Adaire Petrichor

The Heart of Dying Project

Adaire Petrichor answered the call to accompany the seriously ill and dying professionally in 1989 — a calling that had been quietly shaping her long before that, and one she has honored with deepening devotion across more than three decades of practice.

A Serious Illness & End-of-Life Doula, Adaire is the founder of Petrichor House, a care management practice rooted in belonging — offering compassionate, non-medical, community-based palliative and hospice advocacy. She is also the creator of The Heart of Dying Project®, the community leg of Petrichor House, dedicated to building compassionate circles of care around those who are dying and the families who love them. A part-time Instructor in Family & Community Medicine at NEOMED, she co-teaches The Sacred Art of Dying: Compassionate End-of-Life Care alongside a hospice physician — bringing the human, non-medical dimensions of dying into the heart of clinical education.

What has always set Adaire apart is her conviction that the gap in end-of-life care is not simply medical — it is cultural. She recognized early that conversations about death had been pushed into hospital corridors and divided among death specialists, rather than embraced as the universal, deeply human experience it is. Her response was to bring death back into the community through every sense and every door available: founding the Cleveland Coffin Club, creating Soul Shroud Sewing Circles, hosting Caregiver Cafes and Courageous Conversations on death and dying through local libraries, participating in the national Reimagine End of Life festival, and designing and teaching volunteer doula programs through local hospices. Her approach has always been rooted in creative and visual literacy — inviting people to engage their imagination as a genuine tool for preparing for the end of life.

She has been described by those she has served as bringing “not only deeply kind and knowledgeable care, but a creative, spiritual awareness and guidance for the entire family that truly opens them emotionally to each other” — because she believes that no one should have to carry this time alone. Adaire is currently developing Community HeartWork™, a community-based volunteer end-of-life doula app designed to weave compassionate care networks into the fabric of everyday life, and has several books in the works.

Adaire Petrichor
Serious Illness & End-of-Life Doula
Petrichor House

The Heart of Dying Project®
Cleveland Heights, Ohio