Hi, I'm Summer. I'm an end-of-life doula living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

I offer bedside vigil for the dying and relief for their weary caretakers. I also sit with people in uncertainty, in the last stretch of a lifetime, making space for hard questions, deep sadness, and all the quiet joys and unexpected wonders that can still unfold. My approach is practical, grounded, and built on care. I believe in showing up, in making beauty where we can, and in staying open to the mystery.

My path here has been shaped by the plant world and personal loss. I've been steeped in self-study of plant medicine for over a decade, and my formal herbal education began at the Self-Heal School of Herbal Studies in San Diego in 2016. Not long after, in May of 2017, my life was profoundly changed when both of my parents and my dear father-in-law all died within the short span of ten weeks. My walk with plant medicine has been deeply shaped by that time, and I've been learning ever since how to nourish my community in the ways that supported me most through grief. That grief is part of what brought me, eventually, to this work.

I began exploring home funeral education in late 2022 through volunteer work with the Home Funeral Alliance, and the following year I started offering end-of-life support as a volunteer death doula with Emberlight: The Center for Conscious Living & Dying in Swannanoa, NC, where I also completed end-of-life direct care training. I hold End of Life Doula and After Death Care Educator proficiency badges through the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA), and am a graduate of the End of Life Doula Specialist Program through International Doula Life Movement. I see this as a path of lifelong learning, continually listening, growing, and finding new ways to serve with compassion and integrity.

My community offerings include non-medical end-of-life care, home funeral guidance, and support for families who want to bring more presence, meaning, and agency to the dying process. I help people navigate their options and tend to death in a way that feels aligned with their values, culture, and community.

My hope is to help you remember what already lives in you. To guide you toward the awareness that you — we — already know how to care for each other, and to gently light the way. This is community deathcare. It isn't work meant to live behind closed doors. It belongs to all of us.

If you're looking for someone to walk alongside you or someone you love, or you want to learn what it means to tend your own deathcare ecosystem, I'm glad you found your way here.

Welcome.