I Just Became an End-of-Life Care Professional Last Weekend: What's a Death Doula?

You might be wondering how I got here... it's a fairly simple story.

Life Context

Having grandparents who regularly attended church, attending catholic school, arguably I was thinking about death and the afterlife probably as early as though colonists back in the day. Many protestants believe in hell, catholics discussed purgatory. The prospect of not seeing my mom again who I like was distressing. I was already hoping for myself a peaceful death a passing a way  in sleep or of old age. I deemed drowning at one of the worst ways to go. Stagnant air stresses me and sleeping on my back occasionally disrupts my breath. Additionally having a stuffy nose and mouth breathing was the worse because the whole accidentally closing the mouth and then your body being paralyzed in sleep and struggling to breath.

Honestly in retrospect  I have been probably mourning my mother's eventual death since I was three years old. I know mourning things in advance won't make the feelin go away quicker it still made me sad

A blend of all that and seeing my grandfather with good insurance struggling greatly with diabetes and others issues  encouraged me to take care of myself the Then through more reading and critical thinking I now do what I so that I do not allow capitalism to gift me a painful death.  This is truncated I'm not hear to right a memoir right now lol

Currrent Day

One of the things I do as a public historian is interpret the building that i work in. I discuss political social, and architectural history and bridge the manufactured gap between the past and the present.

For the past eight months a significant portion of my time has been spent in a crypt. Grabbing waters to sell, spying the neighborhood bunny who slips inside, educating visitors on the death practices of puritans , congregationalists, colonists, and anglicans across all socio-economic lines. While many peoples beliefs  were whack and oppressive, the processing of death was far more practical and natural and than it is today.

Today we are bombarded by ways to freeze our facial features for pure aestestic. We are forced to place loved ones in poorly run rehabs and hospice centers. Before the body is cold it's whisked away and people are so shocked they are unable and unwilling to consider that there are more options than the environmentally unfriendly practices of embalming and fire cremation. Billionaires are obsessed with living forever through speading their seed as far as possible and freezing their brains. This preservation of the self is far removed from legitate concerns about leaving a legacy that will actually improve society and who you leave behind when you're physical form has expired.

Back then was different.You sat with the body, washed it, had friends and family visit the body. You or your children were sleeping next to this body. Some people crafted jewelry containing the hair of their loved ones. You were able to witness the process of decomposition to properly accept and say goodbye. For Puritans specifically it was a strong reminder your actions in life determined where your soul would be residing for eternity and there was nothing the still living could do about it.

Predestination aside, we can take normalizing the end of your corporeal as something worth injecting back into the zeitgeist.

That's what the Death Doula practice is attempting to do. As Birth Doulas are bridging the gap between the sanitized medicalization of pregnancy and ancestral traditional Death Doulas are doing the same thing with the process of dying. I will add that there too exist Abortion Doulas who give emotional support to people considering an abortion and/or would like someone to be with them while they may have to walk through anti choice bigots.

Doing this work in the crypt looking at bones and discussing how people maintained legacies has been helpful for when people who impact my life in a positive way eventually leave their physical form

Organically, through much critical thinking and my interest/annoyance in American Studies, I see that there are good reasons why this is not often discussed. People fear death. The capitalist system only values the productive, not the growing, and not the dying. If you fall outside of the physically properly formed cog to be place to produce until death you do not matter. White Christian Nationalists only care about more white babies and not allowing other ethnicities to thrive. This is also I became extremely interested in studying the practice of birth doulas and childbirth education before starting college. I still follow the organization from whom I'd like to get a certification from. The knowledge and application of these skills is directly link to individual and community health and longevity. Therefore, I consider them worthwhile endeavors and skills to have in my back pocket.

It was not always like this and it does not need to be like this.

I may return to receive a certificate in Death and Grief Studies. However, no one needs multiple degrees to understand the country and society they exist in , there is no need to do that for grief. These are topics everyone should have a basic understanding about in order to be engaged citizens of the earth and be activists taking charge of their own lives to improve society for themselves and their communities. Looking how I look discussing what I discuss I need proof that I know what I'm talking about so  if I can help spread that awareness cool.

If you think that you may be in need of services, reach out and I will let you know what's up, what's down, and what's beyond us all.