The Doulas Who Help Us Die. “Instead of assisting in the birthing room or the nursery, end-of-life doulas could keep vigil over people during their last hours, providing comfort and companionship and helping a family find peace.”
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Comments 3
Archive link: http://archive.today/EQCcl
I've been thinking about becoming "certified" (there are many training options). I spend enough time reading about death, and how to have conversations with those who are grieving since so many of my friends are now. I wonder if this will help me better confront the inevitable passing of my own beloved elders. I'm also very interested in communal grieving or "grief organizing" -- how do we welcome this intensely private and isolating experience into gatherings and places? Grief splinters people, and I think our current administration is using this reality against us: by vaulting people into grief through the destruction and dismantling of support systems, leaving us alone to find the pieces.
Here's a great resource that got me thinking about all of this a while back: https://narrativeinitiative.org/blog/turning-collective-grief-into-collective-power/
Swati,
I wondered if/how I would respond to this post as one of the thousands of end-of-life doulas. Your thoughtful and grounded response offers so much to consider.
First off, thank you for putting "certified" in quotation marks; while one can earn a certificate from a training course, they cannot become certified as an end-of-life doula because there is no recognized licensing process. Folks who claim they are certified...well, hmmm. That being said, if you feel called to formally explore the complexities, dimensions, and gifts of grief and death, I strongly recommend that you do even if you don't move forward with any official "practice."
I returned to living in the US (after years of working closely with death in rural Mexico, including as an apprentice to an indigenous death midwife) just as AI started forcing cracks into my day job and as authoritarianism and racism compounded grief. I've found profound comfort in volunteering to sit vigil with immigrant families who can’t risk engaging with official hospice spaces. I know how to help them even when everything else has felt so helpless. As I continue this act of service, I am also working full-time in thanatology and grief across multiple death & dying spaces. My financial security is at an all-time low, but my personal alignment with my values is at an all-time high.
And speaking to collective grief... I can't encourage you enough to lean into the collective power of grief work. We need more folks who can help those in the resistance, as well as those who are being constantly marginalized and harmed, to safely experience and process their ongoing and compounding grief through an intersectional, antiracist, and pro-liberation lens. I'm currently working with a local interfaith clergy alliance to create spaces for just that. We are seeing so many microfractures (some are not so micro) happening among progressive organizations as folks become burnt out and overwhelmed with grief. Recognizing our grief and how it shades our interactions with others in the same struggle requires a clarity of mind that grief can often cloud. So yes! To learning and living with grief.
Obviously, from this manifesto, it's clear that I have thoughts, and I'd be more than willing to share them re: trainings, independent study resources, community work, and practicums. Becoming intimate with grief and death has been the most life-affirming and joyful choice I've ever made.
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