Death & Dying are Normal
my death doula training is nearly over!
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I am a week away from finishing my death doula training through Going with Grace! It feels like I just started it. I can’t believe it’s almost over. I have learned so much and still have plenty more to learn.
I wanted to do this training for a few years. My friend Alex died when we were 33 from stage 4 colon cancer. He complained of symptoms early on, but was ignored due to his age (“You’re too young to have colon cancer!”) and his mental illnesses (anxiety and OCD). He died a year after he was finally taken seriously enough to get testing done.
Another friend of mine, Xeph, who was a trans woman of color, died by suicide a few years ago, and her parents immediately deadnamed and misgendered her in all of the obits.
There is so much transphobia, ableism, racism—all the isms—that do not end in death, unfortunately. We can’t abolish this overnight, but we can do the bare minimum like honor someone’s wishes for what happens to their body when they die.
The foundation of a Death Doula’s work is advocacy. We are non-medical support people to those who are dying or those who are thinking about their end of life planning. We work with three main categories of people: 1) those who don’t know when they are dying; 2) those who have knowledge of when they will die; and 3) those who have lost a loved one.
The training was 12 modules and weekly Zoom meetings. The module titles were:
The Role of the Death Doula
Conscious Dying
The Art of Medicine
Being with Dying
Natural Deathcare
The Funeral Industry and Home Funerals
Legacy, Ritual, and Meaning-Making
Advance Directives & End of Life Decisions
Beyond the Advance Directive
Wrapping Up Affairs
Bereavement & Burnout
Business Building & Self-Care
Something that has been impressed upon me over and over again is how much bureaucracy is involved with our deaths. How much is tied up for months on end, especially if we don’t have certain things completed at the time of our death. I highly, highly recommend doing the following as soon as possible:
Assigning a Medical Power of Attorney
this is a legal document that gives someone the power to act on another’s behalf (if unspecified, this falls to the next of kin, which can be problematic for many reasons)
Living Will
this typically lays out wishes for medical treatment that the health care agent/power of attorney should follow. In this document, you can say whether you want a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), a DNI (Do Not Intubate), or an AND (Allow Natural Death).
Physician Order for Life-Saving Treatment (POLST)
a document where a person can indicate whether they want to receive fluids and nutrition, whether they want to be resuscitated, and whether they want antibiotics or not and for how long.
Please note that these forms are usually state-specific, so you need to look up the one that is applicable to where you are currently residing.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about death these last few months, and it has help amplify my living. It has also wrecked me in ways I didn’t expect. I think about everyone I’ve lost and how badly I wish they would have had resources to die how they wanted to die. For their loved ones to show up how they (the dying person) would have wanted—instead of the loved ones deciding what was best.
Death and dying are the most normal of things. None of us get out of here alive. We might as well spend some time attending to thoughts of our death.
For a list of death doulas national and international, go here. For a list of National End of Life Doulas, go here.
I will be offering free services for the time being. You can check these out here.
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