. Read an article about this precedent-setting decision at California Can No Longer Require End-of-Life Doulas to Obtain Costly Funeral Director Licenses
While we were in Hawaii to teach at the Death Doula training, I did an interview with Amorah at Gutsy Women Radio. Click here or on the image below to watch the interview on Facebook. (No login required.)
“Final Passages’ course work is life-changing. The education is transforming my perspectives on death and the healing that can occur at the end of life. I look forward to sharing, connecting and assisting with my family, friends and community about home funerals.”
— Victoria Joy
Final Passages’ trainings go far far beyond home funerals. I step into more of who truly am every time I come. There’s nowhere and nothing in the world like them. They’re consistently the most transformative trainings and workshops I’ve ever attended.
— Andrea, Santa Cruz
In reflection of the my path with your direction in May 2019, I must let you know how much that experience meant to me and continues to mean to me.
The opportunity to say good bye to my Beloved husband Tom by having his presence close to me for three days as his spirit left his body, continues to be such a healing for me.
Thank-you, so much for nurturing the peace and deep-hearted presence of love which still lives within me today.
I would love to be a part of your dedicated work; if and when there is a path for me to do so.
Please know, how thankful I am for your inspirational work.
Peace, Love and deep Gratitude,
Mathilda Cassidy, Home Funeral Guidance Client
We weren’t ready for how the veil was parted in our lives, but we appreciate all we learned at your course a few years ago. We relied heavily on what we’d just learned to a) share new options (and our wishes) with our adult children, b) advise them to let either us or someone they trusted know their wishes, and c) share with others, encouraging similar things.
Tami Monkman, Level 1 and 2 student
We had no idea that in just a very short while, we would host a tender wake at home for our 24-year old daughter, Anlya Grace.
Her tragic death in August 2018 shocked us all – family, childhood friends, and extended community in several cities. Mourners repeated over and over how much it meant to be able to bring their art/poem/quote/peace to enfold and honor Anlya.
Many didn’t know such a thing as her community-decorated cremation casket and home-directed funeral was possible. All were agreed: Anlya’s at-home, earth friendly wake was exactly how she would have wanted her community to gather. An artist, poet, and equal rights activist, she was known for sheltering and feeding temporarily homeless friends, celebrating our beautiful planet, laughing heartily, dancing and galvanizing others to reach beyond indolence, cruelty, and discrimination.
I can hear her in my mind, anxiously watching while her country chooses its path, ferociously urging while she paces.
Thank you, Jerrigrace, for your instruction, hands-on demonstrations, and resource materials provided at the workshop.
#end-of-life-doula #endoflifedoula #deathmidwife #naturaldeathcare #greenburial #consciousdying #homefunerals #familydirectedfuneral #finalpassages #jerrigracelyons
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