Our death café is part of the larger death café project (Welcome to Death Cafe).
Death Café is a brave, confidential space, open to all religious and spiritual backgrounds (including the non-spiritual), with no set topic for the meeting, other than speaking to what’s on our minds regarding death and dying that meeting.
For the purposes of our cafes, death can include the specific passing of a pet or person as we typically think of it, or it can include the “death” of societal structures, or even the little deaths (ex. disease, transitions – life is always in transition) we go through in our lives. Past conversations have included thoughts on the afterlife, how we’d like our bodies processed after death, experiences with death from childhood, the process of grieving death, adjusting to chronic illness/new ways of being.
By uniting in a shared space with the specific intention of this topic, death cafes make a universal, but taboo, more comfortable to explore. To add to the comfort factor, when in-person, death cafes would often provide drinks and desserts (hence the “café”).
We have been meeting virtually since April 2020, approximately twice a month. Our meetings generally start with some death café ground rules (confidentiality, kindness), then we go around the group, introduce ourselves, speak what’s on our minds related to death and dying, and find a topic for the group from there. Participants are not required to share.
Beginning in 2022, I started facilitating LGBTQIA+ death cafes to explore the specific needs and experiences of our pride community (even in death, our community experiences inequalities). I kindly respect that allies refrain from attending.
Although many of our regular participants are from Illinois, we have had individuals from across the US and the world (ex. India) join in.
Interested in joining our café? Check my EventBrite page for our next café and register by emailing me: [email protected] Please check out the main project page for events worldwide, especially if our cafes do not fit your scheduling needs.
Honoring my/our 1 year anniversary of offering death café here: https://ignitewell-being.com/one-year-anniversary-death-cafe-naperville/
For books related to death and dying, please see my bookshop at: Ignite Well-being Bookshop
~Additional content coming soon~