An Honest Exploration of the Work of a Death Doula
by: Tanis
What is a Death Doula?
This term is being used more often in the media and community support circles. I receive messages and referrals from people who are called to this title and want to ask questions about what this role is and how to become an end of life doula. And, of course, it comes with long answers and many different perspectives and positions.
Death is such a taboo topic. Given this context, death doulas create the space to begin the conversations that feel long overdue.
End of Life Doula, Death Doula, Soul Midwife, or Death Worker. These names encompass the spaces that are heavy with a hope for some lightness. As a lot of us know, “doula" comes with its own history and story- meant to be in service to others; as any type or version of doula, we all come to the role with a want to be a caregiver. There are great needs being filled by doulas.
For communion, for safety, for birth, for health, and ultimately for death.
The service and care of birth work comes from past traditions coinciding with our modern needs. Entering death work is, too, a calling from our past traditions coinciding with our modern needs.
The keeners and banshees from my Irish ancestors may not be super prevalent in modern culture, but I feel assured that it carried my ancestors far and there is a calling again.
Bringing Heart & Soul Back to the Business of Death & Dying
Understandably, the modern industrialization of death and dying has removed many cultural aspects from our grieving process. This is holding us back as a society by insulating all of the hard parts as if this will make things “easier.” Death has been hidden, sterilised, cleaned up, and packaged up in tidy boxes lined in satin. For those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one, those who have experienced the many failings of the medical industrial complex know that death is anything but presentable, despite the images we are sold.
Death doulas and death workers are here to bring humanity and grace back to the messiness of living and dying and being human.
How to Become a Death Doula
The training, experiences and backgrounds for each death doula are unique, as are our care and support services. Each of us is a veteran in loss, in grief, in dying and we all hold different experiences. There are colleges that offer certifications, established death doula organisations that offer training and workshops, and a wealth of online information to glean to create your own practice. Like much else, death education is also an industry, and it comes with its own capitalist education structures and gatekeeping. There are, of course, spaces and corners in this work that are focused on mending and nourishing this field.
My own personal experience with death came with losing my father to cancer as a child, losing my mother traumatically in my 30s, and losing my best friend, Babs just 3 years ago among other losses and grief. Babs was the first to teach me what a death doula was by having her very own.
Babs was what I call “death literate.” She knew her terminal cancer diagnosis was a call to lean in as hard as she could into embracing her ending days and making choices that allowed her the most control and healing for the days she was granted. Babs painted her own coffin at the London Coffin Club, she was on the board of directors for the UK end of life organisation and had Sam by her side. Sam was Babs’ death doula, and Sam granted me the gift of proactively loving Babs in her final days.
Sam was by Babs’ bedside to read my love letters to her. Sam could report back to tell me how much my letters made Babs laugh out loud. This was a priceless gift to me while Babs was in hospice in the United Kingdom and I was stuck here in BC, Canada.
With Babs’ encouragement and some alignment with luck and timing, I was able to take the end of life doula certification at a local college. The course offered me knowledge and information about the laws and restrictions in death and dying, as well as a component about health advocacy within my local region for end of life medical situations.
My Journey as a Death Doula
The pandemic hit a few months after graduation, and I have had to redesign the in-person client work I offer just like a lot of us. These last few years have been revolutionary for me professionally. Babs is my muse for this work and I have had the gift to share similar love and care and connections for my own clients now. I have realised that death work is not just for the actively dying, but for all of us.
Death work pertains to the living days and the challenges and the grief and all of the sticky moments. I realised I wasn't just a “death doula” but a “life doula,” and so my business was born. I meet clients in their difficult moments, and together we create care plans for getting through these moments as best we can.
Considering the breadth of living and dying, there are so many different places a death doula or death worker might show up. Death workers:
Are with us in our active dying and in our earliest stages,
Are with us while we grieve, process, and remember our lives,
Are by our sides when we want to create our legacies,
Help us find solace and refuge in existing when things feel difficult,
Hold vigil, at our bedsides,
Engage in conversations with family members, caregivers, doctors, nurses, health care practitioners,
Hold space for support groups for grief.
You’ll see us sharing the final words of long distance loved ones, and being a medium for all the words needing to be said, for all the stories that need to be shared. We are the empathy-filled advocates, guides, teachers, helpers, and supporters here in your corner, knowing that just as life begins in wild and woolly ways, so death does carry us this way.
You’ll find death doulas and death workers on the other side with our bodies, the burials,
the anointments,
the rituals,
the modern version of keening
the funerals,
the ceremonies
the planning,
the legacies,
the memories to help share.
We show up in a variety of places, in a variety of ways from such a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Blessed be the palliative care workers, the nurses, the doctors, the ICU staff, the hospice volunteers. The broken system does not support this web of caretakers and stewards of life and death nearly enough. These folks too, whether they use the term or not, are our death and life workers as well.They see more of it than the rest of us, and they choose to be there.
Most death workers have deeply personal connections to this work because of our own losses. We all come to this work honestly.
Death is Hard.
And it’s tragically inevitable. So, often our questions are:
How can we make this easier?
How can I find even just little bits of comfort and care?
How do we add grace to the grim?
What types of nourishment and grace can we anoint ourselves in?
How can we connect with others in these sticky, scary, taboo spaces?
How do we do this work within and without the sterilised, binary, colonial, platitudes that come with the bypassing of death and dying?
That's a lifetime of searching for the answers and finding the solutions.
I keep showing up to try to answer these questions, and it often seems to come back to building community and building spaces to grieve, to process, to be human. There’s so much more that can be held and created. There are so many spaces to fill up with mutual aid and community care and more honesty and vulnerability.
If you can, please explore the ways death, dying and grief have made space in your life. For me, this feels like life practice. I hope you can join me.
Owner of ‘art & apothecary’, Tanis Laird (they/them) is a death worker (certified end of life doula), life worker (abortion doula, grief assistant) & postpartum companion. They create art, magic & apothecary objects for community, care & joy.