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We've been featured in news outlets all over the world. Read all about the work that we're doing.
Read all about the work we're doing to re-imagine our relationship with death and dying, life and living. We've been featured in the Guardian, Stylist Magazine, Vice and many more. In addition, Louise and Anna regularly write for national newspapers and magazines about death and dying. For all press enquiries, please get in touch.
“We’re Anna and Louise, an end-of-life doula and a progressive funeral director. Anna supports people who are living with life-limiting illness, their family and friends, helping people to live as good a life as possible right up until the very end. In her doula role, Anna also works with people who are grieving. Louise supports people to put together funerals that honour, heal and inspire. Our joint mission is to normalise death and dying as part of life and living. Over the last year, our work, both together and separately, has changed immeasurably.”
“Anna and Louise’s new book, the aptly named We All Know How This Ends, is a gentle treatise on not only why we find it so difficult to talk about death, but also offers practical, uplifting advice on how to talk about it openly with your friends and family, and how to reframe our own thoughts about the end of life. It shares the unforgettable stories of people Anna and Louise meet every day through their work.”
“Having the conversation when all of you are well, is completely different to when one of you is ill, says Anna Lyons. She advises trying to have that chat before it gets to that point, and to start having these conversations from a young age.”
As two professionals working ‘on the ground’ with death each day, the rise of young grief communities doesn’t surprise them. ‘There’s a real hunger. People want to talk about loss but many simply don’t know how to,’ says Louise. Their mission is to ‘redesign the dialogue around dying and grieving’ to make it more empowering. ‘If as a society we are repressed and not dealing with how we feel, this will feed into how we deal with death, too – whether that’s our own or a loved one’s.’ Next spring sees the publication of their book, also called Life.Death. Whatever, which draws on the lessons they’ve learnt from their unique careers.
“Popped your clogs, passed away, brown bread - there are so many euphemisms we use to say that someone has died. Two women who are encouraging us to talk more honestly about death are Anna Lyons and Louise Winters; a respective end of life doula, and a progressive funeral director who together founded Life Death Whatever. Anna and Louise share the importance of changing the dialogue surrounding death and all they have come to appreciate about being alive in this uplifting and touching episode.”
“Often I’m called in at diagnosis when there’s an element of disbelief and panic but sometimes it’s at the last minute when someone is actively dying. Their needs can change, too – someone who doesn’t require much support in the beginning can need a lot more assistance as their illness progresses.”
“Discovering Anna’s Instagram feed a few years ago was a lightbulb moment. I checked myself for recoiling at the word death and immediately understood her passion for improving, not only end of life care, but also the entire dialogue around death, after all its one of life’s certainties yet as a nation we are positivity adverse to talking about it. Here Anna gives us a glimpse into her unique career choice as and End of Life Doula and the profound things it has taught her.”
Clemmie Telford
"I’m meeting the pair at their first exhibition, Life, Death, Whatever, and it’s full of so many people we’ve had to take refuge in a wardrobe at the top of the building. I’m surprised there’s such an appetite for death – there are whole families wandering around the space below us – but both Winter and Lyons, who met on Twitter in 2015, are keen to educate people on this great unknown."
“Some of the exhibits are light and playful, others are quite intense. We want people to take some time to explore and reconsider their relationship with mortality and give everyone an opportunity to explore their emotions around death in a way that's accessible and friendly,” Winter says. “We'd like visitors to leave the exhibition having realized that death isn't something to be avoided, but to be considered, explored, and acknowledged. Then we can all get on with our lives with an awareness that we're not going to be here forever, so we should make the most of today.”
“We talked about death and dying. From arranging funerals and the creative ways you can do it, to end-of-life care and how wonderful hospices in the UK are, to the best way to support someone when they are grieving the loss of a loved one, to the importance of us all getting more used to death by talking about it.”