how we meet death
profoundly changes how we live

HOW I DEATH DOULA:

I’m a death doula, trauma-informed guide, ritualist, and lifelong student of the strange, sacred, and deeply human experience of being alive.

For more than a decade, I’ve worked in trauma, grief and mental health care, particularly with survivors of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking. A lot of my work has been steeped in understanding how the pain we avoid or suppress, has a way of showing up everywhere else. I received my doula training through Going with Grace and my work in hospice, death care, and grief support has only deepened what I have always believed: grief is universal, identity-shattering, and not something we “get over.” It is something we learn to honor, carry, question, ritualize, and eventually integrate into the new person we are becoming.

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WHO MY WORK IS FOR:

I will work with anyone (within reason), however I’m especially passionate about cultivating culturally responsive and spiritually expansive spaces to explore grief and all its expressions with LGBTQ+, BIPOC, transient, and other historically overlooked communities. Death does not happen outside of race, identity, faith, family, culture, socioeconomic status or power—and death care should not pretend that it does. I believe every part of who we are deserves to be acknowledged in how we live, how we grieve, how we receive care, and how we die.

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MY APPROACH:

My approach is compassionate, honest, curious, direct, and with complete reference for the autonomy of the person(s) I'm working with. I'm a staunch believer in the need for us to dive collectively into the "mess" of humanity; to stop sanitizing death, grief, and trauma, and get brutally honest with ourselves about the impact of these aspects of our humanity. The only way through is through; and the first necessary step for most of us in grief, is to give ourselves the permission to acknowledge that it hurts, and that we need help managing it.

 

I believe ritual can change you; a hard but honest conversation can free you; and that sometimes the beginning of a more truthful life starts with accepting that you have no idea what the hell to do now. I'm here to walk that road with you. I won't preach, sugarcoat or pussyfoot around grief, death, & trauma, nor will I hand you a five-step plan for getting over your grief by Tuesday. I am here to help you ask better questions, trust your own inner authority, acknowledge and honor your deepest needs and vulnerabilities, and to make meaning from the beautiful, complicated, heartbreaking realities of being human.

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At the heart of my work is a simple truth: when we become more honest about death (in all of its breadth), we can become more intentional about life. My hope is that this work helps you feel less alone, better equipped, and more willing to create a life that is not solely defined by fear, grief, trauma, obligation, or the belief that you must hold everything together all the time.