Amanda Blainey.  2019.  Do Book Company.  118p.

This practical guide is divided into five main sections: Before, During, After, A New Way, and Conscious Living.  Blainey is “a speaker and activist in the growing death movement” and her multi-media platform Doing Death aims to “open up authentic conversations about death and dying to inspire people to live more fully.  In addition to volunteering at a local hospice in the UK, she is involved in a charity that records the life stories of terminally ill patients [and is] training to be a death doula and regularly runs a local Death Café”.

Blainey suggests we have forgotten how to ‘do’ death, and that it has become institutionalized and peripheralized the crucial elements of family and the community.  The book is written simply and emphasizes the importance of moving beyond fear to acceptance of death.  It provides a number of step-by-step checklists as well as being a “manual for living”.

Doing death, website of Amanda Blainey