Are You A Safe Place For Death?
5 Signs You Carry the Deathwalker Archetype
When I was a girl, my best friend’s mom worked as an RN at a nursing home and my idea of a dream playdate was going with her to work. My friend, Cory Ritchie, wasn’t as thrilled to spend the day “visiting” as I was, she preferred the neighborhood pool or making mud pies in the backyard, even Barbies if begged. But for me, there was nothing better than the linoleum halls and fluorescent lights of the nursing home.
As I started to answer the call into Deathwork, I wrote a letter to myself from Death. In my letter, I imagined that Death was a great Mother who was calling me to serve her children as they approached end-of-life. She showed me that she had been preparing me for this work, my whole life in fact, and those nursing home hallways were some of the earliest proof. Even as a girl, I’d been reading books to my elders, asking them about their lives and their personal recollections of history, coloring pictures to make their spaces cozier.
When I look back at my own life, the signs were there long before I had language for them. It wasn’t just my proclivity for senior centers as a child, there were other clues too: certain moments, curiosities, and encounters that kept appearing; small threads that, over time, wove themselves into a clear calling.
Now that I teach others how to walk this path, I see those same threads again and again.
One of the best parts of teaching holistic deathcare in an apprenticeship style is that I truly get to know each person I train in this sacred lineage. I hear their stories: how they first felt the pull toward death work, the moments that shaped their curiosity, the experiences that made them realize they might be meant to sit at the threshold with others, the deep capacity to walk through grief that we all seem to share.
The stories are often magical. And they share some strikingly common patterns. These patterns often point to something I call the Deathwalker archetype (as learned from the work of Dr. Sarah Kerr at The Center for Sacred Deathcare).
The Deathwalker Archetype
A Deathwalker is someone who is naturally oriented toward life’s thresholds, especially the final one.
Where others instinctively pull away from death, grief, or the unknown, the Deathwalker tends to lean closer. One of my favorite way to think of this is, “When others pull away, we lean in.” We’re not morbid or voyeuristic, that’s not what I mean. Rather, we see the reverence in the ending, the beauty in the decay, the sacredness of second half of life’s cycle. These are often the folks who find skulls and bones beautiful, who value buzzards as much as hummingbirds, that keep flowers past their blooms, that prefer a walk in a cemetery to a city street.
Across cultures and throughout history, communities have relied on people like this. Our lineage has always held midwives for birth, guides for dying, ritual keepers who help mark the passages between worlds. Today we might call these people death doulas, hospice companions, grief tenders, or spiritual caregivers. But at its heart, this calling often begins long before the training. It begins with a pattern of recognition: a sense that decline, death, endings, and transformation have always been part of your landscape.
Here are a few signs you may carry this archetype.
1. You’ve Always Been Curious About Death
Not in a dark or sensational way but in a reverent, wondering way.
Maybe you asked questions about death when you were young that made adults uncomfortable. Maybe you found yourself drawn to conversations about mortality, legacy, or what happens after we die. Perhaps you were like me and wanted to look into the coffin at the family funeral, to see what they body looked like when the spirit had left it. Or like my daughter, you kept an insect after its death to study its process of decay. It’s possible that you found a way to study death in your academic years. I look back on my twenty-year-old self, hand raised in philosophy class and wonder how no one nudged me closer to what was becoming obvious: my senior thesis was on the topic of Nothingness in Heidegger’s work. If you know Heidegger, you know his entire philosophy is built on the idea that man is eternally, a being-toward-death. Eureka!
You may embody the Deathwalker archetype if where others saw something frightening, you sensed something meaningful and you wanted to understand it. I’ve seen very young children have this curiosity around death so I’ve come to believe it’s a disposition we are born with. A few years ago, I had a pediatric client who died just before she turned 5. Her parents kept her dying process open to their community, which of course, held many children. As I sat beside sweet Ady’s bed, I was surprised at the differing dispositions. Some children approached her concerned and wanted to make sure she was tucked in and comfortable. Some were worried and hid behind their parent’s legs, peeking out quietly. Some stood solidly beside her toddler bed and sang her songs, rubbed her hand, and kissed her cheeks; these are the Deathwalker archetype as children.
2. People Come to You During Life’s Hardest Moments
Over time, you may have noticed a pattern. When people in your life are facing illness, grief, or profound transitions, they somehow find their way to you. Not necessarily because you have perfect answers, but because you know how to stay present when things get tender, uncertain, or heavy. You can sit with the hard things without rushing to fix them. That kind of presence is rare and it’s one of the core qualities of a Deathwalker.
A student told me once that everywhere she went, strangers would tell her their deathbed stories. While our work together was necessarily focused on boundaries and energetic cleansing, this doesn’t surprise me. We live in a world where half of humans want to focus on what is new, bright, and shiny. Where then do we go to feel seen when processing what is not? The Deathwalker might as well have a flashing button pinned to our chests, “Doesn’t scare easy.” This is truly the archetype: we aren’t afraid of the messy, the unstable, or the broken. In fact, we might prefer it.
Sometimes, when I tell the story of how I came to care for my great-aunt Sis at the end of her life, I’m stunned at the absurdity. Why did my 22-year-old self, in her last year of college, take on the responsibility of caring for a schizophrenic great-aunt who was homeless after Hurricane Katrina? Well … codependency. And also because for those of us with the Deathwalker archetype, the messy humanity does not deter us from answering the call of service. The absurdity is just a bonus.
3. You Feel Strangely Comfortable in Liminal Spaces
The Deathwalker archetype is strong in folks who can walk in liminal spaces comfortably. Are you the friend who visits the hospital? Do you go to every funeral that you can, in a time when few do? Voluntarily walk beside strangers in their most tender moments? This comfort in liminal spaces can extend into the ethereal or holy too.
Recently, my therapist asked me to imagine my safe space. The images that shuffled through my mind were of things few would consider safe: the cemetery at night that I used to live beside, the “reading room” in my grandmother’s assisted living center, a Bingo hall packed with old ladies chain-smoking, the quiet pew of the old French church St. Maurice New Orleans’ Bywater, incense lingering and candlelit.
Many people feel uneasy in these spaces and want to escape them as quickly as possible. But you may notice something different in yourself: a sense of calm, focus, or even purpose in the moments where something is ending and something else has not yet begun.
One night, as one of my students and I left the hospice residence where we volunteer together, a family member of a resident burst out through the front doors just behind us. “I don’t know how y’all come in here day after day,” he exhaled, “Place gives me the creeps.” His body physically shuddered as he shook off the willy-nillys. We shared a shrug and gazed up at the stars smiling. For the Deathwalker archetype, where others feel lost, you instinctively know how to walk with purpose.
4. You’re Drawn to Ritual, Ceremony, Meaning-Making, and the Mystical
Deathwalkers often feel pulled toward the sacred dimension of life. You may find yourself naturally drawn to ritual as a part of living: lighting candles, creating intentional spaces, turning to the elements, honoring transitions in ways that bring meaning to them.
One of the first assignments my students are asked to do is to build an altar to death. It’s remarkable how many already have built an altar of sorts. This is why I encourage them to focus the altar specifically on Death. For the Deathwalker archetype, life is a sacred endeavor and altars are everywhere. To build an altar to death is to remind yourself to show up to this calling and dedicate a portion of your devotion to cultivating your own relationship with Death.
Those with the Deathwalker archetype may also feel connected to mystery itself: the unseen, the symbolic, the spiritual layers of life and death. For many deathwalkers, death care is not just practical support. It is soul work. A student who finished my program last month sent me a beautiful thank you letter yesterday, “There is something about your spiritual-director style of leadership that feels both grounding and freeing,” he said. Often times, at the bedside of those who are dying or in my mentorship with students, my offering is as simple as ritual: a blessing over a body, an anointment of sacred oil, a meditation on the soul’s journey, a reminder to look for the signs they communicate with after death. Because to find the mystical in liminal spaces is both, as my student pointed out “grounding and freeing”.
The Deathwalker can intuitively share these skills with families we serve because our whole lives are oriented toward the mystical, often without our intent. These are often the people who do breathwork, have stable meditation practices, live in somatic worlds, and find themselves creating circles and gatherings to honor the earth’s balance and elements.
5. Strange Threshold Encounters Keep Finding You
This last sign of the Deathwalker archetype is one many people hesitate to talk about but I hear it all the time: dying animals crossing your path. Birds or butterflies in their final moments appearing in unexpected places. Encounters with death that seem almost… orchestrated. Maybe it happens often enough that you’ve quietly wondered: why does this keep happening around me?
One of my students found me after a series of animal deaths so profound, it could not be ignored. There was a deer that died near her home, a series of cats finding their way to her for their last days, bird bodies, butterflies, even the pets of friends. Finally she googled, “Death Doula Nashville” and showed up for our initial consult frazzled but curious, “I just need to know what this means?” she asked, “Why are all these animals finding me to die?” For the Deathwalker archetype, maybe Death is a safe place. In a world where the pace is always hurried and the focus is on the superficial, I believe that Deathwalkers attract what needs a steady, sacred space.
Whether we interpret these moments symbolically, spiritually, or simply as meaningful coincidences, they often leave a lasting impression. Sometimes it feels as though the threshold recognizes its own.
When the Call Appears
If you recognize yourself in these patterns, you’re not alone. Many people who feel called toward death work begin exactly this way: through a lifetime of subtle signals that eventually become impossible to ignore.
The question then becomes: what do you do with that calling?
If you’re curious about this path and want to explore it more intentionally, I created a gentle starting place. My Death Doula 101 mini-course walks through the foundations of death work and helps you understand what your next steps might look like if this path is calling you.
And if you’ve already answered that call but feel ready to go deeper, you can explore my Deathwalker Apprenticeship, a fully customizable, nine-month death doula certification program and mentorship container for those who want to deepen their practice.
Because there is one thing I know to be absolutely true about those of us who carry the Deathwalker archetype: We need each other. And I’m always here for support.
As our culture struggles to remember how to face death with dignity and meaning, the world needs people who are willing to stand at the threshold. People who can sit beside the dying. People who can hold grief with compassion. People who are not afraid of the sacred work of endings. People who can see the beauty and the perfection in seasons of decline and decay. People who can honor the signs from the spirit world on the other side, even if it gets us side-eyed by those who don’t hold respect for the unseen.
If you’re one of them, you’re in good company. And you don’t have to walk this path alone.
Jade Adgate is a death doula, educator, and advocate. Through her work at Farewell Fellowship, Farewell Education, and Farewell Library, she guides others in exploring mortality and cultivating understanding, reflection, wonder and care around life and death.
