INTRODUCING
The Nightside Planning Studio
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Discover a thoughtful end‑of‑life planning tool that helps you clarify your wishes, understand your options, and organize your documentation.
A different way to plan for death
MORE THAN JUST PAPERWORK
End-of-life planning is often treated as filling out forms, checking boxes, and getting it over with ASAP. But those plans are of limited use when decision-makers face situations that weren’t reflected in those checkboxes, or are left with unanswered questions.
Our platform takes the opposite approach, inviting you to slow down and engage in a deeper process of reflection. It’s designed to help you explore your values, start meaningful conversations with loved ones, document your plans with confidence, and reduce fear and uncertainty.
DESIGNED FOR REALITY
Death planning doesn’t happen in a day. It typically unfolds in scattered moments over time: a chat you had last week, an option you learned today. This platform automatically saves and organizes your notes as you go, helping you shape them into useful outputs, and creating a flexible plan that changes with you.
Start with practical details, or by reflecting on what a good death means to you. There’s no prescribed place to begin—we’ll meet you where you are.
USE ALONE AND TOGETHER
Communicating your wishes clearly to the people in your life is just as important as having legal documentation in order. Designed for flexibility, any activity on this platform can be done alone or with others: you might do some solo reflections during your subway commute; play a conversation game at the dinner table; or fill out paperwork as part of a bigger discussion with your family.
The included activities can help you understand each other, start important conversations, and deepen connections.
By leaning into curiosity and addressing the emotional as well as the practical, death planning can provide clarity and comfort, both for you and the people in your life.
Work through guided activities that help you imagine what a good death looks like for you, clarify how your values translate into real choices, and consider what you want to leave behind. Taking the time to reflect will help ensure your plans are grounded in what matters most to you.
As you go, the Planning Studio organizes your materials and tracks your progress so that it’s easy to create a practical plan.
PLAN WITH INTENTION
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LIVE WITH PEACE OF MIND
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PLAN WITH INTENTION ✹ LIVE WITH PEACE OF MIND ✹
What’s included in the Planning Studio
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Reflection Prompts: Explore your experiences, beliefs, and what a good death means to you.
Values & Fears Ranking: Clarify what matters most at the end of life.
Scenario Navigator: Work through realistic illness scenarios and think through different choices.
Legacy Map: Explore the moments that have shaped your life, and consider what you want to leave behind.
Deathcare Trivia: Test and build your knowledge about your rights and options.
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Healthcare Wishes: What happens to your body after you die, including legal requirements, options, and final arrangements.
Deathcare: What happens to your body after you die, including legal requirements, options, and final arrangements.
Wills + Estates: What to include in your will and other estate planning resources.
Legacy: The practice of consciously reflecting on what you want to leave behind, and doing that reflecting while you’re still here to shape it.
Personal Admin: Organizing the important personal details of your life, including your accounts, passwords, contacts, and digital presence.
Ritual + Ceremony: Crafting traditions, designing memorials, and exploring ways to honor your values and story.
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Easily find all your activity outputs, notes you’ve captured, and document templates to fill out. You can export a complete version of your planning at any time.
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Regulations and options vary widely by province. This platform makes it easy to understand what applies wherever you live.
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End-of-life planning is not a one-and-done activity. You can return to the platform to review and update as your relationships, priorities, and circumstances change.
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Clarify what matters most to you at the end of life, with activities like Values and Fears Ranking.
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Learn what rules apply where you live, including options, regulations, and considerations specific to your province.
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Track your progress against practical tasks.
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Walk through realistic scenarios and weigh different choices.
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Fill in practical details, like contacts, accounts, and passwords, that rarely get written down but make a huge difference.
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Build documents from thinking you’ve already done. Your notes and activity work surface right beside each question, so you don’t have to start with a blank page.
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Find all your stuff in one place.
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Export and share your materials when you're ready.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The Planning Studio is designed for all Canadians looking to plan ahead. Anyone 18+ should have an end-of-life plan. The best time to start is now!
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$179 CAD (+HST) gets you lifetime access to the platform.
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No. This is not a platform to write your will or other legal documents. The platform provides information about legal requirements and links to external resources and templates for you to create wills, powers of attorney, and so on, and enables you to track your progress on them and document their location.
We do provide templates to supplement legal documents, including documents regarding your wishes, and practical documents covering contacts, personal admin, devices and passwords, and more.
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No. The platform treats everything you create as private by default. The only way for others to see your materials is if you export and share them yourself, and we encourage you to do so.
The platform also requires you to name a Legacy Contact, who can reach out to us if something happens to you and receive a limited selection of materials you’ve created. They do not have access to any of your materials while you are alive.
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We appreciate that end-of-life planning is a highly sensitive topic and have taken care to design the system in a way that protects your information.
Some of the practical documents ask for details that are sensitive even by the standards of this work, e.g. account numbers and passwords. You add those fields at the moment you export, so your completed document has everything in one place while the platform itself never holds that information.
See our Privacy Policy for more details.
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The Planning Studio was designed for individuals and families planning for themselves. However, if you’re a death doula, facilitator, clinician, or organization interested in using it in your work, including potential white-label uses, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out at rebecca@thenightside.net
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Reach out to contact@thenightside.net any time with questions, feedback, or if you need a hand. We’re happy to help.
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The Planning Studio is designed by Dr. Rebecca Pardo, an anthropologist, technologist, and death doula with nearly two decades of experience in research, design, and technology. Learn more about why she created this platform here.