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There is a moment that doesn’t get named often enough. It doesn’t arrive with a diagnosis. It doesn’t announce itself through crisis. Nothing is “wrong,” and yet—something has shifted. You’re sitting across from them. Maybe at the kitchen table. Maybe on the phone. Maybe watching them move through a room they’ve moved through a thousand times before. And suddenly, quietly, you know: This will end. Not today. Not tomorrow. But undeniably, inevitably—this life you have known wi

On why the traditional funeral fails the grieving — and what we lose when we leave the body, the community, and the song outside. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that follows a funeral. Not the exhaustion of weeping — that is clean, even necessary. This is something else. Something heavier. A tiredness that feels like incompletion, like a sentence cut off mid-clause. You drove to the parking lot. You sat in a row. You watched someone in a suit read words from a paper

On the village we have lost, the grief we have been left to carry alone, and the single step that can begin to change that. Photo by Sasha Zilov Something happened to grief in the modern world. Something quiet, and gradual, and almost completely unnoticed — until you are in the middle of it, and you look around, and you realize you are profoundly, inexplicably alone. Not alone in the sense of having no people around you. You may have family nearby, friends who checked in, nei

A Letter to Those Carrying More Than They Expected Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash Most people do not choose to become caregivers. They arrive there. Sometimes gradually—a few appointments, a few concerns, a quiet noticing that something has shifted. Sometimes all at once—with a diagnosis, a fall, a phone call that changes the shape of everything that follows. And in that moment, whether named or not, something in them steps forward. Not because they are trained. Not be

Photo by Ýlona María Rybka on Unsplash There is a tenderness and a tyranny that can live inside a dying person's last wishes — not from malice, but from the way we've come to think about death itself. We have made it so thoroughly personal. So individual. A private matter to be handled with efficiency, tidied up. And somewhere in that narrowing, we have handed the dying a kind of final authority that may not, in fact, be theirs to hold alone. Much has been said — rightly — a

Photo by Fabien TWB on Unsplash There are moments in a life that divide everything into before and after. A diagnosis. A phone call that shakes you. A meeting that reshapes your professional plans. An ending to a relationship, once solid. A death. Or the quiet realization that, now, one day, it will be you. These are not just emotional experiences. They are full-body, full-life disruptions. They reach into our hearts, our relationships, our work, our sense of identity—and t

How a Death Doula Supports Families Through Medical Assistance In Dying Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is one of the most profound and complex choices a person and their family can face. It is, at its core, an act rooted in autonomy, dignity, and the deeply human desire to have some say in how one’s life comes to a close. And yet—because of its nature—it can also disrupt something we rarely name, but deeply feel: The natural rhythm of a dying process. When death unfolds o

On the grief that waits, lingers, and asks again... Grief does not follow a calendar. It does not check in after a respectful interval to ask whether you are finished. It does not observe the social contracts we construct around it — the acceptable window of mourning, the expected arc from loss to recovery, the quiet pressure to return, renewed, to ordinary life. And yet, many of us have been taught carry grief as though it has an expiry date. As though the years between a de

So many families are sure that there is only one way to celebrate a life. Things seemingly have to move quickly. There isn’t much time to think. A call was made… arrangements followed… and suddenly, everything felt like it was happening around them. Decisions. Timelines. Packages. They did their best. They showed up with love. But underneath it all, there was a quiet feeling: “This doesn’t feel like us.” Not wrong. Not bad. Just… not them. And definitely not the person that

and No One Tells You How to Be There. There is a moment that no one prepares you for. It’s not the diagnosis. It’s not even the final days. It’s the quiet space in between…When someone you love is still here—but already beginning to leave. More than ever, this is becoming the everyday experience for tens of thousands of people, day in, day out. And suddenly, you don’t know what to do. Do you say something? Do you stay quiet? Are you doing the right things? Who is there to sup

We tend to think of death as something that happens at the end. A distant moment. A closing chapter. Something to avoid, postpone, or quietly fear. But what if death wasn’t the end of the conversation—what if it was the beginning of a more honest, more meaningful way of living? What if, instead of turning away, we turned toward it… and in doing so, found our way back to ourselves? This is where the work of a death doula begins. For many, a death doula is someone you call when

Holidays are a time for family and friends, for connection and community. For laughter, for play. They are, for most, a time of celebration, the opportunity to end another year on a positive note. And along with all that, there can also be absence. Loneliness. A feeling of isolation and despair. Whether it is the death of a loved one, or a deeper awareness of something that we long for but find lacking, the absence of community, the void left by a loved one, can bring a sense

When was the last time you went to a funeral, be it at a religious establishment or a funeral home, and had it be so unique that you could remember the details years later, it was so distinct? For the most part, if you remove the photo at the front, these celebrations of life have little if any of the resonance of the person whose life is being celebrated. Like choosing off a menu that is limited to minimalist options, the opportunity to have a celebration of life reflect the

For most of my life, and even more so in the years since I started working as a death doula, Grief has almost always been associated with sadness. Occasional anger, on rare occasions, apathy or numbness. And if that is what Grief is, then of course it would make sense that people would absolutely want to get "over it" as soon as possible. No one wants to feel those things any longer than they "have" to. But is Grief really a synonym for sadness? An emotion that also sometimes