Peaceful Exit podcast host Sarah Cavanaugh draws on eight years of research to help readers plan a peaceful goodbye, break the cultural taboo around end-of-life conversations, and bring more meaning to life right now — on sale October 27, 2026
SEATTLE — Research shows that the vast majority of us, upwards of 90 percent, will have time to think about and plan a peaceful goodbye. Yet most of us never do: nearly three in four Americans don’t even have a will, according to a 2026 national survey. In PEACEFUL EXIT: A Guide to Reimagining Your Final Chapter (October 27, 2026), author and podcast host Sarah Cavanaugh offers a warm, practical, and surprisingly life-affirming guide to the conversation Americans avoid most: how we want to live and how we want to die.
Written with national best-selling collaborator Lynya Floyd, Peaceful Exit grows out of Cavanaugh’s eight years of research, her experience co-teaching the live online “Peaceful Exit” course, and intimate interviews from her acclaimed Peaceful Exit podcast, downloaded more than 57,000 times worldwide, featuring guests such as Anne Lamott, Mary Roach, and Oliver Burkeman. Woven throughout are stories and advice from dozens of experts, along with people at every stage of the journey toward their own peaceful exit.
“I help people talk about what matters most — before it’s too late,” says Cavanaugh. “That might mean making peace with a loved one you’ve fallen out with now, not in the last days of life. Planning a celebration of your life instead of a commemoration of your death. When we talk openly about the end, we deepen our relationships, ease fear, and create peace for ourselves and for those we love.”
Cavanaugh knows the cost of silence firsthand. Born into a family shaped by loss, she grew up in a home where grief was present but unspoken. When her mother was dying of cancer in 2002, her final months were marked by aggressive treatment and separation from the people who loved her most. Cavanaugh never asked her mother what she wanted at the end of her life. Peaceful Exit is the book she wishes her family had: a starting place for having these conversations — with yourself and with the people you care about — and for imagining something good. Because when you can picture a peaceful ending, you have a far better chance of getting one.
Arriving amid a growing cultural shift, death doulas going mainstream, a national reckoning with unprocessed pandemic grief, and millions of sandwich-generation caregivers navigating end-of-life decisions for aging parents, Peaceful Exit gives readers the language, tools, and courage to act. Inside, readers will discover:
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How to uncover and rewrite your “death story” — the narrative about dying we each inherit
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How creating “Praise, Pardon and Patch” lists — naming the people you want to praise, the grudges you’re ready to pardon, and the relationships you hope to patch — can transform your most important relationships while there’s still time
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What belongs in an end-of-life plan, from advance directives and wills to memorial wishes
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How to start hard conversations with parents, partners, and children — without fear
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Creative and sustainable alternatives to traditional rituals — including why you don’t have to choose a casket
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Why planning your own death is an act of love, and service, to the people you leave behind
PEACEFUL EXIT will be available October 27, 2026, wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, and in ebook formats from all major retailers.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“In this culture of denying and fearing a fact of life — that we die — Sarah Cavanaugh’s Peaceful Exit provides deep inspiring insight about approaching the cycle of life. Reading this book will change how you approach this fact of life, and find greater meaning and joy in this part of being human and alive.” – Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Founding Director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center
“Sarah Cavanagh has created something rare: a book about death that actually helps us live and love more fully.” – Tasha Wahl, Executive Director of The Wahl Group and the Founder and Executive Director of The Butterfly Effect
About the Author
Sarah Cavanaugh is a writer, podcast host, and creator of Peaceful Exit, a platform helping people talk openly about death, dying, and grief. She hosts the Peaceful Exit podcast, co-teaches the live online Peaceful Exit course, and co-created the Peaceful Exit Discovery Guide. A published author with a master’s degree in education, she has served on the Board of Directors of Copper Canyon Press and was a founding board member of The Merwin Conservancy. She lives in Seattle. Learn more at peacefulexit.net.
About the Co-Author
Lynya Floyd is a national best-selling collaborator and award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience, including editorial roles at Glamour and Essence. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Oprah, Women’s Health, Prevention, and Cosmopolitan, and she has appeared on TODAY, FOX, and NPR. She lives in New York City.
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