Speaking

Most conversations about death are either clinical or sentimental. My talks and workshops bridge that gap by using storytelling and social analysis to draw out the most human aspects of facing our mortality. I speak to senior living communities, hospice and palliative care teams, healthcare professionals, social workers, funeral directors, nurses, and anyone else navigating the terrain where life meets death. My talks combine academic rigor with personal narrative — grounded in 25 years of teaching sociology, direct doula practice, and the lived experience documented in Bound.

For Senior Living Residents and Community Groups

The Conversations We Keep Putting Off

An interactive workshop on end-of-life wishes, legacy, and what we want people to know

Most of us know we should talk about death, and all the stuff that goes with it: from advance directives and wills, to how we want our lives to be remembered and what lessons or messages we want to leave behind. And we know these are conversations we need to have more than once, with our families, our doctors, ourselves. Still, most of us don’t. Not because we’re afraid of dying, but because we don’t know how to start, or we worry about burdening the people we love. This workshop gives residents a structured, low-stakes space to explore the conversations that matter most: What kind of end do I want? What do I want people to know about me? What am I still carrying that I’d like to put down? Drawing on sociology, storytelling, and direct doula experience, I lead participants through reflection exercises, small-group sharing, and practical tools for beginning — or deepening — these conversations.

75-minute interactive workshop · Up to 25 participants · Guided reflection handout include

Interested in booking me to speak? I’m happy to build a talk or workshop to meet your needs. I’m also available to do podcast, radio, or TV interviews. I can readily prepare a talk or workshop on many themes related to sexuality, gender, memoir, storytelling, caregiving, death, and dying.

Your Story, Your Terms

A legacy storytelling workshop for people who want to be remembered as they truly are

Each of us has lived a life worth recording. This workshop is an invitation to do exactly that — not as a formal memoir project, but as a personal act of reclamation. What are the stories only you can tell? What do you want your children, grandchildren, or friends to understand about who you really were?

I guide participants through the craft and courage of personal narrative. Participants leave with a framework for capturing their own stories and, often, a draft of something they didn’t know they were ready to write.

90-minute workshop or 3-session series · Up to 20 participants · Writing prompts and legacy narrative guide included

For Hospice and Senior Living Staff

Death Literacy for Care Workers

Building comfort, language, and confidence for end-of-life conversations

Those who work in hospices, nursing homes, and other senior living settings are among the most death-adjacent people in our society, and often their training does not delve deeply enough into developing the emotional and communicative tools the work requires. This training builds what researchers call “death literacy”: the knowledge, language, and personal readiness to engage meaningfully with residents and families around dying, grief, and end-of-life wishes. The session includes real-scenario practice, discussion of organizational culture around death, and practical language tools participants can use immediately.

Half-day training (3 hours) or 60-minute introductory session · CEU eligibility available upon request

Holding the Hard Stuff

Organizational culture and the weight of end-of-life work

Staff in senior living and hospice environments carry a particular kind of weight — one that often goes unnamed and unaddressed. Compassion fatigue, grief accumulation, and cultures of stoicism take a real toll. This workshop takes a sociological approach to understanding how organizations either support or inadvertently undermine the people doing end-of-life work.

I work with teams to name what they’re carrying, examine the cultural patterns that make this work harder than it needs to be, and identify practical ways to build more sustainable, humane workplace cultures.

90-minute workshop or half-day retreat · Up to 30 participants

Speaker Kit (Bio and Headshot)

If you’d like a sense of my speaking style, here are a few YouTube clips from podcasts and interviews I’ve done.