Tag: Doula

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How Death Doula Alua Arthur Gets It Done

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In 2012, Alua Arthur quit her legal career to become a death doula. The problem was that she had no idea such a job existed. “All I knew was that there had to be a better way to give support during one of the most lonely and isolating experiences a person can go through,” she says. Now 42, she is a leader in the field of death work and has guided thousands of people and their loved ones through the end-of-life process. She has also trained hundreds of other death doulas through her company, Going With Grace, and is on the board of directors at the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA)

This year, as COVID has forced so many Americans to cope with sudden loss and their own mortality, Arthur has been inundated with new clients and students as well as larger questions about how to handle constant grief. She lives in Los Angeles. Here’s how she gets it done.

On her morning routine:
I usually get up around 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. I’m a night owl, and it helps me in my work because people tend to die between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m. I’m not sure why; there are a lot of different theories about it. But I’m most awake and alert at that time. The witching hours. I love to burn my incense at 4:00 a.m. and greet the crows.

Most mornings I meditate right after I get up. After I meditate, I fill up my gallon jug of water and exercise. I need to sweat and move. I love anything where the instructor is like, “Faster! Go! Only ten more seconds!” Since we can’t do group fitness in person right now, I have to re-create it in my house. It doesn’t work quite the same, because I will stop and eat snacks in the middle of a video. But I’m trying. Exercise and meditation are the things that keep me sane and grounded. They’re the baseline.

On being drawn to end-of-life care:
Being around death has made me more honest. I see that what we don’t say chokes us as we die. People always think they have more time, and when they realize that they don’t, they have regrets about things they haven’t done. I try to do what I feel like doing right now. And if that means eating white-cheddar Cheetos for breakfast, I will. Which is what I did this morning. I won’t always be able to taste delicious things, so let me do it now.

On managing her clients:
I don’t take on more than one client at a time who is imminently dying, because I want to be on call for them. Whatever they need, I will do. When a client with just a couple of weeks or months left first comes to me, we’ll go through the long list of items to consider in death and dying, and then we’ll create a plan. That usually happens over the phone. Then I go to visit, put my hands on them, really see what their physical condition is, and see what kind of support they have.

I continue to visit every week or so until their condition starts deteriorating fast, and then I’m there more often. I might be there when they die, and if I’m not, I’ll come sit with their family or caregivers afterward until the funeral home comes. I may also help wrap up practical affairs — possessions, accounts, life insurance, documents. It’s exhausting for a family to have to think about that when they’re also grieving, and I’m equipped to help. I’ll sit on hold with insurance companies, make funeral arrangements, all that stuff.

Beyond those who are imminently dying, I often have several clients who need end-of-life planning consultations. I can take on a couple of those at a time. That could be someone who has just gone on hospice and it doesn’t look that bad yet, or someone who just received a diagnosis and wants to prepare.

On winding down after an intense day:
I’ll drink wine and hang out with a lover. I’ll go out dancing until 5:00 a.m. Sometimes I just want to shut the brain off after a long day, and the best way to do that is by spending time with friends and people who tickle me. But it’s also good to spend a lot of time alone, which is the default these days. I like silence.

On becoming a death doula:
I spent the bulk of my career in legal services in L.A., working with victims of domestic violence. Then there were some big budget cuts, and I wound up getting stuck doing paperwork in the courthouse basement. I was already depressed and burnt out, but it blossomed into an actual clinical depression. So I took a leave of absence and traveled to Cuba. While I was there, I met a German woman who had uterine cancer and was doing a bucket list trip. We talked a lot about her illness, and her death. She hadn’t been able to discuss a lot of those things before, because nobody in her life was making space for her to talk about her death. Instead, they’d say, “Oh, don’t worry. You’re going to get better.” I came back from that trip thinking I wanted to be a therapist who worked with people who were dying.

I applied to schools to become a therapist, but in the meantime, my brother-in-law got very sick. So I packed up and spent two months in New York with him. That experience gave me a lot of clarity on all the things we could be doing better in the end-of-life processes. It was so isolating and I couldn’t understand why. Everybody dies — so why does it feel so lonely? After that, I did a death doula program in Los Angeles, called Sacred Crossings, and then I founded my company, Going With Grace.

On leaving her law career (and a steady paycheck):
It wasn’t a hard decision to leave my job as an attorney. The challenging part had more to do with identity and what achievement means. I was born in Ghana, and we’re all raised to be doctors and lawyers and engineers. So I was going against societal expectation and parental expectation. It was also tough to be broke for a long time. My student loans were in forbearance. I spent a lot of nights lying on my mom’s couch wondering how I was going to make things work. If my friends were going out, they’d have to pay for me or else I couldn’t join them. To support myself while I was starting my business, I worked part-time jobs at a hospice and a funeral home.

Eventually, I started hosting small workshops about end-of-life planning. I charged $44 dollars for people to come together and learn how to fill out the necessary documents. Now I have my own doula training programs. I have about 100 students at the moment, all online.

On charging for her services:
I have to navigate the financial conversations with a lot of directness. Part of the challenge is that our society doesn’t see the financial value of having somebody be kind and supportive. Being able to hold so much compassionate space when somebody’s dying — that is a skill. It needs to be compensated highly.

On living with grief:
I’m constantly grieving with and for my clients and their family members, all the time. There’s no fixing it. I have to be present with my feelings and let them wash over me, in whatever expression they take. If I try to shut off that part of myself, it becomes much harder to function in everyday life. Grief doesn’t always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like anger, promiscuity, or eating everything under the sun. Like all things, it’s temporary.

On how COVID has changed her work:
We have to rely much more heavily on technology and remote communication. There’s also a lot more interest in the death doula training program. Death is on a lot of people’s minds, and I’ve seen a lot more people starting to do their end-of-life planning — mostly healthy people in their 40s with young kids. A lot of people have seen younger people die suddenly, and it’s changed their perspective.

On her own end-of-life plan:
I would love to be outside or by windows. I want to watch the sunset for the last time, and I want to have the people I love around, quietly talking, so that I know they’ve got each other after I leave. I want to have a soft blanket and a pair of socks because I hate it when my feet are cold. I want to smell nag champa incense and amber. And I want to hear the sound of running water, like a creek. I’d love to enjoy all those senses for the last time. And when I die, I want everybody to clap. Like, “Good job. You did it.”

I want my funeral to be outside, and I want all my jewelry to be laid out. As guests come in, they grab a piece and put it on. I want my body to be wrapped in an orange and pink raw silk shroud. They’ll play Stevie Wonder — “I’ll be loving you always” — and everyone will eat a lot of food and drink whiskey and mezcal and red wine. There will be colorful Gerber daisies everywhere, and they’ll take me away as the sun goes down. And when they put my body in the car, the bass will drop on the music, and there will be pyrotechnics of some sort. I hope my guests have a grand old time and dance and cry and hug each other. And then I want them to leave wearing my jewelry.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Indigenous death doula mentorship program aims to teach youth to help others through grief

‘I just want to be able to support my family and my community [when] people die’

Kayleigh Lagimodiere and her mother Dana Connolly. Lagimodiere is one of 12 Indigenous youth who have been accepted into the Indigenous death doula mentorship program.

By Lenard Monkman

A new death doula mentorship program is being offered to Indigenous youth to equip them with skills to help others deal with grief and loss in their communities.

“It’s important for me to learn about this work because prior to colonization, I think we shared a different relationship with death. One that wasn’t so scary and fear-driven,” said Kayleigh Lagimodiere.

Lagimodiere, who is Cree, is 17 and one of 12 young people chosen to take part in the Indigenous Death Doula Program being offered by Blackbird Medicines in partnership with Canadian Roots Exchange.

A death doula is someone who supports people who are experiencing grief and or going through the process of death.

In January, Lagimodiere’s aunt Tracey Stevenson died and she got some experience doing death doula work.

“An elder from Swan Lake [First Nation] came and taught me how to prepare the body,” said Lagimodiere.

“That was like the first time that I had actually seen a dead body. Prior to that, at funerals, I wouldn’t go up.”

Lagimodiere said there have been a few recent losses in the family and they were having a hard time navigating through the grief.

“I just want to be able to support my family and my community [when] people die,” said Lagimodiere.

“I want to be able to help restore our practices that were there and to help people.”

The experience inspired her to apply for the Indigenous Death Doula Program, which was accepting applications from youth aged 12-29.

Lagimodiere said there were a number of different interest options that were available to applicants. She chose palliative care, harm reduction, cultural death practices, legacy planning and culturally grounded death and dying resources.

Indigenous grief

The program was started by Blackbird Medicines and its Indigenous death doula collective, which includes Connor Sarazin, Tasheena Sarazin, Colleen Cardinal and Elaine Kicknosway.

Founder Chrystal Toop, Omàmiwininì (Algonquin) from Pikwakanagan First Nation, started doing death doula work in 2018.

Chrystal Toop is the founder of Blackbird Medicines. The organization is offering an online death doula mentorship program for Indigenous youth ages 12-29.

“I come from the background of a full spectrum or a life spectrum doula worker,” said Toop.

“So I started out working with babies, pregnancy, things like that. But there’s just a huge demand on the other end, on that death spectrum.”

According to the website, Blackbird Medicines offer a range of services including virtual consultations, slideshows and videos for funerals, virtual funerals and aftercare to support people who have lost loved ones.

“For a lot of us, we came to this work because we were doing social services, front line work,” said Toop.

“Some of us have stories around missing and murdered men, women, girls, two spirit. And we have these personal experiences, so we recognize that Indigenous death doula work includes harm reduction from death.”

For the doula program, they are hoping to get more young people involved.

“The program itself is a gentle introduction to people, to support them,” said Toop.

It features two individual one on one sessions, as well as two group sessions with the whole collective, all of which will be done online.

Kicknosway said doing death doula work comes naturally to her. She has helped friends and family who have lost loved ones to cancer, but has also helped families go through things like suicide or other tragedies.

“What does Indigenous grief look like?” said Kicknosway.

“We need to make it a natural place to talk safely and to have spaces for this work.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Hospice Workers Share What They Wish Everyone Knew About Death

By Emily Laurence

When Daniel Lynn tells people he’s a hospice volunteer, he says they usually respond by asking him a question: Why? American culture tends to be put off by anything related to death; it certainly isn’t a welcome topic at a party or around the dinner table. “People ask me why I would want to spend my time doing something so sad, but I find it incredibly rewarding and meaningful,” Lynn says.

Palliative care physician Christopher Kerr, MD, PhD, has gotten similar responses when he tells people about his occupation. Dr. Kerr started working in hospice care—a type of health care focusing on managing a terminally ill patient’s pain and symptoms, as well as their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life—to supplement his income as a doctor. Up until that time, Dr. Kerr’s job only focused on one outcome—saving patient’s lives—so he admits that he wasn’t quite sure where he would fit into a health-care space where death was imminent. “When I first started, to be honest, I didn’t think there would be much for me to do,” he says. “As a doctor, you’re taught that death is the one thing to avoid.”

The years Dr. Kerr has worked in hospice care, treating thousands of people who are dying, have made him see the dying process in a whole new way. “Death is not a sad experience for everyone,” Dr. Kerr says. His book Death Is But a Dream shares stories of patients he has cared for in hospice, showing that dying is much more than suffering. It can be a time when many become emotionally awakened, and there can be levels of comfort and peace that can’t be explained by science.

This year, of course, death has been on our collective minds more than ever due to the pandemic. It’s devastating to lose a loved one—to COVID-19 or otherwise. But hospice workers offer special insight into what’s often overlooked when we talked about dying. And with their observations comes something we all collectively need right now: healing.

How relationships can change when death is imminent

Lynn became a hospice volunteer in 1985, after both his wife and father died of lung cancer. “My current wife and I are both hospice volunteers in Williamsburg, Virginia,” he says. “And we have two Bernese mountain dogs who work as therapy dogs with us in the hospitals and nursing homes.”

Lynn doesn’t deny that losing a loved one is extremely heartbreaking. “When my first wife was dying of lung cancer, I grieved deeply,” he says. Experiencing the need for comfort during this difficult time in his life was part of what inspired him to be there for others.

Just as people live in different ways, people die in different ways. But something Lynn has noticed in his work is that dying patients often prioritize relationships in a way they didn’t earlier in their lives. “Something I often see is that many people want to make amends and improve relationships that have been damaged,” he says. Family members who haven’t talked in years may start communicating regularly. Grudges are dismissed, replaced by forgiveness and peace.

Angela Shook works as a death doula, a trained professional who supports someone at the end of their life. She’s also seen how important relationships become at the end of life. “Many of the people I’ve worked with have a fear that they’ll be forgotten, so something we often do is a legacy project, which is a way of helping friends and family remember them [after they die],” she says. “One woman I worked with was known in her family as this amazing cook. Everyone loved her food. So for her legacy project, we made a cookbook of her recipes that all her children could have. And we used her old clothes to make an apron for her daughter. It was extremely meaningful to her, and also to them.” In these ways, a death doula can help make saying goodbye easier for both the dying and the living.

Experiencing comfort unexplained by science

While many people equate death with suffering, Dr. Kerr says something that has surprised him the most about working in hospice is the peaceful visions that often come in a person’s final hours. He says 88 percent of his hospice patients report seeing visions as they die. Often these visions—vividly real to the person experiencing them—are of people who have died before them, and they provide a great sense of comfort, peace, and even joy.

Dr. Kerr adds that dying children often see pets who have passed away. “Children don’t have the same language that we do to talk about death, but the visions they describe give them a sense that they are loved and that what is happening to them is okay,” Dr. Kerr says.

He cannot offer a scientific explanation for these phenomena. “There’s this assumption that people have these visions because their brains are changing, becoming deoxygenated, or they are medicated and confused, but that’s not the case,” he says. “We know that by looking at the brain; it’s not changing biologically or functionally. I think people are changing very much spiritually.”

“To me, visions like these show that we really don’t die alone. And there can be comfort and even joy in dying.” —Angela Shook, death doula

Shook says many of her clients have also had visions. She and Dr. Kerr say it’s something that happens regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs; even those who don’t believe in a higher power or an afterlife can experience visions. “I would estimate visions are part of about 90 percent of the deaths I’ve been apart of,” Shook says. “One 83-year-old woman I worked with had been feeling very agitated for the three days. But when I walked into her room one day, she had a peaceful smile on her face. I looked over at her and she was rocking her arms, as if she was holding a baby.” The patient died shortly after that, and Shook shared what she saw with the patient’s son. “He told me that his mom’s first daughter had been a stillborn and she had often said that she couldn’t wait to see her daughter in heaven one day,” Shook says. “To me, visions like these show that we really don’t die alone. And there can be comfort and even joy in dying.”

Not everyone, though, has happy visions. In his book, Dr. Kerr says his research has found that in 18 percent of his patients who have visions, they are more like nightmares. “There seems to be a correlation between people who have had very traumatic experiences in life or a lot of regret [and experiencing negative visions],” he says.

Of course, it would be unfair to paint everyone’s end of life experience as peaceful and uplifting. The truth is, death is sometimes accompanied by pain and suffering, both physical and emotional. “Often, people have a question of ‘why me?’” Lynn says, adding that some are angered by what’s happening to them. It seems death, like other stages of life, isn’t all good or bad. Still, few people talk about the moments of peace—and even joy—in the process, and that’s what Lynn, Shook, and Dr. Kerr hope to shed light on.

“Becoming a death doula and spending time with the dying has been the greatest, most beautiful gift of my life,” Shook says. “It’s strengthened my belief that there’s more beyond what we can see.”

What hospice care has looked like during COVID-19

Both Dr. Kerr and Shook say their jobs have changed tremendously during the pandemic, and have caused them to think even more about the importance of end-of-life care. “Our work in hospice and palliative care has become invaluable during the pandemic,” Dr. Kerr says. He adds that, for him, working during the pandemic has been a struggle as the way he works has changed tremendously. “Personally, I feel a bit lost,” he says. “My work is most meaningful when defined by direct interpersonal relationships with patients, families, and colleagues.” But as hospitals and care facilities tightly restrict visitors to reduce the spread of COVID-19, cultivating those relationships is extremely difficult.

Shook says she feels her work has become more vital than ever in helping loved ones find avenues of closure. “Many have lost loved ones and been unable to mourn at a service or traditional funeral because of social distancing restrictions,” she says. “It is so important to take the time to grieve and realize that grief looks different for everyone.” Since, for many, attending a funeral isn’t a possibility right now, it can make finding other ways to say goodbye—such as through a legacy project—especially meaningful right now.

“Those of us who work at the bedside of the dying can attest that patients, in the face of what may look to most like a lonely death, do experience love, meaning, and even grace.” —Christopher Kerr, MD, PhD

Shook says she has still been providing her services as a death doula virtually, as meeting in person with families is not currently possible. “Many facilities and hospices in which many doulas work have restrictions on visitors. During this time, doulas [like myself] have been offering virtual support through web conferencing, calls, letters, FaceTime, and more,” she says. “With so many being isolated, doulas are more important than ever and can still support the dying and their loved ones from a distance.”

Dr. Kerr says that many family members of his patients have expressed devastation and sadness at not being able to be physically present for their loved one’s final moments. He sympathizes with this sentiment, but offers up some words of comfort. “The dying process includes altering levels of alertness and progressively deeper sleep, and include vivid pre-death dreams,” he says. “[In their final days], the majority of patients see not tubes or monitors but the faces of predeceased loved ones. They revisit the memories of being held and cherished, the apotheosis of a life rather than its demise. They teach us that the best parts of having lived are never truly lost.”

This, he says, reveals something important about the dying process, whether it’s during a pandemic or not: “The totality of our human experience can never be defined by or reduced to its last moments,” he says. “Those of us who work at the bedside of the dying can attest that patients, in the face of what may look to most like a lonely death, do experience love, meaning, and even grace. The dying often experience a summation of their life’s best moments and they leave us feeling more connected than alone.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How death doulas are helping people process grief during the pandemic

By Tracey Anne Duncan

Like so many people, I have spent much of this pandemic grappling with grief. I’ve lost people I love, and even now, people I care about are ill. Even if you haven’t personally lost someone, you’re likely tapped into the collective sense of mourning. It’s hard to know how to comfort people who are dying or the people who love them under any circumstances, but when you can’t be together, it makes it even harder.

That’s where death doulas step in. In case you aren’t familiar with the term, a death doula is like an end of life midwife. They help dying people by guiding them and their families through the dying process. They help people plan out their death experiences. They can aid in navigating the practical parts — like wills and funeral planning, and also the emotional aspects — like helping people figure out what kind of rituals will make grieving cathartic.

Many of the usual ways that dying people and those who love them deal with death — deathbed visits, meetings with spiritual advisors, grief counseling — are not available to us right now. We may not get to have much, if any, contact with a person dying of coronavirus. In this pandemic of mass uncertainty, death doulas can help us through the grieving process.

“Doulas are professionals who provide support and guidance to individuals and their families during transformative life changes,” Ashley Johnson, an Atlanta-based death doula and founder of Loyal Hands, a service that matches people with end-of-life doulas, tells me. These doulas can train family members in some of the practical aspects of caregiving, help people create support plans, and counsel those who are dying and the people who love them, Johnson tells me.

Death doulas are also educators, in a way. Most of us spend a lot of time trying not to think about death, and we aren’t well-versed with the death process. Most of us aren’t even aware that death is a process that can be charted. Death doulas help folks get familiar with the normal and natural stages of dying, Johnson tells me. In the terrifying and confounding moments when grieving people are wondering what happens next and how they can deal with it with dignity, death doulas can step in to fill in the blanks.

There’s kind of a new-age, woo-woo stigma surrounding the work that death doulas do. They aren’t priests and they aren’t psychiatrists, so their professional world is kind of murky spiritual-ish/life coach-ish territory. But some psychologists do think that death doulas can play an important role in helping people cope with grief. “A doula could help people figure out how they want to mourn,” says Aimee Daramus, a Chicago-based psychotherapist.

Daramus adds that people should be mindful that many doulas aren’t trained therapists, but because they are familiar with managing grief so they are generally able to tell when a clinical professional is necessary. For people who are spiritually inclined, but not formally religious, this middle ground can be a comfortable place to mourn without devolving into either over-medicalized melancholy or eccentric science-shunning spiritualism.

“A doula should be able to recognize when someone’s thinking or behavior is starting to go beyond the normal range of mourning experiences.” In this way, death doulas can be a touchstone for figuring out if a person is having a healthy grief response or if they may benefit from another type of help. There is no one right way to grieve, of course, but some people can sink into depression if they don’t process their grief as it’s playing out.

One of the benefits of working with a death doula is that you can shop around to hire someone who fits your needs and understands the cultural specifics of your background. “A professional should work to understand the unique cultural practices relevant to that individual or family,” says Thomas Lindquist, a Pittsburgh-based psychologist and professor at Chatham University. This is especially important, he says, during important life milestones.

A lot of folks in the hospice and funeral industries will likely have a passing knowledge of many kinds of death practices, but you can find a death doula who shares your beliefs, or who literally speaks your own language. Grieving, while it is a universal experience, isn’t generic, and Linquist says that it’s important for a family or person’s religious beliefs to be incorporated into their care plan.

But how can a doula help someone die with dignity if they can’t even be in the same room with them? “As doulas, we have had to get really creative about the ways we meet with people,” says Christy Moe Marek, a death doula in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and an instructor at International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA). Marek says that she has met with the families of dying people on their decks and porches, but that she has had to meet with most dying people via Zoom. It’s not ideal, she says, but adds, “it is opening up such possibilities given the constraints of the pandemic.”

Death doulas are finding new ways to support people. “So much of the way this works right now is in helping both the dying and their loved ones to manage expectations, reframing what they hope for, and to shift focus onto how the ways we are connected whether we are able to be together in person or not,” Marek says.

Marek says that helping people accept the reality of difficult experiences is really the whole point of her work. “During the pandemic, what is actually happening is different than we could possibly imagine and we may not like it. We may actually hate it with our whole being, but it won’t change what is. So we work with that,” Marek says, “And that is what ends up being the mark of a good death.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Death Doula: We Are Segregated, Even After We Die


Lupe Tejada-Diaz works as a death doula and helps communities of color through the holistic and legal aspects of death.

By Dylan Allswang

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the major issues for our country is the disproportionate effect COVID-19 is having on communities of color. Both infection rates and death rates are much higher in these communities than in white communities. 

This is causing an increased need for healthcare, especially hospice care.

We talked to 24-year-old Lupe Tejada-Diaz who works in Washington state as an end-of-life care specialist and a death doula (a non-medical person trained to care for someone holistically at the end of life). She discussed why at such a young age she decided on this career, being an advocate for patients in hospitals especially during the pandemic and undoing the stigma around death as a taboo topic.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

DYLAN ALLSWANG: Can you describe what the job of being a death doula entails for people who may not be familiar with that?

Lupe Tejada-Diaz: A death doula is somebody who handles the nonmedical aspect of dying. We counsel people through what they want their death to look like. We help them plan and — if they would like — on the day of their death. And after, we help their families deal with all the bureaucratic things that go into it.

DA: Who are some of your usual clients?

LTD: I work specifically with people of color, indigenous people, LGBTQ communities and low-income communities. I do a lot of community education. So I work at senior centers and community areas that ask me to come in and talk about accessible care options.

DA: This is a pretty unique career path. Why did you choose to be a death doula?

LTD: I saw a need in my community that wasn’t being met. In America, death is still really segregated. And a lot of people don’t think about when we [people of color] go into a white-owned funeral home, they don’t know how to do our hair; they don’t know how makeup works on our skin tone.

I wanted people to see that there are different options. Also that you don’t always have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a good death. When you die in America, you have to kind of undo the life you had. If you have debts, they need to be settled and sorted and your assets have to go through the system called the probate system.

In order to do that, you need to have all kinds of paperwork, different death certificates, different powers of attorney and it’s really difficult for families who are grieving to call 100 different companies and be like, “Oh yeah, so and so died.” So that’s where I come in and help do that kind of tough stuff for them because death in America is unfortunately a super long and arduous legal process.

DA: Communities of color are more likely to distrust medical institutions. How does that play into your line of work?

LTD: So in a lot of the American health care systems, people of color specifically aren’t treated the same way that their white counterparts are. They are kind of brushed aside. Their concerns are not addressed. 

I think that with the coronavirus, now more than ever, we are seeing that people of color are dying at disproportionate rates to white people. And the people working in death are also really tired because even in the middle of a pandemic, we still want to honor this wish that our cultures have.

I think that having someone who speaks the same language or looks like you or from the same kind of background, really helps you feel that sense of security that you normally wouldn’t get in hospitals or clinics. You feel like someone is on your side to kind of help you battle through that. So there’s more trust.

DA: How are you working with clients during the pandemic?

LTD: So we’re doing a lot of virtual communication, Zoom and FaceTime. But I’m also still doing a lot of the legal work I do. But unfortunately, the people that are taken into the hospital, I’m unable to be an advocate for them because it’s kind of out of our hands at this point. People are scared. People are worried that they’re not going to be able to have the traditional funeral burial services that they wanted their whole lives.

Specifically the Indigenous community, we have gone through epidemics and pandemics, not quite to this size, but the kind that wiped out our entire tribe and our entire society. So we have a sense of knowing that it will pass, but there is still that fear. We all just have to do our part to stop the spread and to be mindful of our neighbors as we possibly can be.

DA: Why do you think death is such a taboo topic?

LTD: I think that the main goal for a lot of death doulas is to spread awareness that it’s OK to talk about death. Talking about it isn’t going to bring death. There’s a lot of superstitions along those lines. And I just want everyone to know that it’s not necessarily something scary. It can be something beautiful.

We don’t have to rely on our doctors and hospitals to deal with death if it’s something that we can deal with at home. There’s a place for medicine and there’s a place for home care. And by marrying that together, I think it would really help the landscape of the American mentality for future generations.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Death Doulas Have Adapted End-of-Life Care Amid COVID-19

By Ilana Kaplan

Christy Marek, a certified end-of-life doula, has seen firsthand the added stress that terminally ill individuals have had to endure because of the pandemic. One client had been living at home but decided that her health was putting too much added stress on her family. “She had considered going into a facility just so that she could get the level of support that she needed as she was becoming bed-bound,” says Marek, who is based in Minnesota. But the client found herself at a crossroads: she had to choose between the possibility of dying alone in a facility (upon admission, patients were required to quarantine alone with no visitation for two weeks) or continuing to rely on family care while spending the rest of her time at home.

Marek made several phone calls to facilities to advocate for her client. “I said, ‘What if she doesn’t have two weeks? What are you going to do?’” Marek recalls. Ultimately, her client ended up getting 24-hour home care, but it wasn’t her first choice. “People are then dying at home because the last thing they want is to go into a facility,” says Marek. “They don’t have time to quarantine for the amount of time that [facilities] need.”

For centuries, doulas have been assisting with childbirth, providing emotional, physical, and educational support during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. But there aren’t just doulas for the birthing process: over time, both officially and unofficially, end-of-life doulas have emerged to help individuals with palliative care and support their families through the grief that comes with losing someone. A 2017 study found that women who had continuous support during their labor—whether from a nurse, doula, or partner—reported a more positive birth experience. It seems likely that the same kind of constant emotional support from a death doula would have an equally positive effect on processing the grief around passing.

In a year when death and grief have become a constant, the palliative care process has reached a new level of complexity amid COVID-19. End-of-life doulas have always strived to be a support system for those who are terminally ill, but in 2020 the people who take on that responsibility have been challenged to think outside the box when it comes to caregiving. They’ve had to help their dying clients make unimaginable choices between risking virus exposure and spending their last days alone. They’ve also had their presence questioned at a time when their skills could be most valuable.

Alua Arthur, an end-of-life doula and founder of Going With Grace, has been trying to encourage clients to focus on what they do have control over, even when the world feels full of uncertainty. “Because they’re getting close to the end of life, I remind them that there are some things that are still firmly within our control,” says Alua. “[I have them] look at what it is that we’re trying to control and where the control actually exists. She has her clients work on “cultivating presence and practicing adaptability,” along with “exercises, like finding our feet and consistently planting our feet firmly on the ground [and] becoming present.”

Communication and connection have been the most challenging variables for doulas and their clients. Many in-person meetings with clients and their families have gone digital. For Arthur, FaceTime and Zoom have become essential for helping with clients’ health-related questions when she can’t physically be with them. “Family members [can] scan body parts through a video call, show me and say, ‘Does that look normal?’ Or, ‘She’s breathing like this, does that sound normal?’ And [they] hold the phone up [for me to hear] somebody’s breathing pattern.” That way, even if Arthur is not with the client, she can make an informed decision as to whether they should call the doctor. Arthur has also hosted webinars to help people experience grief and facilitate rituals for transitioning. She has helped coordinate with funeral homes to livestream funerals for clients so that more family members could participate.

For clients who are in assisted-living communities or the hospital, nurses often act as a bridge on behalf of doulas. Janie Rakow, a recently retired end-of-life doula and former president of the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA), has been raising money for baby monitors for local hospitals so that doulas can keep in touch with their clients, talk to social workers and chaplains, and even play music. “Nurses and medical staff have been integral in helping doulas make sure they connect with families and play music until the end,” she says.

Omisade Burney-Scott, a full-spectrum doula based in North Carolina, has been encouraging her clients to “think about how you show up energetically when you can’t show up physically.”

“Because I’m a Southern Black woman, there’s so much ritual involved with death and dying in the South with Black folk,” says Burney-Scott. “It’s beautiful, it’s complex, but it’s highly ritualized.” Grieving has generally involved a lot of face-to-face interactions and “people coming to your house dropping off casserole after casserole,” so during the pandemic Burney-Scott has tried to help her clients try to find alternate activities that will create a similar feeling of closeness and community. One client with relatives spread throughout the United States and Europe had lost two family members and was looking to honor the deceased. “My question for this person was, ‘Where are they from? What are the things that are meaningful for your family? What are the things that you all love to do together?’ And one of the things that we talked about was food and how much food is a core part of their family culture.” Since their family already did a Zoom session every Sunday, Burney-Scott suggested that they make a dish that everybody in the family loves for their meeting. “Then, when you come to the Zoom call, y’all eat together and honor this person or these people who’ve made their transition,” Burney-Scott says.

End-of-life doulas also help their clients navigate and find support within a racist healthcare system. A 2017 study from Academic Emergency Medicine on implicit bias revealed that White patients were favored, especially by White doctors. Coronavirus has been two times as likely to kill Black and Latino people than White people. In June, Arthur was a panelist for a talk where she and other Black death doulas, along with grief and funeral professionals, discussed the implications of a “good death” in a racist society. More than 2,000 people signed up for the webinar, which touched on the “implicit bias that exists against Black workers, Black deceased and patrons of their families.” “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say that racism or race should not be a factor in how we care for people at the end of the day,” says Arthur. “But in order for us to effectively care for people in the afterlife, we have to honor the reality of their lived experience. That includes race, their physical ability, [their] ability to hear, color, sexual orientation, gender identity, and every little part of themselves. We’re honoring a life, so we have to look at the whole life.”

Burney-Scott has been helping members of the Black community process continued grief after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and amid continued police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. “Grief is not an emotion that is mutually exclusive to physical death,” says Burney-Scott. “So what I have found is that there’s been an unrelenting nature to the grief that we’re all experiencing right now with the pandemic, with COVID-19, but also with racism and white supremacy.” Burney-Scott has been looking to her spiritual background to provide support for others. “My role in that has been to provide instructions and support around how to create your own altar, how to open your space and yourself up to either meditation, prayer, or conversation with your ancestors to ask for support for these families who have experienced the unimaginable,” she says.

More than ever, it’s been necessary for doulas to focus on possibility and opportunity as a way to keep their clients comforted and connected. Still, the challenges of limited physical interactions and restrictions due to COVID-19 have transformed their jobs. In the meantime, end-of-life doulas are doing everything they can to be there for their clients.“We support and empower,” Arthur says. “Why? Because we don’t want people to feel alone in the process. How? We show up.”

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Sacred Crossings

– Reclaiming the Lost Art of Death Midwifery and Healing Ritual of the Home Funeral

Death Midwifery returns death to its sacred place in the beauty, mystery and celebration of life. A Sacred Crossings Death Midwife shepherds individuals toward a conscious dying experience; guides loved ones in after-death care of the body; and empowers families to reclaim the healing ritual of a vigil and funeral at home. They offer compassionate support to individuals and their families from terminal diagnosis to final disposition.

“As a culture, we deny the natural process of aging and death,” remarked Olivia Bareham, founder of Sacred Crossings. “Learning how to die consciously with grace and acceptance is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and those we love.”

Many people are unaware that they have the legal right to care for their dead at home before burial or cremation. Sacred Crossings offers education and guidance to families who wish to create meaningful funerals at home. We teach them the ancient ritual of bathing, anointing and dressing the body, laying the body in honor for a 3-day vigil and decorating the cremation casket. Inter-faith ministerial services include near-death prayer/meditation vigils, grief support and funeral celebrant services.

Sacred Crossings founder Olivia Bareham is a death midwife, home funeral guide, ordained inter-faith minister and funeral celebrant. She is a member of the National Home Funeral Alliance http://www.homefuneralalliance.org and serves on the board of the Center for Conscious Creativity. Sacred Crossings is owned and operated by certified death midwives.

About Sacred Crossings:
Sacred Crossings is changing the culture of death and dying – through death education and an alternative funeral home. We offer an environmentally friendly option to traditional funeral industry practices and the opportunity for families to have a vigil and funeral at home. The Sacred Crossings Institute offers workshops and classes in conscious dying, home funerals, end-of-life planning, and a certificate program in The Art of Death Midwifery. The Sacred Crossings Funeral Home, owned and operated by certified death midwives, offers a full range of services including home funerals, cremation, conventional burial, green burial and full-body deep sea burial. For more information, contact Annemarie Osborne, publicist at 949.237.2906 or by email annemarieosborne7@gmail.com or Olivia Bareham at 310.968.2763 or olivia@sacredcrossings.com or visit http://www.sacredcrossings.com.