Founder Holly Pruett

I’m Holly Pruett. I bring people together to help prepare for, live with, and talk about death.

Life-Cycle Celebrant, Home Funeral Guide, Conversation Leader & Consultant

• I work with families and communities to create unique, personalized ceremonies that support bereavement and remembrance, including supporting families to care for their dead at home.
• I am the co-creator of Oregon Funeral Resources & Education, a non-commercial website informing Oregonians of legal rights and resources when death occurs.
• I created the Death Talk Project to support useful, honest conversation through workshops, rituals, a three-year run of monthly movie nights, and other events.
• I co-founded and for five years was the principal organizer of PDX Death Café, then the largest death café across 60+ countries, leading Death Cafés at restaurants, libraries, hospice programs, community centers, college reunions, and a music festival.
• I led the successful 500-person, 10-hour day of programming Death:OK, Let’s Talk About It, held in Portland, Oregon in 2015.
• I served for three years as a facilitator with Oregon Humanities’ Talking About Dying conversation program.
• For 30 years I served the community through local, state, and national non-profit organizations as a community organizer, executive director, and consultant.  
• My principal teachers are the deaths I’ve attended; I’ve written extensively about my father and my friend Marcy Westerling, among others. My work with Lynda Martin-McCormick on her husband’s home funeral was featured in the short video Death DIY.
• I’m a writer with a popular blog on meaningful celebrations and commemorations; I serve as a frequent source for the media.

Education & Professional Training

• NEDA Proficient: Proficiency in core competencies by National End-of-Life-Doula Allliance
• Professional Presence End of Life Doula training with The Peaceful Presence Project
• Certified in Thanatology: Death, Dying & Bereavement by the Assoc. for Death Educ. & Counseling
• Certified in Funerals and Ceremonies for Children and Families by the Celebrant Foundation & Institute and as a Home Funeral Guide by Final Passages
• Ordained interfaith minister
• Master’s degree from the Leadership Institute of Seattle; BA in history from Reed College
• Eight+ years of study with Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW at his Orphan Wisdom School

Holly is available to:

• Design and officiate customized rituals and ceremonies for individuals, families, organizations, and communities
• Serve as a sounding board to individuals and families as they explore, determine, and plan for what will happen during their dying time and after their death
• Provide public speaking, media interviews, training, and community consultation on a range of topics related to how we die, how we mourn, and how we remember our dead
• Advise organizations and communities on designing and producing community conversations and other events
• Support new practitioners through personal consultation