Our Roots
We envision a world where death is met with reverence, where care is accessible to all, and where grief is acknowledged as love.
Our Roots
Back in 2013, our founder was an entrepreneur with a thriving consumer insights business. She was also the sole caregiver for a man with terminal rectal cancer. Through the process of his treatment, decline, and eventual distressing death, Erin experienced the painful consequences of her partner’s death denial, and was astonished by the lack of training and support available to patients and families. Her experience is briefly outlined in this podcast episode, How to be Anything, where Erin explains what a death doula does and what a good death can look like. This was a deeply catalyzing experience. Over the following years, Erin immersed herself in the fields of death positivity, hospice, death care, and the American death system. She cultivated a passion for evolving the national conversation around death and dying. In late 2023, she founded Nightsong Doulas with a commitment to:
Death literacy,
Building death positive community, and
Providing compassionate, loving support of families, individuals, and communities.
About Erin
Erin Bishop is an INELDA-Certified End of Life Doula serving families and communities in the Greater Richmond, VA region. She is a graduate of the Integrated Thanatology program at the Art of Dying Institute (thanatology is the study of death).
Erin is dedicated to:
advocating for mortality awareness and expanded end-of-life care,
facilitating open conversations about death with the public, and
guiding clients and families as they navigate mortality.
She is also a proud participant in the second Death Consciousness movement currently underway and the founder of Nightsong Doulas.
What is a Nightsong?
No matter our age or health, we each have a quiet inner song. This song tells the tale of our path and life. Its echoes will linger after our death, revealing to the world who we were and how we lived.
We call this song our Nightsong. It is our legacy in any given moment.
The art of composing our Nightsong as we live and age has long been forgotten. Yet we are always composing it, whether we realize it or not. And if we choose, we can shape it with intention. The more we shape our Nightsong, the more we come to love it. This means we love our life.
A relationship with our mortality gifts us the urgency to rehearse our Nightsong, and the rhythm by which we play it. After we die, it offers those left behind a melody to ease the loneliness. Uncovering your Nightsong is a gift to them, and to you.
Let us help you find yours.
