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Founder & Projects
Death Walker | Ritualist | Artist | Community Educator
I’m Chi Chi Menendez, founder of The Dying Well and a practising Deathwalker, based in Mullumbimby on Arakwal Country in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. I offer non-medical, compassionate support for individuals and families navigating the end of life. Whether you are planning ahead, actively dying, or caring for someone who is, I provide practical preparation, emotional presence, ceremony, and connection to trusted local services. My role is to walk beside you during this time, offering care that is gentle, grounded, and attuned to your unique needs and beliefs.
My call to death care work emerged from personal experience, after the sudden death of my brother. It was an initiation into death and through my grief I entered what Jungians might call the dark night of the soul. The journey did not lead to closure, but to a deeper path of service one that honours death as both sacred and human.
I work from a spiritual, interfaith perspective that honours all belief systems and worldviews. My approach is inclusive, non-judgmental, and centred on the dignity and autonomy of each person. I believe everyone deserves presence, clarity, and care at the end of life, and that communities are strengthened when we meet death with openness, respect, and compassion.
Approach
My approach is grounded in presence, ritual, and reverence. As a death coach, guide, and ritual practitioner, I offer support that is practical, poetic, and deeply personal. I hold space for people to meet death, grief, and transition with clarity and care.
My work weaves together end-of-life guidance, spiritual companionship, and ceremony. Whether through ritual, storytelling, or tarot as a tool for reflection, I support individuals and families in navigating the emotional, psychological, and sacred dimensions of dying. I work from an interfaith, non-judgmental perspective that honours each person’s beliefs, identity, and lived experience.
While my practice is informed by extensive training in death care and spiritual support, it is rooted most deeply in lived experience and a conscious commitment to move at the pace of presence, not urgency. I create a space for people to meet death with clarity, courage, and care. Where people can explore death as a natural part of life and engage with it as a threshold of meaning, mystery, and transformation.
How I work
As a Ceremonialist and Ritualist, I create and facilitate personalised ceremonies to support grief, remembrance, and transition. These may take place before a funeral, after a death, or even years later. I believe ritual can be a powerful tool for healing and reconnection.
I also work closely with individuals and families on end of life planning and legacy work, helping them reflect on and express the meaning of their lives through ritual, story, and creative acts of remembrance.
Training & Studies
Death Walker Training Natural Death Care Centre with Zenith Virago (2022)
Consultation & Celebrancy Training Natural Death Care Centre (2023)
Ceremony Masterclass Natural Death Care Centre (2023)
The Tibetan Book of The Dead Andrew Holecek (2024)
Grassroots Community Death Care Leader Australian Home Funeral Alliance (2025 )
Sacred Death Care Training Sacred Centre for Death Care (ongoing)
Ritual Healing for Grief & Loss (2025)
Community Ceremony Masterclass Zenith Virago (2025)
Tarot, Myth & Ritual Work
Projects
Community Talks & Workshops
THE DYING WELL PODCAST / Interviews with death workers, artists, and spiritual practitioners
DEATH CONVERSATIONS Free community gatherings fostering death literacy through open dialogue
DEATH MATTERS / End of Life planning & Death Literacy Workshops
RITUAL & THE ART OF FAREWELL/ Creative Ritual Workshop
DEATH & DYING EXPO / An annual public event in Mullumbimby connecting community with resources
MULLUMBIMBY DEATH CAFE/ A welcoming space for informal discussions about death
Creative Practice
I maintain a multidisciplinary art practice grounded in themes of grief, mythology, ritual, and transformation. My photography and performance work explore the intersections of death, beauty, and the natural world often engaging with earth-based materials and site-specific installations as part of personal and collective healing. I believe art has the power to restore what cannot be spoken and to create meaning in the wake of loss.
UNDERLAND: An ongoing fine art photography and Ritual performance series exploring grief and mythic underworlds
Ritual Objects Studio
Ritual Objects Studio was co-founded by Chi Chi Menendez and her husband Jim Preece.
Ritual Objects is primarily a ceramic studio dedicated to creating vessels that hold memory, meaning, and transformation. Our work sits at the intersection of art, craft, and ritual, an exploration of what it means to honour grief, mortality, and the enduring presence of those we’ve lost.
We craft ceremonial vessels and urns designed for both public ritual and private remembrance. Drawing on the tradition of memento mori, objects that remind us of death, we create pieces that invite reflection, reverence, and emotional intimacy.
Each piece is one-of-a-kind, formed slowly by hand using traditional techniques and experimental processes. Our practice embraces imperfection and earth-based materials as metaphors for the human condition, fragile, resilient, and forever marked by the stories we carry.
Ritual Objects is not just a studio, but a virtual space for mourning, myth-making, and meaning-making. We believe that art has the power to transform grief, and that beautiful, intentional objects can become companions in the rituals of letting go, remembering, and healing.
Let's Connect
If you’re looking for someone to walk beside you, create and facilitate ritual, or help make meaning through ceremony or art, I’d be honoured to work with you.
Let’s connect.