Booking campus partners for 2026–27
The Living Room
The Living Room

For young adults, by young adults

We talk about death to better understand life

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Our offering

Death cafés for young adults

We talk about death to reflect on our life.

It is a non-hierarchical space, guided by the participants in the room.

We introduce games, facilitated conversations, and always with good food and drinks.

We do not bring in an agenda, nor pre-set conclusions—that is left to those in the room.

Campuses have therapists, chaplains, and career counselors. They rarely have a place for the in-between, where students can reflect on who they are, what they really value, and how they may use their early years to set themselves up for their “Good Life.”

A death café is an open conversation about death over something to eat and drink. It has no agenda and no conclusions to reach. It is not grief counseling or therapy. Learn more about death cafés ↗

Jenna Yeam
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My story

Talking about Death, taught me about Life

Hi! I'm Jenna.

I graduated high school in 2020, as the pandemic began. I took a gap year and spent it asking what this life is all about: who I am, what matters to me, and what I want to do with it. Like many people my age, I entered adulthood with an existential streak, and it stayed with me through college.

At Duke I tried hobbies, majors and social groups, and travelled alone over breaks. I was searching for my good work while trying to understand my good life. Early on I joined a research project that asked, what is dying well? It introduced me to death doulas, and later to death cafés. Studying death and talking about it became the fixed point I kept returning to.

For my senior thesis, Reclaiming the End: Death Doulas Shaping the American Dyingscape, I interviewed 67 death doulas, the people who sit with the dying.

I started going to death cafés and came to two conclusions. Death cafés are really cool and there should be more. And I was the only person under 30 in the room. So I hosted one on campus. Then two more.

Since graduating I have trained as a death doula and kept working with, and learning from, the professionals and activists trying to make the end of life more dignified.

Death cafés are a space for honest, raw, deeply human conversation. From my own experience and from my peers, I've learned how rare those spaces are right now. I didn't know I needed one until I was sitting in it. The Living Room is my invitation to pull up a chair.

The college tour · Fall 2026, Winter 2027, Spring 2027

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Where we're going · Southern California

Your campus?

Fall 2026Winter 2027Spring 2027

Open to colleges and universities across Southern California for the 2026–27 academic year.

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  • Two hours, with food and tea.
  • We open with ground rules: no judgment, respect, and silence is welcome.
  • Small groups of about seven, each with a peer who holds the space.
  • Question cards to start. After that, the conversation goes where students take it.
  • Open to any student. No experience with loss required.
  • A place to say out loud what many of them are voicing for the first time.
  • Conversation with peers outside their major and class year.
  • For pre-health students, an early look at their role in end-of-life care.
How we've done it so far

Versions we've played with

Small circles

Groups of five or six with a conversation facilitator. Free-flowing dialogue with very little structure.

Topic tables

Each table welcomed one topic, and people sat where they wanted to talk: personal experiences with loss, religion and the afterlife, or simply why they came.

Games

Attendees worked through a deck of cards with questions about death, mortality, and living and dying well.

What we've seen so far

Where we've been

Duke University

2024–2025Durham, NC
Students asked How do you treat your own death when you don't have a religious belief to rely on?
0RSVPs. The first two filled past capacity.
0out of 10, on average, when asked how likely they were to make time for another one

What students told us

Death is relational

Asked what a dignified death meant, more than a third of students answered in terms of other people, not themselves.

Talking about death becomes talking about how to live

Agency and a fulfilled life each came up in nearly a third of answers.

Legacy is about character, not accomplishments

Students cared less about what they would achieve than about who they would have been to the people around them.

In their words

“
Still not something I can describe, but it helped me to talk about it.
First-year student
“
Definitely didn't come out with an answer. If anything I have more questions!
Senior

Quotes come from anonymous post-event surveys and are shared with consent.

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Book a call and tell me your school, the department or club you'd partner through, and which term works: fall, winter or spring.

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