Hi there! My name is Veronica and Conscious Dying is my love offering to community. I am a death worker, community organizer, Mexican immigrant, recent urban farmer, and fellow grieving being. I move through the world grounded in core values of racial and economic justice, community, self-determination and informed decision making, love, hope, and curiosity. I am so glad and honored you’re here.

When I’m asked what brought me to death work, I often share that death work is rooted in both the personal and the communal AND that I didn’t choose death, it chose me. I’ve known death and grief for most of my life—in different seasons of life—and while my relationship to death and dying has been different through each loss, what stayed the same has been my ability to greet whatever has shown up each time; to face it head on even when it was unbearable; the awareness that there's no wrong way to grieve; and in recent years I have been able to lean into and nurture joy as fiercely as I have nurtured and sat with death and grief for most of my life.

The communal aspect comes in the understanding that death and dying are universal experiences and that everyone has a right to the support they want and need during such a devastating and transformative time. Yet, due to the many intersections of oppression my community and communities I love experience, they are disproportionately impacted by needless loss and grief on top of the natural death and dying processes, and oftentimes they don’t have access to the support they need through their experiences.

Accessible, skilled, and compassionate death and grief support is what community investment looks like. Conscious Dying was borne of the commitment to demystify and destigmatize a part of the life process that has been relegated to the darkest recesses of society. Death, dying, and grief have so much to teach us about witnessing our full humanity and living and dying well if we take the time to listen to what they have to say to us, and these incredibly nuanced experiences look different for each person. I bring the skills and knowledge I have acquired through each personal loss, through comprehensive death doula trainings and continued education, and through my ongoing death doula practice to my work, and I am here to witness and support as you embark on your own process.