The Heartwood Collective on Substack
The Heartwood Collective is Jen and Karen, and we decided to get on Substack to have an open place for us to talk aging, dying, death, and our mortality — and the work we do in this world.
What we’re going to do here
We’ll keep it short. Like, literally, every post will be pretty short. We just want to give you something to think about, typically about death. While we may dabble in some longer pieces with other contributors, we’ll generally just bless you with 500 words or less to help keep mortality top of mind. We think that’s healthly.
Who we are
We are end-of-life educators, Certified Senior Advisors, death with dignity volunteers, and death doulas. We live in Portland, Oregon, but we do a lot of our education work on zoom. We both came to death work as a second (or third) career, but it feels good now that we’re here. A little more specifically:
I’m Jen. I’m a Death Doula and Certified Senior Advisor who brings both personal insight and professional dedication to my end-of-life work. After a career in advertising, I pursued a major shift—one that led me to seek more meaningful, human-centered work. Over time, my deep comfort with death and dying, shaped by personal life experiences, became the foundation for a new path rooted in service.
Today, I’m driven by a strong desire to help others approach the end of life with clarity, empowerment, and peace. Through one-on-one doula support and educational planning workshops, I work to normalize conversations about mortality and help individuals and families face this natural stage of life with openness and confidence.
I’m Karen. I’ve always been drawn to people and their stories. From helping to build StoryCorps to working on HR teams at tech companies big and small, I love learning about the paths that shape one’s life and legacy.
After losing both of my parents, and witnessing how much we struggle – as a society – accepting our mortality, I turned my focus to helping people plan for the end of their life. At The Heartwood Collective I’m committed to leading folks through important decisions with compassion and in a way that honors the life they’ve lived.
I’m a Certified Senior Advisor, Death Doula, and soon to be Medicare Navigator.
We feel lucky to have found each other! There are a lot of ways to think about, talk about, feel about death, and we’ve found that we’re pretty aligned, and that’s super rewarding.
What are the things we do
Doula services
We offer individual and family support for people who need advocacy, organization, or companionship at the end-of-life. Learn more here.
Workshops
We run a four-part zoom workshop called Peace of Mind Planning. Details are here, and here’s something one of our participants said:
I loved the flow of this workshop. It allowed this gentle way to start thinking about a difficult subject that eventually led to very tangible takeaways that will make the whole process more peaceful.
We also run an hour-long 101 version of the Peace of Mind Planning workshop, but for workplaces. Here’s another fun testimonial:
This was an AMAZING workshop!!! This will help me and my family be more proactive with end of life planning.
Volunteer work
We volunteer with End of Life Choices Oregon which supports people who want to learn about options for their end-of-life, including Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) under the Death with Dignity law.
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