“And any book that extends that death wisdom to the wider culture is a called-for book. This is one of those.”

—Stephen Jenkinson

Author of Die Wise and Trembling, Still

DYING TOGETHER:
The Art of Community Death Care

Village-inspired approaches to befriending death, awakening aliveness, and belonging to each other at the end of life.

Publication Date: Fall of 2026
From: New Society Publishers

About Dying Together:

In a world where death is medicalized, sanitized, isolated, and outsourced, Dying Together: The Art of Community Death Care introduces the radical notion that mortality is a gift—and a teacher.

Author Lee Warren, a cultural pioneer and leading voice in the conscious dying movement, draws from three decades of ecovillage living, where six significant deaths over two years changed the landscape of their collective.

Through firsthand accounts, embodied exercises, and a community-building toolkit, Dying Together offers a visionary yet grounded approach that returns death to the center of our personal and collective lives—and guides us to belong to each other in the tenderness of loss and grief.

Inside You’ll Find:

Soulful practices drawn from a community that chose to face death together
A wisdom-based toolkit for preparing ourselves—and each other—for death in sacred and meaningful ways
Contemplative and communal exercises to foster conversation, connection, and intimacy with death
Guidance for reshaping our fear of death, creating shared rituals, and supporting each other at the end of life
A framework for restoring coherence and reverence to our communities

Essential reading for anyone ready to face the inevitability of dying with honesty and heart—caregivers, community builders, sustainability seekers, and all who sense that learning to die well is part of remembering how to live.

Pre-order Available HERE

Advanced Praise

“Any book about dying in which dying people might actually recognize their labor, their heartbreak, their fears, is a useful book, for them and for those who love them. And any book that extends that death wisdom to the wider culture is a called-for book. This is one of those.”

Stephen Jenkinson

Author of Die Wise and Trembling, Still.

“Dying Together is a luminous invitation to restore the communal practices of care, grief, and reverence that once held us through life’s final threshold. Through story, practice, and lived wisdom, Lee Warren shows us how accompanying one another through dying, grief, and remembrance can awaken a deeper intimacy with life itself. Her reflections illuminate how tending those who are dying together deepens our shared humanity.”

Aditi Sethi, MD

Founder and Executive Director & Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living & Dying

“Lee Warren brings a compassionate and experienced lens to the tender yet practical work of community-based death care. Dying Together is a much-needed book that reminds us how to heal and share both our lives and deaths—not as isolated individuals, but as neighbors helping neighbors.”

Dr. Mallory McDuff

Author of Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love

“Wisdom traditions around the world turn to death as a potent ally for living well. In this inspired and accessible guidebook, Lee Warren helps us to prepare for our own return and to assist those we love in becoming healed and vibrant ancestors.”

Daniel Foor, Ph.D.,

Author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing

“Dying Together generously integrates thirty years of community practice and reflection. Whether you are new to community death care or a seasoned educator, this book offers wisdom to deepen your journey and support your work. It is a valuable ally—and a top-shelf resource.”

Patrick Davis, MA

Hospice Chaplin & Emberlight: CCLD Community Education Director

“Dying Together is a deeply personal and compassionate offering drawn from decades of lived experience. Lee gently guides us to the grace and clarity that emerge from full presence with death and dying. Her wisdom-filled prose invites a mystical journey that is grounded, loving, and soulful.”

Amrita Grace

Author of Reclaiming Aphrodite and Dancing with Breast Cancer

“This book is a welcome and necessary contribution to a culture that still is mostly asleep to the problem of how we treat our dying and dead. The best possible criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Thanks to Lee for helping us get beyond “business as usual,” and see what it actually looks like when a community takes their dying and dead into their own caring hands.”

Katherine Savage

Death Midwife, Home Funeral Guide, and Edu-culturalist.

“Lee Warren leads us on a journey inspired by her personal experiences of community death care. The practical information and heartfelt stories inform us as individuals and as a community of humans in the ways of life, death, and grief. This book is a much-needed guide on the path of reclaiming community death care.”

Trish Rux, RN

End-of-Life Doula

“Dying Together reminds us that we have an opportunity to hold and be held. The season of our dying is the greatest truth serum I’ve ever known—for those who are dying and those who love and serve them. It is in our at-one-ment that we remember the way.”

Gregory Lathrop

Crossing Fire Chief/ Elder Council at Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living and Dying

“Dying Together is an invaluable resource to help us individually and collectively wrestle with—and celebrate—the great mystery of death. Lee Warren has devoted her life to exploring and pioneering cultural change, and I have no doubt this book will influence the evolutionary trajectory of how our culture meets dying as a sacred passage. May we take this gift into our hearts and souls.”

Steve Torma

Earthaven Ecovillage Elder & Former President, Nonviolent Communication Educator and Lifelong Activist

“This is the book I wished I had when my partner was dying. Full of mystery and grace, Dying Together has expanded my imagination around what death can be, both personally and collectively. It has radically changed how I will prepare for my own death as well as the ways that I will show up for others who are dying in my community.”

Susan Patrice

Community Arts Director, Makers Circle

“I so wish I’d had this book while caring for my husband as he was dying. It was during the pandemic, and I was completely isolated and alone. Lee Warren draws from a lifetime of community living and offers us a guide toward a more compassionate and connected experience around death and dying.”

Annice Brown

Business Consultant and Strategic Advisor

“In a time when death has become hidden and medicalized, Lee Warren invites us to remember an older human truth: that dying, like living, belongs in community. Drawing from lived experience at Earthaven Ecovillage, Dying Together offers a powerful vision for reclaiming death as a shared rite of passage—one that reconnects us to each other and to life itself.”

Cynthia Tina

Author of Intentional Community

“More than ever, people are remembering the importance of village life and death as a sacred rite of passage—essential elements that restore meaning to our lives. Drawing on decades of experience walking with both, Lee Warren offers a grounded and important guide for those called to steward this collective return. This is a book for our times.”

Hannah Fowler

Founder, School of the Red Skywalker

“I have known Lee Warren for nearly 20 years and have watched her live what she writes about in this book. She speaks from direct experience—walking alongside others in death, in community, and in the practical realities of end-of-life preparation. Having taken and co-facilitated classes with her, I know her to be deeply sincere in her care. Dying Together is a beautiful expression of her life’s work and a gift for these times.”

Mary Lane

Author of Divine Nourishment; Co-author of Plant Medicine for End-of-Life Care

“Lee Warren’s Dying Together is a seminal manifesto for how I choose to meet my own death. With humor, gentleness, and clarity, she shows us how to create nested circles of care and invite community into dying, death, and grief in ways that allow everyone involved to become ‘entrained, cohesive, and coherent.’ In my decades of working with the dying, I have seen how, when death is well supported by loved ones, the process transforms everyone involved. Lee’s book shows us how.”

Melody LeBaron

Author of Transforming Death

“Lee Warren is a fellow grower and intentional community member, and I recognize her worldview. Dying Together is an unflinching and valuable book, weaving philosophy, poetry, practical guidance, stories, and lived experience. She shows us how to shape our final chapter based on our own unique character, how grieving with others deepens our ability to embrace life, and how bringing a group together to give birth to a death bonds us more closely.”

Pam Dawling

Author of Sustainable Market Farming; longtime member, Twin Oaks Community

“My life work has been gathering people to heal in community. So this vision of dying at home, held within a circle—a community nest—brought me to tears. Yes, please! This is holy, wondrous work.”

David Cates

“Lee’s book takes the form of prose, yet I was sure I was reading poetry. The language soars—challenging, stimulating, transforming, and enriching. This book is clearly born of long and deep experience, from a woman whose life has courageously expanded to meet death in community while staying fiercely open to all emotions.”

Elana Kann

Urban Community Developer, Writer, and Sculptor

About the Author:

Lee Warren is a death educator, end-of-life preparation guide, and somatic practitioner.

She is a cultural pioneer and leading voice in reimagining intimacy with death as a pathway to ecstatic aliveness.

With over 30 years of experience living in intentional, land-based communities, Lee draws deeply from life at Earthaven Ecovillage in Southern Appalachia where she co-created regenerative systems for home-building, food production, renewable energy, and progressive self-governance.

Immersed in exploring more reverent ways to live, Lee also participated in collective approaches to death care, gaining firsthand knowledge of caregiving in a cooperative context, including at-home death care, home funerals, green burials, and community-based grief rituals.

Her work bridges the practical and the mystical, weaving embodiment, contemplative inquiry, and culture repair into a recipe for empowered living and dying.

Lee is the founder of Reclaiming Wisdom and Queen-of-Death.org, platforms offering education and resources. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.