“I don’t feel it’s my job to give answers. I take the hand of someone and walk with them to their own answer. Our realities are subjective, and what matters is what well means to you.”
Elayne has died before. She has pulled people back from the edge as a paramedic. She has watched families disappear from bedsides. And she has sat in the silence with the people who had no one left. She is not here to tell you how to grieve. She is here to walk beside you, and stay.
Elayne Sallemi
Death Doula
EMT / Paramedic
Pagan Ritualist
Mediator
My message
Best friends with death.
Elayne Sallemi has been walking alongside death her entire life. She clinically died at age ten after a car accident fractured her skull. She was gone for two minutes. She came back, and death never left her side.
Since then she has survived cancer, a plane accident, and physical assault. She spent years as an EMT and paramedic in New York City, pulling people back from the edge every shift. And somewhere in all of that she realized: she couldn’t prevent death every time, but she could be the person who held your hand when it arrived.
She brings all of it to the bedside: the clinical training, the pagan roots she was raised in, the HR mediation expertise, the entomologist who teaches children that dead things can still be beautiful. Every piece of her life has been preparation for this work.
The people who find their way to Elayne
The dying & their families
People who want a human presence at the end, not just a medical one. Someone to hold the sacred space, facilitate conversation, and make sure no one is scared and alone when it matters most.
Families in conflict
When death surfaces old wounds: siblings stop speaking, inheritance creates division, and grief becomes a battleground. Elayne mediates with the skill of a trained HR professional and the compassion of someone who has held deathbeds.
Those seeking ritual
People who want more than a funeral home service. Green burials, pagan rites, shroud viewings. Sacred ceremonies that honor the way the person lived, not just the fact that they died.
Caregivers at the edge
The ones who held everyone else through the dying process and never got held themselves. Elayne has been the caregiver. She knows what it costs. She holds space for the people who gave everything.
Veterans & elders alone
Elayne has sat with veterans who had no one left. Elders whose families stopped coming. People whose last chapter deserves witness, not indifference. She stays when others leave.
Children & death education
As an entomologist, Elayne teaches children about the cycle of life using preserved specimens, showing them that dead things can still be beautiful, that decomposition feeds new growth, and that death is part of nature.
Right for you if…
If any of these are true, you’re in the right place.
- You want someone at the bedside who isn’t afraid of death, because she has already died and come back
- You want a green burial, a pagan ceremony, or a ritual that honors a tradition the mainstream ignores
- You’re looking for a guide who brings the whole spectrum: clinical crisis training, spiritual rootedness, and a deep belief that death is not something to fear
- You need family mediation during a loss; not legal intervention, but someone who can hold the room with neutrality and heart
- You’re a caregiver who has been holding everyone, and you need someone to finally hold you
- You want your children to understand death as a natural part of life, not something hidden from them
How I work
Elayne doesn’t follow a script. She follows the person. Whether she’s sitting bedside at three in the morning, mediating a family meeting, or guiding someone through a Norse burial rite, she meets you exactly where you are. Her approach draws on a decade of emergency medicine, a lifetime of pagan practice, and the hard-won knowledge that every person’s version of "dying well" is different. Her job is to help you find yours.
Resources & education
You don’t have to carry it alone.
Otherside Life coordinates; care is provided by the practitioner.