Online Death Cafes with Kristie West

By Kristie West

Online Death Cafe dates

*All times are GMT*

June

Wednesday 26th 8-9:30pm

Saturday 29th 6-7:30pm

July

Tuesday 2nd July 2-3:30pm

Saturday 6th July 9-10:30am

Further dates and times to come.


What the heck is a Death Cafe?

Well…straight from the Death Cafe website:

‘At Death Cafes people come together in a relaxed and safe setting to discuss death, drink tea and eat delicious cake. The objective of Death Cafe is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”.

Jon Underwood set up Death Cafe in 2011 based on the work of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz. Bernard offered ‘Cafe Mortels’ in Switzerland and France. Jon read of this in a newspaper article in November 2010. Jon was already developing a project to get people talking about death and immediately knew that Bernard’s vision clicked with his.’

In a nutshell, Death Cafes are free events and are a wonderful way to get a small group of people together in a relaxed environment, with a tea, coffee, piece of cake (seeing as we are online you’ll be providing your own drink and cake of course….unless you just want to sit and watch me eat and drink mine, which doesn’t sound like much fun) to have an open chat about a very important topic that people often avoid – death.

For these Death Cafes I take off my G.R.I.E.F Specialist hat and instead am a Death Cafe facilitator. That means that I will not be doing lots of talking, teaching, or any kind of coaching or grief support. That is not what this space is and if it is coaching or grief help that you are looking for then contact me at kristie @ kristiewest.com to find out how I can help you.

As a Death Cafe facilitator I will simply be opening and holding a space, and guiding conversation when necessary, to allow you to come and relax and chat openly with a small group about anything around death that you may want to….and eat some, hopefully yummy, cake.

I have attended and run many Death Cafes and each has been a very different and special experience with attendees constantly feeding back how relaxing, ‘normal’ and enjoyable these can be.

My Death Cafes will all be online and via Google Hangout at this stage. If you have yet to use Google Hangouts….don’t worry I’ve only just started using them myself. Once you are signed up I’ll send you instructions how to use it. The beauty of being online is that you can attend from anywhere in the world and from the comfort of your own sofa/bed/kitchen table.

There are also lots of different Death Cafes being run physically around the world too. You can check out www.deathcafe.com for all details.

I began holding these online Death Cafes in early June and (depending on demand) will intend to run at least one a week going forward. I’ll run them at a range of times as there has been a lot of interest from people all over the world. If none of my times fit your time zone let me know so I can consider different times for the future ones.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Kristie

xx


If you are interested in participating in any of the dates above or would like to be kept updated with my future online death cafe dates just get in touch via my website. I can only take 6 per group so get in touch quick to reserve your space!

PS to read about the first online Death Cafe I held earlier in June you’ll find my blog here.