LOS ANGELES — The typical culture around death is usually one of sadness and silence, but some women are leading a movement called death positivity. 

According to an organization called the Order of The Good Death, “people who are death positive believe that it is not morbid or taboo to speak openly about death. They see honest conversations about death and dying as the cornerstone of a healthy society.”

C.C. Boyce is the creator of handmade plant-urns, alternative vessels to house the remains of loved ones, that double as planters. Boyce is part of the death positivity movement, and her plant-urns are very popular for those seeking alternatives.

“Usually what I say is they’re geometric and they have a plant on top. And so you don’t really know what’s in there, so you can display it without having to talk about it,” Boyce said. “Not everyone is comfortable with death, and not everyone likes talking about it.”

In Chinatown, Jill Schock is a death doula. Like a birth doula helping mothers bring in life, Shock helps people transition out of life.

“There’s this interesting reclamation of how we’re going about death care,” Shock said. “We’re not interested in having the services in churches and boxes in the ground in the cemetery anymore. People are interested in saying goodbye before they go, donating their body, composting their body, doing green burial, aquamation, lots of things.”

The death positivity movement is said to have begun in the U.K. in the late 1970s, but picked up in popularity during the pandemic.