However, the ideas behind the movement have existed much longer. The Order of the Good Death website lists the beliefs of the death-positive movement as being that cultural censorship of death and dying does more harm than good, that open discussions about death should be accepted as a natural human curiosity, that families should have full rights to care for the bodies of their loved ones without intervention from funeral businesses, and that end of life care should be diversified and performed in ways that cause less damage to the environment than our current practices. The movement also strongly encourages participants to speak to their families about their own end of life wishes, even if they are young and healthy, and is critical of the commercialized funeral industry. It also encourages people to express their feelings about death through art. Other organizations such as Going with Grace, founded by death midwife Alua Arthur, are contributing to the movement through their online courses and End of Life Training Program. In 2021, Alua and Caitlin launched a new online course, Mortal, giving an opportunity for students to explore their own mortalities. End Well, founded by physician and film producer Shoshana R. Ungerleider, hosts an annual conference and media platform to highlight solutions to make the end of life experience more human-centered. Death Over Dinner, founded by restaurateur and author Michael Hebb along with Angel Grant, is an organization that encourages people to have dinner parties to talk about mortality which has facilitated more than 200,000 dinners.
