Welcome…

Dealing with big stuff to do with dying or another life transition? Feeling overwhelmed or confused? Need a listening ear or a helping hand?

Exhale…ahhhh…grab a glass of water or a cup of tea…you’re in the right spot…

Greetings and pleased to meet you!

What the heck is a death doula?

Change is afoot – and death doulas are part of it. We are normalizing conversations and planning about death, and offering practical, emotional, ritual, and spiritual support to ease the process. Both for the dying one and for their people. Whether you have a terminal diagnosis, have just lost someone, or are healthy and want to contemplate and prepare for your eventual mortality.

Many folks have witnessed less-than-ideal deaths and memorials and want something different for themselves and the ones they love. They want to know how to plan better and what to ask for. They want a sense of agency. They want to know about options and alternatives. They don’t want to leave a mess for their people to sort out afterwards. They yearn for meaning and comfort and connection but are not sure what exactly is missing.

As a death doula, I am part of the ‘death-positive’ movement to re-claim death-craft and grief-craft into our homes and families and communities as a natural part of the life cycle. One that requires skills and rituals and information and support and community - just like other big life transitions. The role is to companion and support people in a holistic and intuitive way, not try to ‘fix’ their situations or replace anyone on their care team or in their circle of loved ones.

Death doulas offer a similar approach as birth doulas – just at the other end of life. It’s about humanizing the experience and empowering people to make plans and choices, honour the wisdom of their bodies and instincts, and consider their legacy. To be with the challenges that often accompany dying – and also open to the love, sacredness and possibilities. Doulas support people to just BE with all the confused feelings and messiness of life – and death. With a big heart and a steady hand.

This death doula role existed and still exists in many traditional societies around the world – often doulas/midwives worked with both the birthing and the dying. Their hands caught folks at the start of life and released them at the end. Modern-day death doulas are re-discovering and remembering and honouring that wisdom and knowledge and bringing it into the light. Helping build a more death-literate culture.  Akin to what birth midwives and doulas have done for the birthing experience over the past 50 odd years in western cultures. 

Other terms used for roles similar to, overlapping with, or the same as death doulas:

  • end-of-life doulas

  • end-of-life planners/educators/consultants

  • death or grief coaches

  • death educators

  • transition guides

  • death companions

  • home funeral guides/consultants

  • thanadoulas

  • pan-death guides

  • practitioners of soul midwifery or death midwifery

The terms ‘soul midwife’ and ‘death midwife’ have also been used traditionally but are legally prohibited for use for business purposes in BC.

 

Why would you hire a death doula?

Do you talk about, plan for, honour, celebrate, and remember big transitions in life – like birth, graduation, leaving home, adoption, getting married, or getting a new job? These all involve letting go of a previous way of being in the world and initiation into a new stage.

Yet many of us feel squeamish or afraid or unsure about approaching our inevitable mortality in the same way. Don’t know how or where to start. If this is you, you’re not alone. Two thirds of Canadians don’t have an up-to-date will (LegalWills.ca 2021).  A similar percentage have not discussed their funeral or burial/cremation plans with loved ones (Willful and Arbor Memorial Inc. 2020).

Why is this? Why are so many of us afraid to talk about death? Or in denial that it will actually happen to us? Our reasons are as individual as we are of course - however here are a couple of factors…

First is a sheer lack of knowledge - death in modern society tends to be hidden behind the walls of hospitals, long term care facilities, hospices, and funeral homes. We have handed over responsibility for our dead and their dying to the professionals and lost much of our cultural knowledge and skills - we often literally do not know what we are doing. So some of our fear is simply of the unknown.

Second is that some people have witnessed traumatic deaths - either directly or as part of their family or community story. Often these have secrets or shames or violence associated with them and people may not have had the opportunity or support to process their grief and other feelings. So just speaking of death can trigger difficult emotions and sensations.

And third, we do not leave a lot of time and space for grief in our busy lives. So deaths and other losses are often left un-processed - unmetabolized. This is magnified when we also carry big collective or community griefs around climate change, colonization, war, or the toxic drug crisis for example. A new grief - or even the anticipation of a new grief - pokes at the vulnerable spot where we are carrying all that un-tended grief and results in uncomfortable emotions and feelings.

No wonder lots of us would just rather not deal!

And yet, we will all die one day. Everyone and everything we know and love will die one day. Death is always riding shotgun, as they say. There are ways to ease these passages and their aftermaths - and the fears so many people have. A calm and supportive presence can help.

You don’t have to be recently bereaved or have a terminal diagnosis to work with a death doula. Just be curious and open. Willing to enter into a conversation with your fears. Looking for ways to be more prepared and supported and self-aware through the dying process and the aftermath – yours or a loved one’s. Interested in manifesting the death or memorial you want, rather than the one you’re afraid of. Even if it feels a little scary to start with.

My intentions as a death doula

My calling during this stage of my life is to midwife souls through the transition we call death. To bring ease and wisdom and wonder and humour and intentionality and grace and meaning and empowerment and intuition and compassion and comfort and poetry and ritual and a sense of the sacred to this liminal space. Before, during and after death – with the dying and the living. In service to Spirit, from which we all come and to which we all return.

For me, what we call physical death is a transformation of energy - an ending of one energy state and an initiation into another. It is not scary in itself – in fact it is the most natural thing in the world, and we will all go through it. It is our resistance and unknowingness and lack of holistic support and ritual and community and guidance – the lack of a cultural map as one of my teachers, Sarah Kerr, says - that makes it scary for many of us. 

I see my role as a guide, an educator, a facilitator, a ceremonialist, a companion – someone with some practical and energetic knowledge and tools to ease the process. Someone to talk with along the way, to help plan, to listen and hold space for and support both the dying one and their people at all stages of the transition, including after death. To help navigate and humanize what can be a very medicalized, alienating, and confusing experience in our modern world.

And in the process, to help build and re-build community capacity and death-literacy to support our dying and grieving ones in holistic, equitable, and humane ways. Blessed be.

My beliefs and values

I am open to working with folks who carry many different beliefs about death and what happens afterwards – whether connected to a particular faith or cultural community or not. It does help if you have a sense of where I am coming from and we share at least some basic aspirations and attitudes about how to approach working together.

Here’s what makes me tick – any of this resonate with you?