About TalkDeath

What is TalkDeath?

TalkDeath encourages generative conversations around death and dying. We are the hub for death-conscious education, advocacy, and community.

Our Guiding Principles

Education

From death care history and cultural practices, to sustainable disposition, funeral law, and grief resources, TalkDeath enables you to make informed end-of-life choices and bridges the gap between death care providers and the general public.

Advocacy 

We advocate for agency in both life and death for all peoples, especially equity-deserving groups and individuals. We fight for structural reforms in end-of-life fields that prioritize the dying and their loved ones, and foster inclusive death-conscious, grief literate spaces.

Equity

Death, dying, and bereavement do not exist in a vacuum; how we die is influenced directly by social, cultural, and political structures. We approach the inequities present in death using multifaceted and diverse lenses, and champion death care workers anchoring their communities.

Community

TalkDeath is a community that uplifts, affirms, and engages with mortality and grief directly, empathetically, and without reservation. Through our online forums and community events, we create spaces that connect individuals and encourage them to participate in community care.

Mandy Benoualid

Co-Founder / Editor
Mandy [she/her] is the co-founder and editor of TalkDeath, and co-host of the #TalkDeath webseries. She is also the founder and President of the online memorial platform, Keeper. Mandy’s work has appeared in national and international publications, she has been a featured presenter at professional funeral and cemetery conferences and was recently featured as an industry innovator by American Funeral Director Magazine. Mandy works part time as a Funeral Director’s Assistant, and plays music in her free time.

Jeremy Cohen

Co-Founder / Editor & Site Designer
Jeremy Cohen [he/him] is the co-founder and co-editor of TalkDeath. He is a full-time PhD candidate in Religious Studies at McMaster University, exploring the intersections of death, health and technology in contemporary North American society. His research focuses on how personal experiences with death shape the worldview of individuals seeking radical-longevity, as well as the historical and cultural framework of changing North American relationships to death and dead bodies over the past two centuries. Jeremy Cohen’s work is informed by the philosophy of technology as it relates to Western relationships to death, nature and technological progress.

Sage Agee

Social Media Manager & Staff Writer
Sage Agee [he/they] is TalkDeath’s Social Media Manager and Staff Writer. He is a certified Death Doula and runs a small-scale trans community farm called Phototaxis Farming Project. His writing focuses on death positivity, gender identity, sexuality, and parenting. He has written for The Washington Post, Insider, Parents Magazine, and more. Most of the time he is covered in dirt and looking for cool bugs.

Francis Lafreniere

Programmer
Francis [he/him] is our developer extraordinaire. Working with Keeper and TalkDeath since day one, he helped build the platform from scratch and has been closely involved with its evolution over the past four years. Francis manages our website backend, implements our (often overzealous) web design and makes sure everything is running smoothly.

TalkDeath’s History

Keeper (formally Qeepr) is an online memorial platform and cemetery wayfinding app that offers free tools to preserve, share and discover life stories of deceased loved ones. Keeper’s Blog was established in 2014 with the hopes of building a community around Keeper’s users and the death-positive community. “Qeepr Blog” eventually outgrew its humble start, and is now TalkDeath (i.e. the website you are currently on. Hi!).

Keeper is focused on making digital memorialization simple, yet meaningful. We invite you to try out the site by creating a free memorial for a loved one where you can preserve their life story, build their family tree, invite friends to add their personal stories, share photos and remember those who are dearly missed. Oh, and you can also create your own memorial to write out your own obituary, important milestones and assign someone you trust (your Keeper) to publish it once you die.

Try Keeper Free Here