…I know it’s snuck up on me, many times. Think about all that we’ve all been through, just in the last handful of years. The people we’ve lost, the transitions we’ve been through (because loss isn’t just about physical death.) Sometimes, a person “dies” many times while they are still alive, transforming, reshaping, rebirthing.

My name is Katy Swallow, and I’m a transition ritualist, death doula, herbalist, energy worker and animistic spirit worker.

Life is not static. And neither are we. And in order to rebirth, we have to move through a process of dying, and grieving, but this culture doesn’t like to talk about that part.

This culture, it’s lost so many of its skills for navigating transitions of all kinds. We’ve lost the concept of community, of moving through challenges, together. Gathering our allies, making space for their voices, and making space for human wholeness.

We’ve lost our connection to Earth as source.

We’ve lost traditions, and we’ve lost our magic.

That’s what Death’s Door is all about.

Modern spirit work, modern dying, modern grieving, modern rebirthing, and all the ways our ancestral magic can teach us how to do it.

I didn’t know I was a transition ritualist, or death worker, until I had to be, until grief called me up.

The pieces came together slowly, like the cards of a tarot reading, each one selected, seemingly at random, yet not at all. Woven from ancestral stories and rituals, echoing voices from the layers of time, all of them saying…some sit with us (the ancestors). Come sit with her (Earth). The future is now. Your home is here. There is nothing to ascend, and our physical bodies were created as a part of this place, in this lifetime, to savor everything that life has to offer, including loss, grief and rebirth.

My energy work is divination, spirit communication, storytelling, drumming, movement, sound, herbal work, ancestral hand crafts. My colleagues are land spirits, rivers, mountains, trees, birds, land animals, the blessed dead, and the old “gods.”

My work is intentionally anti-supremacy, anti-patriarchal, and supportive of queer people and ancestors, because my work is always focused on supporting our human wholeness. Until all of us are free to be whole, the work is not done. Anything less would be unethical in healing work.

I don’t do “new age” work, or “ascension,” and I don’t believe that we are meant to be anywhere but where we are, on this Earth, in human bodies, learning to process our trauma, learning to embrace our wholeness, grieving fully, reconnecting with our bodies, and building community with one another.