Caitlin Doughty

Caitlin Doughty is the author, narrator, and main character of From Here To Eternity: Traveling The World To Find The Good Death. In addition to being a writer, Doughty is a mortician who owns and runs a nonprofit funeral home in Los Angeles called Undertaking LA. Doughty's philosophies about death rituals and deathcare subvert many traditional and conventional practices. She rejects the conventional and commercial Western death instrusriy which operates on a for-profit model. In addition, she disagrees with the professionalization of deathcare which excludes families from the process and results in a lack of death literacy.

Doughty believes that emotional and physical proximity to death are important parts of the mourning and grieving process. She sees Western society's death avoidance as an unfortunate consequence of the commercialization and professionalization of deathcare. She holds death professionals and average citizen alike responsible for reforming deathcare. She believes...