Time and Presence: the gifts of home funeral
Photo courtesy of Olivia Bareham, Sacred Crossings
If you are seeking the vital information you need to care for your own after death, the NHFA is here for you. Our directories will help you find those in service to guide you, from celebrants to home funeral guides to funeral professionals who will partner with you. We also provide all the tools you will need to conduct a home funeral on your own.
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Photo courtesy of Olivia Bareham, Sacred Crossings
A rapidly growing number of well-trained home funeral guides find a home here at the NHFA where we provide the latest information and opportunities to hone their skills. Many of our books, resources, conferences, and other activities are designed with home funeral guides in mind, to support you in this deeply heart-centered work.
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Photo courtesy of Donna Belk, Beyond Hospice
The mission of the NHFA is to educate and empower families and communities to care for their own dead. We seek to educate all who seek to know more about this time honored tradition. Whether looking for practical guidance or to read about others' personal stories, how to locate your state laws or learn how you can change one, we can help.
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Why Home Funerals?
Photo courtesy of Donna Belk, Beyond Hospice
Despite the rise in professional death care, it is and has always been legal in every state for families to care for their own loved ones at home from death to final disposition. Until the Civil War, funerals were family, church, and community affairs. The family washed and laid out the body, dressed or draped it, often with the help of a birth midwife and church members. Today there is renewed interest in reclaiming this right and privilege in ways that bring meaning and comfort to all. |
Photo courtesy of Amy Cunningham, Fitting Tribute Funeral Services
Home funerals invite family, friends, and community into an authentic and healing after-death care experience in a safe and familiar place, with care performed by loving hands. Families choosing home funerals express gratitude for the intimacy, connection, and sense of purpose that results from this organic and timeless practice. Taking the time out of our busy schedules to truly tend to the lives of those around us and be present to the loss begins the journey to healing. |
Photo courtesy of Jerrigrace Lyons, Final Passages
Though families are entirely in charge of their own home funerals, sometimes family members feel more confident enlisting the assistance of someone who has firsthand knowledge of the processes that are required. Home funeral guides are first and foremost educators, teaching the family how to prepare paperwork, care for the body, find related professionals, including funeral directors if desired, all with the purpose of meeting the families' unique needs and goals. |
T E S T I M O N I A L S
How We See Home Funerals
"Engaging hands and hearts, home funerals empower families and communities through their grief." |
— Char Barrett, A Sacred Moment, NHFA Founder and President
— Donna Belk, Beyond Hospice and NHFA Founder
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"No one can better tend to our departed than those who have known and loved them." |
— Elizabeth Knox, Crossings: Caring For Our Own at Death, NHFA Founder and President
"Home funerals are about taking time to absorb, to be part of a process that is intimate and authentic, to build community around profound loss. They are about responsibility and constitutional family rights and defining and strengthening where death lives in this culture." |
— Lee Webster, New Hampshire Funeral Resources, Education & Advocacy, NHFA President
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