Member Profile

Jennifer Jurlando is a death doula, community educator, Reiki provider, and writer based in Richmond, Virginia. Her desire to build a mutual aid death care community led her to start the RVA Death Collaborative, a group that provides education, resources, and community support to people at end of life and to the bereaved. She regularly facilitates mock funerals, death cafes, and community education events and believes that mindful conversations and experiences about death make it possible to live life more authentically.
Jennifer has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a regular contributor to the University of Richmond’s Osher Institute. She leads grief support groups for preschoolers and in assisted living communities. Her writing on loss, survival, and worth has been published online and in the anthologies, Unspoken: Writers on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth, and Nine Lives: A Life in Ten Minutes Anthology. Her poetry collection, No Mistakes Were Made, was published in 2026 and she blogs on end-of-life issues on Patreon. Jennifer has a years-long ancestral veneration practice, facilitates monthly self-care ritual groups, and is driven to help people plan for the sacred space linking the end of life, death’s arrival, and body blessing rituals. Jennifer runs Thistle Community Death Care and provides Reiki services in Richmond, Virginia.