Death doula | Experience designer | founder
Hi, I'm Melissa Lapena and I'd be honored to walk beside you.
It's that simple.
As a full-time Death Doula and the founder of Living Your Best End, I support individuals and families wherever they are on their end-of-life journey. I believe every person deserves to feel safe, seen, and supported — no matter their age or health.
I serve as a willing witness, helping you reflect on your life and experience meaningful moments that honor your values, relationships, and truths. I create supportive spaces where you can simply be —without the pressure, expectations, or beliefs you have to have everything figured out.
My role is to gently hold space for exploration: of fears and hopes, of wishes and priorities, of curiosities and uncertainties about death and dying. With grounded, heart-centered support, we can work together to name what matters most to you and create plans and moments that reflect who you truly are — right up to the very end.
People often describe me as warm, steady, and pragmatic. I believe connection comes before perfection, that meaning matters more than formality, and that grief — when tended gently — becomes love transformed.
What's a Death Doula?
Death Doulas (or End-of-Life Doulas) support individuals and their loved ones before, during, and after death.
Our role is non-medical and holistic, attending to emotional, spiritual, and practical needs. We complement hospice and medical care by offering presence, clarity, and continuity.
Death Doulas help people clarify priorities, strengthen their sense of agency, and cultivate peace and dignity through all stages of care.
Through my own experience with personal loss and grief, I found my life’s calling.
My path into end-of-life care began in 2016 when my father died unexpectedly.
In that moment — and in many that followed — I felt unmoored and ill-prepared, both emotionally and spiritually, as well as practically. The world around me kept moving as if nothing had changed, and I did what many of us do: I buried my grief and tried to “be fine” until I couldn’t anymore.
I struggled to understand why everything felt so hard. My loss wasn’t unique — death touches us all — yet we’re rarely taught how to meet it, or how to support each other through the grief that accompanies it.
Where were the tools?
The conversations?
The compassion?
Over time, I realized that something had been planted in that moment — a seed of change. One that grew slowly, quietly, and then all at once. I began to see how loss reshapes us, how identities shift, how families reorganize around absence, and how every person’s grief is uniquely their own. No two lives, losses, or loves are the same...so why would grief?
As my grief softened and changed, it revealed unexpected, tender, transformative gifts. I learned that acknowledging our mortality doesn’t diminish life; it deepens it. The time we have before we die — however long or short — is still living. We deserve to define its quality and have our choices honored with intention, connection, and agency. And lastly, I discovered helping people make meaning in that sacred stretch of time — through living funerals, legacy work, celebrations of life, bucket-list wishes, or quiet moments that shape how we’re remembered — nourished my soul.
In my early 40s, I stepped fully into this work, recognizing that my grief had been preparing me for it all along.
Today, I feel deeply privileged to support individuals and families who want to approach the end of life — and the life they’re living now — with intention, creativity, and a sense of agency. My work helps people reflect on their lives, clarify their wishes, explore fears and hopes, and create meaningful plans and moments that honor who they truly are — all the way to the end.
Love. Loss. Legacy. They’re already part of your unique story.
I’d be honored to help you tell it.