Caitlin Doughty, licensed mortician and founder of the Order of the Good Death, was born on a balmy August evening on the very un-morbid shores of O’ahu, Hawai’i.

Growing up in Hawai’i, Caitlin was an even tempered, bookish child. Her parents had little reason to believe that she would ultimately seek a life tiptoeing the line between the living and dead. It was only when she began to ask the pertinent questions that her parents began to suspect a proclivity towards the macabre. Example: “Mommy, if I was on the edge of that cliff and I fell off and on the way down screamed ‘Mommy, Mommy, I need you Mommy why won’t you help me’ and then smashed my body on the rocks, would you be sad?”