Our Mission and Values 

Sunset Companions is dedicated to supporting dying people and their loved ones through all aspects of the dying process.  We seek to transform the culture in the United States around dying through education, advocacy, and actively dismantling the traumatic and oppressive structures that prevent people from having a good death, however you define it.

We build our practice on these values:

• Everybody dies. Death is an integral part of life.

• Dying encompasses every part of who we are: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, and beyond. Dying has a wisdom to it. 

• Every death deserves a doula. 

• However, we imagine a world where death doulas are unnecessary because every dying person’s loved ones and community are able to provide the care professional death doulas provide.

• We imagine a society where everyone’s basic needs are easily met so that  loved ones have the time, space, and emotional capacity to care for their dying loved ones. 

• We advocate for you, meaning we always seek to assure that the dying experience and all processes and procedures do no harm and are for your benefit. We prioritize the dying person’s wishes.

• Everyone has their own belief system regarding death and dying.  We strive to work with every human being to understand and support that belief system.

• Our knowledge is open-source and available freely. 

• Access to support around death and dying is not distributed evenly. How our many identities interact with oppressive society structures deeply shapes our lives, and our deaths.

• Currently, all the doulas of Sunset Companions are white, middle-class, and cisgender, meaning our gender assignment at birth matches our gender identity.  This puts us in a position of privilege. We are continuously working to educate ourselves to better serve dying people whose identities do not match ours. However, no amount of education is the same as lived experience, and so our identities may prevent us from providing the best support in all dying scenarios. If you wish, we will put you in touch with a death doula who may be able to support your dying experience better than we can.

• We affirm the gender identity of everyone and will use the pronouns each client requests we use for them.

• We believe death is a part of daily life, and we encourage the de-compartmentalization of death and dying and daily living.