OLIVIA BAREHAM

My name is Olivia and I am known primarily as a death midwife, but am also a dedicated student of the Mystery, a teacher, healer, inter-faith minister, mother, grandmother, friend and Mystic.

Every since my mother died in 2005 I realized that at the moment of death and for a few days following there is a profound opportunity for healing. I turned my ministry toward the goal of inspiring and empowering others to reclaim the lost art and healing ritual of home-based after death care.  When we lean consciously into this liminal space, allow ourselves to feel the depths of our fear, love and sorrow we are re-arranged and never the same.

The work is tender, raw, honest, gentle, real, alive and deeply satisfying. I fall in love over and over again and become more and more aligned to my true purpose – to help change the culture of death and dying from fear to love.

I feel the expansive field of work with the dying and their families is Death Midwifery and includes the role of Spiritual end-of-life counselor, death doula, home funeral guide, funeral planner, celebrant  and even funeral director and care giver. The Art of Death Midwifery training program was designed to cover all aspects of the work.

Death is life’s greatest teacher – it is time for us take this skeleton out of the closet once and for all, to lay her gently on the table and allow her wisdom to gently penetrate the depths of our psyche till we are free from fear, free from attachment, free from conditioning, free to truly live.

– Olivia Bareham