Death Doula & Grief Companion
Elayne Sallemi is a death doula and grief companion who spent years working as an EMT and paramedic in New York City before moving her practice to end-of-life care. She clinically died at age ten and has since survived cancer, a plane accident, and physical assault - experience she brings directly into the room with dying people and the families around them. Her work draws on trauma-informed crisis training, a background in HR mediation for resolving family conflict during a death, and her practice as a green witch rooted in the pagan and Italian Strega traditions she was raised in, which she now teaches through nature-based ritual, green burial guidance, and ancestor work. She teaches a seasonal course on green witchcraft and nature-based death care, and writes for Otherside Life on vigil-holding, green burial, deathbed herbalism, and Italian folk death rites.
8 pieces published with Otherside Life.
The Old WaysSep 3, 2026
Most death doula training teaches the logistics beautifully and skips the sacred entirely. On the gap in modern doula training, and why nature-based practice fills it.
The Old WaysSep 1, 2026
We've forgotten how to sit with the dying. A death doula on what a vigil actually asks of you, and how to hold space for someone in their final days.
The Old WaysAug 29, 2026
Why green burial is, for many families, the thing that finally feels honoring instead of processed — the old way of returning a body to the earth, explained by a death doula.
The Old WaysAug 25, 2026
Long before hospitals, the village strega came to the deathbed with plants in her hands. A death doula on the herbal death care we forgot we had, and why it still works.
The Old WaysAug 20, 2026
On Stregheria, the indigenous Italian folk-magic tradition, and what it teaches about ancestor veneration, home altars, and the sacred rites of dying and leaving.
The Old WaysJul 27, 2026
Elayne Sallemi on what it actually means to be a green witch: an ancestral, plant-based approach to death care, why she covers mirrors, what is in her apothecary bag, and what a full green burial…
VideoJul 21, 2026
Elayne Sallemi was clinically dead for two minutes as a child. On what she has seen since, and why she calls death itself her guardian angel.
Grief in the BodyJun 11, 2026
On grief in summer: what the science actually says, and why loss feels louder when the world insists on being beautiful.
Clinicians, doulas, funeral professionals, and people who have been through it. If you know something families need to know, we want to publish it.
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