Death Education
Death education for those seeking a more conscious relationship with living, dying, and grieving well.
Most people are taught to fear death and avoid grief until they arrive at their doorstep.
My work is devoted to helping people build a more conscious relationship with living, dying, caregiving, and grief. Whether through personal loss, professional calling, or the desire to explore what is sacred or forgotten, this space was created for a more honest conversation about mortality.
Client Reviews
“Thank you for putting your heart and energy into creating this time and space for all of us. I absolutely am so grateful for you.”
— Michelle, DS Evolved Student
Thanks so much for our training. The only critique I have is that I just want more. I left feeling full and satisfied for the moment, and also wanting more.
— Death Doula Training Student, Fall 2024
Death Ed Library
Deathschool Evolved Certificate Program
What began 7 years ago as a small grassroots class has evolved into one of the most beloved and expansive death doula trainings available today, exploring grief, caregiving, funerals, ritual, and the human experience of mortality through both intimate live cohorts and now a flexible self-paced format.
Death Ed Full Courses Library
The Death Ed Library offers a growing collection of accessible courses for those seeking deeper wisdom, practical skills, and honest conversations around death and grief. From funeral celebrancy and pet hospice to philosophical reflection, end-of-life planning, and advanced doula education, these classes offer grounded guidance for both personal growth and compassionate service to others.
This work is for:
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or those drawn toward deeper questions about mortality, meaning, grief, and what it means to be human
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for those caring for aging parents, dying loved ones, or trying to prepare together before crisis arrives
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for those called to accompany others through dying, grief, funerals, and the realities of end-of-life care
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for those carrying loss and looking for language, community, and ways to grieve more honestly
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for workplaces learning how to support employees through death, caregiving, burnout, and bereavement
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for those brave enough to love deeply in a world where everything is temporary
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for those who know the systems intimately and still long for more humanity within them
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for those exploring death, grief, ritual, ethics, culture, and the questions society often avoids
Death Doula Services
Workplace support
Death impacts the workplace personally and professionally, impacting both moral and productivity. I support organizations create staff memorials and organized grief support in the wake of loss.
11th hour care
Support in the final days and hours of life. Holding presence at the bedside, tending to the atmosphere of the space, and helping families participate in the dying process with greater confidence, calm, and care.
Planning for the end
Practical guidance for the realities of dying, death, and what comes after. Together we tend to the choices, conversations, fears, grief, and decisions that arise when preparing for the end of life, moving gently toward greater clarity, peace, and surrender.
Ceremony
Creating meaningful funerals, memorials, rituals, and gatherings that reflect the life that was lived. Thoughtful ceremonies can help grief move, stories be shared, and communities feel held through loss.
Visitations
Companionship for the dying and support for the people caring for them. Sitting bedside, offering presence, respite, conversation, quiet, and a steady hand through difficult moments.
Who is Erin Merelli?
Erin Merelli is a death doula, educator, and public speaker devoted to helping people build a more conscious and literate relationship with mortality, grief, and caretaking at the end of life.
Her work explores the great mystery of what it means to be human in our brief time here. Informed by years of bedside experience, deep personal loss, and a lifelong devotion to death and dying, Erin invites people into more honest and participatory relationships with loss and the ways we care for one another through life’s most tender thresholds.
In a culture where death is often hidden behind corporate systems, Erin’s teachings help people reclaim a more human approach to mortality. One grounded in educated decisions, community care, grief tending, memorialization, and meaningful conversations about what happens when this all ends.
Shaped by decades of deathcare experience as a CNA, hospice volunteer, death doula, and educator, Erin’s perspective bridges practical care with broader cultural and spiritual questions surrounding mortality. Her work is also deeply influenced by travel and learning from cultures around the world, exploring the many ways humans honor grief, tend their dead, and make meaning of mortality. Together, these experiences shape a broad and reverent approach to death education.
Over the last seven years, thousands of students have participated in Erin’s classes, trainings, and public teachings. Her work has been shared through TEDxMileHigh, podcasts, publications, and classrooms devoted to widening the narrative around death and dying.
Through Death Ed with Erin, she offers free introductory classes, immersive topic-specific courses, and comprehensive death doula training programs online and in person. Conscious pricing, scholarships, and payment plans remain central to the work, because meaningful death education belongs to everyone.
In addition to teaching internationally online, Erin maintains an active death doula practice serving Denver and the Colorado foothills.
Education for Every Level
Death touches everyone, which means death education should belong to everyone, too. My work ranges from short community classes to immersive professional trainings, offered both online and in person. Together we explore the practical, emotional, philosophical, spiritual, cultural, and environmental realities of death and dying, helping people meet mortality with greater skill, confidence, and humanity.
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Personal ancestry and inherited narratives
Cultural death practices across time and place
The funeral industry: a critical look behind the curtain
Death laws, democratization, and autonomy at the end of life
Green burial options and ecological alternatives
The environmental impact of burial and cremation
Cultural grief rituals and the need for communal mourning
Ceremony and rites of passage at the end of life
Death Doula business tools