I don't know exactly how you're feeling. But the landscape is familiar. And I'm guessing it's messy.

I've spent my life close to death in almost every way it shows up: sudden, slow, complicated, beautiful, and everything in between.

It started with my great uncle. He died in a hospital and they gave us a few minutes before the logistics took over. The gurney. The mortuary arrangements. I stood there stunned. It felt off. Dismissive. Routine. Then came the flowers, the catering, the music, the readings. I remember thinking: this is it? This is how this ends? Everyone around me was trying to help but nobody was actually talking about it. Tiptoeing around the edges instead of stepping into the whole messy, sacred, completely human experience of someone you love being gone.

That moment never left me.

My granny moved in with us in her mid eighties. What followed was splendid and hard and real: private caregivers, shifting roles, learning on the fly what it actually means to show up for someone at the end of their life. My mother in law, one of my closest people, was diagnosed and gone within eight weeks. My stepmom the same: sudden, fast, no time to prepare. My dad's cancer was long and complicated and so was our relationship. I showed up the way I could, which wasn't always the way I wished I could. And then there was Dell. 18 months of being old and a cool guy, still driving, tending to his tomatoes and dying at 92, slowly, with strength and difficulty in equal measure.

They are now. And I'm having them.

I spent years in law supporting emotionally loaded cases that required discretion, presence and the ability to hold hard things without falling apart. I spent 16 years building Treats for Chickens from scratch. Founding it, running it, loving it, cursing it and eventually selling it. I now spend time inside a senior living community where I see up close every single day how fast things turn and how little anyone talks about it. And I work alongside one of the original voices in the home funeral movement, which has completely changed how I think about death and what is actually possible.

All of it brought me here. To this work. To you.

I'm a death doula and end of life advisor. INELDA and Final Passages trained.

But the credential isn't what makes the landscape familiar.

Life did that.

What I'm not.

I'm not therapy. I'm not here to fix your grief. I'm not going to hand you scripts and send you on your way.

What I am.

A steady presence. A clear voice when things feel messy. Someone who can sit with you in the reality of what's happening and help you move through it.

I'm Dawn. And I'm here when it gets real.