About Sarafina
BIO
Sarafina (they/them) began their deathwork journey on the Olympic Peninsula, after an intimate experience of supporting a loved one through Medical Aid in Dying - filled with ritual and planning and connection with the land, and discovering deathcare as a soul calling.
The path took Sarafina from coast to coast working in conservation burial, home funeral care, bedside VSED support, and end-of-life community organizing including the founding of the Dying Matters Guild nonprofit. They have a thesis work on the intersection of death care, ancestral healing, and collective liberation, called Body As A Future Offering, and facilitate interactive performance pieces with the project Tunnels of Light, which invites people to get close to mortality, with its fecund regenerative decay and spiritual mysteries. Through weaving community webs of care around death and dying, they believe in creating healthy culture in the margins of oppressive systems.
Sarafina currently is in the process of getting licensure as a nature-based therapist, and collaborating on a number of projects including a film about grass roots death care, working with the Olympic Wildlands Burial Ground, and doing doula trainings in Spain. They have a passion for bringing access and the sacredness of death care back into the hands of the people and the land.
TRAINING
Death Doula Certification
Going with Grace - 2021
Conservation Burial Internship
Herland Forest Natural Cemetery - 2021
Deathwalker Archetype Training
Soul Passages - 2019
End of Life Doula Training
International End of Life Doula Association - 2017
EDUCATION
Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling
Saybrook University - 2022 - present
Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability and Decolonial Sexuality Studies
Goddard College - 2017 - 2020
Sarafina is also on the board of directors for the Olympic Wildland Burial Grounds, a conservation cemetery with the Jefferson County Land Trust
Let’s connect
Services are offered on hourly basis, with package options for larger time commitments.
Sliding scale available for BIPOC, low income, trans/queer people and anyone unable to access resources or care. I believe in futures born from collective accountability and care, please reach out if you are in need and we can collaborate.
Contact Sarafina for more information or to schedule a free 20 minute consultation.
“This summer, I had the opportunity to meet Sarafina Landis in person, spend time with her, and interview her. Sarafina lives on the Olympia Peninsula in the state of Washington, a place in the northwest of the United States where dense coniferous forests meet a rugged and rocky coastline dotted with cliffs, bays, and fjords that are home to seals, gray whales, and orcas.
The first time I came to this place was in 2018, somewhat by chance. I was traveling to Montana to be with a sick friend. I had booked a cheap flight with a layover in Seattle, which required me to spend 24 hours there. So, her friends, Lex and Lindsey, welcomed me for a night and a day.
To get to their house, I had to take the ferry from Seattle to Port Haddock. That night, as we dined on freshly picked vegetables from their garden, they showed me a picture on their phone of a mother orca carrying her dead baby on her snout, circling and showing the corpse of her child for 17 days in the waters of Seattle Bay. Our first conversation revolved around death, grief, and the wisdom of non-human animals.”