"The role of the practitioner — the doctor, nurse, or other medical professional — is to become a therapeutic tool for healing."
David Rakel
Read MorePart 2: Occupy Death | Occupy Life: The Death Positive Movement
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For us new age boomers and spiritual seekers, this last transformational movement of Practicing for Death, is the crown jewel of how to be fully in our lives. To occupy death is to embody life. We must wake up out of whatever sleeping or waking dreams we have left, whatever dull, mind numbing trances we are still in, whatever false hope we might have that we will get out of this life without facing our own mortality and death.
Some wonder about why we should entertain such gloomy topics anyway, lest we find ourselves bogged down by this unnecessary heaviness. To them I would say that death awareness itches all the time, that it rumbles continually just under the surface, that our real choice is between letting it fester in our unconscious or leveraging it to experience feelings of meaning and deeper connection.
Read MoreNHPCO Announces End-Of-Life Doula Council Formation
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(Alexandria, Va) – National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, the leading hospice and palliative care membership organization in the U.S., is pleased to announce the formation of a Council to provide information and resources to its members, affiliated organizations, and the public regarding the role of end-of-life doulas.
The Council’s inaugural meeting took place April 25 in Washington, DC to define the Council’s purpose and design activities that will serve its mission.
End-of-life Doulas (EOLDs) are caregivers who offer non-medical, holistic support and comfort to dying people and their families. Services are varied to meet individual needs and requirements, and may include education and guidance, as well as emotional, spiritual or practical care. (continue reading)
Read MoreTarron Estes: My Personal Evolution in the End of Life Doula Movement
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When I look back on how I came to teach “Sacred Passage: End of Life Doula” education—I see a beautiful pattern of connections and relationships, events and places. All playing unique roles. All touching. All connected. A long steady stream of connections from early childhood to now creating a beautiful life design.
I can see myself as a small child with my mother going to homes or hospital rooms of people who were sick and dying. My mom was a non-medical, natural born caregiver whose healing gifts were intact I suspect from the moment she was born. Caring was her calling.
I see my mom caring for people so tenderly, confidently and with love. Feeding sometimes. Cleaning sometimes. Sitting sometimes. Cooking. Just sitting. Wetting the mouth. Touching the forehead. Just being there.
Read MorePart 1: Occupy Death | Occupy Life - Creating The Death Positive Movement:
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Most baby boomers who came into personal growth and development, the "Transformational Movement" began "Waking Up" with Werner Erhart, now known as the father of the Transformational Movement, in the mid 1970s. Since then, spiritual seekers, alternative healers, mediators, new agers and growth cravers have tasted, touched, danced, wailed, blissed out, lit up, sat on cushions, tuned in, turned on, felt "let down", high, awakened, and perhaps even moderately addicted to a myriad of “transformational” methods, workshops, & spiritual retreats of all types.
Read MoreThe Evolution of the End of Life Doula Movement
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The End of Life Doula movement may be in its earlier stages but it is a worthwhile cause. By definition End of Life Doulas provide non-medical, holistic support and comfort to the dying person and their family. Death has always been a difficult subject for many. It is a time of loss. But it is also a time of appreciation, a time of retrospection and the opportunity to share intimately with loved ones. End of Life Doulas are trained to be an integral part of the end of life process and provide essential non-medical support to a dying person and their family.
Read MoreDeath Doula Turns Grief into Guidance
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With the facts around her sister’s death seared into her brain, Hayes forgot how to take care of herself. She says she felt like she was walking on her hands and eating with her feet. Nothing felt normal. It was while hiking in Lynn Headwaters with a good friend that Hayes saw a faint light at the end of the tunnel. The friend dropped the term “death doula” and Hayes was intrigued. She went home and immediately googled it.
“It was so clear to me that this is what I’m supposed to be doing,” says Hayes. Except the timing for Hayes becoming a certified death doula was a little off, she admits. You’re not supposed to take the program when you’re in the throes of grief, but Hayes pushed through to the other side. She was a student learning about grief when she had already aced the painful exam.
Hayes took a three-month, End of Life Doula program overseen by the Conscious Dying Institute out of Colorado.
Read MoreThe Space of Total Vastness by Emily Risner
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“And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.” -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Shortly before my Grandma passed away, I was dreaming about her. In the dream, she wanted me to promise her that I would do some of the things that were important to her. The feeling cannot be described with words except that she seemed mercifully dependent upon my response.
Read MoreThe Grace of Dementia by Sara Bensman
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Last summer I took the Conscious Dying Institute Doula Certificate Training in Asheville. I don’t know why I took it. I didn’t really plan on changing careers and I have no previous experience working with dying people. I just felt drawn to understand death better in a deep, personal, and positive way. I knew that I wanted to be prepared for the deaths of my 80 year old parents and aging friends and family members.
Read MoreThe Sacred Ordinary in Healthcare --by Dr. Venu Julapalli, syndicated from tincture.io, Mar 20, 2018→
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The Sacred Ordinary in Healthcare
--by Dr. Venu Julapalli, syndicated from tincture.io, Mar 20, 2018
"If you make time for silence, the sacred will unfold." --Rod Stryker
We wanted to share this article posted on The Daily Good with our readers. We hope you will become a part of the everyday Sacred Care as a Sacred Passage Doula. Training begins March 23rd in Boulder, Colorado.
Dear Caregivers,
This piece isn’t dainty. Because healthcare is never dainty.
Earlier this year, my mother was hospitalized for the sudden rupture of an aneurysm in her brain. You can read about an aspect of that experience here. Last week, she came home.
Just two days after she was home, I found her out of the bed and sitting on the ground. She had wet herself. And the feeding tube that was supposed to stay in her stomach while she relearned how to swallow safely? It was next to her pillow.
My father had stepped away to the bathroom for two minutes before this happened. Fortunately, she was okay - and as a gastroenterologist, I knew what to do about the feeding tube (get a replacement into her belly fast before the hole closes)!
It’s not easy to take care of the everyday needs of someone who can’t do them herself. This is what we’ve been finding out firsthand.
So I write this to express gratitude. For all the caregivers in the hospital who looked after Mom. In our more ignorant moments, we doctors may sometimes call you “ancillary personnel.” I will never use that phrase again. You are NOT ancillary.
Read MoreLiving Like I'm Dying by Laurie Brown→
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So for the past three months I have been thinking about death everyday. "Is this the last time I hand wash this sweater? Is this the last time I talk with my son?" It was jarring, but I kept going. I wanted to get to a less anxious feeling about my own mortality. By trying to live as if I was dying, would I live each day differently? Might that take some of the sting out of my impending death? Is that even possible?
Read MoreThe Most Powerful Way to Help Someone through Emotional Pain
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A beautiful story we wanted to share about helping others with grief by Tree Franklyn posted on on Uplift Wednesday February 21st, 2018..
When Kind Advice Just Doesn't Cut it...
When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark. – UnknownRead More
Holding Space with Death by Marie David
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“Just as when weaving
Once reaches the end
With fine threads woven throughout,
So is the life of humans”
~Buddha
An old family friend, Ellen, asked if my mother and I would visit her parents, who weren’t doing well and if we could check on them. Up until a few months earlier, my mom and I were in the intense fire of tending to my dad 24/7 in the last days of his life. Life after my father’s passing had felt foreign and spacious, and we knew all too well about the lingering desire for more time with him and we wanted to make sure our friends had all the time they needed.
Read MoreBecoming a Sacred Passage Doula
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Becoming a Sacred Passage Doula
Life has been constantly abuzz with opportunity to give of myself. I am overflowing with absolute gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of the amazing and beautiful education and work with the Sacred Passage End of Life Doula Certificate training in Boulder. It was only months ago in September of 2017 that I began my training to become an End of Life Doula. I have cared for the dying as a CNA and was blessed to receive the opportunity to expand my training through the generous gift of a client.
Read MoreFlying on the Wings of Angels
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Flying on the Wings of Angels
Have you ever wondered, if you died next week, who would show up at your funeral; what would they say about you? A year and a half ago, we inadvertently got our first small taste of that. Alarmed at the conventional medicine choices offered for treatment of John’s advanced prostate cancer, we found options that, not covered by health insurance, were out of reach financially for us. So we asked for help. As our first group of angels flew in, John learned how many friends and family from all over the world loved him, appreciated and valued his work and wanted him to stick around! Some shared this with poetic and glowing words. Others, like an old high school friend, told him “he better get well and fast, otherwise he was gonna have to give him a good ass whoopin”.
Read MoreInitiation of a Death Doula by Kristie Zahn
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Initiation of A Death Doula
Often while we are living the illusion that we have “everything under control” and have a game plan for keeping it all together, Life Itself Happens, and the unexpected takes you on a “Hero’s Journey” into the deep caverns of your mind, body and spirit.
And thus my journey began....
Read MoreEmbracing the Mystery by Emily Risner
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Facing death, talking about it, or writing about it is uncomfortable. I’m young. I’m healthy and death seems a remote possibility right now. I am called to become an End of Life Doula and yet find this resistance to begin my homework. Like birthing or parenting, no matter how much you buy in, you still must endure the physical labor with all its uncertainty, the struggles and messiness. The curriculum with the institute is intense, and beginning my homework as a Doula means resurrecting feelings around death that I have avoided. In all the ways I could look at death, it hasn’t always been kind or welcomed, and yet it came. Pursuing my training to become an End of Life Doula is the first time that I intentionally chose death.
Read MoreEnd-of-Life Activists Ponder How to Die in a Death-Averse Culture
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“Are you willing to pretend something for a minute?” asks Greg Lathrop, a local end-of-life activist. “So, let’s pretend this. March 27 will be your last day here. In this game, we know that you’re going to die March 27. Now, how’s your life? See, it’s a simple perspective shift. Perspective is just a choice. You shift the perspective just that much, and it opens a door. We’re getting somewhere. Now it’s like, ‘I hate my job,’ or ‘I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.’ What would it look like, in these last three months, to live the best three months of your life? It gives us an opportunity. It’s more than a bucket list. What’s your life’s purpose — why are you even here?”
Read MoreWhy Me? The Calling to Become an End of Life Doula by Emily Risner
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What calls us to want to serve at someone’s bedside as an End of Life Doula? In my case it is death itself. My mother died of breast cancer one month before my seventh birthday. Although she passed with dignity and grace, I can only imagine how she must have felt on hospice knowing that she was terminally ill and would be departing at the young age of thirty-four with two children and a husband that she loved dearly. She did not have an End of Life Doula, nor did she have any rites of passage for her next journey, in this case death. Not only would my mother have benefited from having a special person to sit with her and help her with this transition, but also us kids and my father too. Perhaps becoming an End of Life Doula started a long time ago.
Read MoreThe Miracles Around Us by Heather MacLeod
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The Miracles Around Us
by Heather MacLeod
After being blessed with the opportunity to be a part of Phase 1 of the Sacred Passage Doula course in Vancouver, I watched several videos of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I came across an interview that Oprah Winfrey had done with Dr. Elisabeth that had been recorded just before Dr. Elisabeth passed on. Oprah and Dr. E spoke of 'guardian angels' and Oprah asked Dr. K-R if she believed everyone had a guardian angel.
Heather MacLeod is a soon to be graduate of the Sacred Passage Doula Certificate Program with the Conscious Dying Institute.
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