Advice to New and Aspiring Death Doulas
What is a Death Doula?
Core Components*
Non-medical support. Doulas refrain from performing any clinical or medicalized tasks.
Non-judgmental support. The doula does not impose her/his values on the client such as acting on biases.
Family-centered approach. The individual and their family form the unit of care. Doulas do not take the place of partners, family members or other care providers.
Holistic care. Doulas recognize the biopsychosocial and spiritual aspects of the whole person and provide services in the context of this understanding.
Empowerment. Doulas promote informed decision-making and foster maximum self-determination for the individual and family.
Team members. Doulas are team players within the end-of-life care ecosystem.
*Patty Brennan, please see NEDA’s scope of practice and other resources
Training
You don’t need training to become a death doula. Being a death doula is mostly about being present and learning how to actively listen to people, without trying to fix a situation or color their perception with your own biases.
Start with volunteering with a local hospice agency. Their training program will give you some of the basics that death doula programs cover.
Read free books at the library, or thrift ones. Much of what I have learned has been through books and my community members.
Popular Death Doula Programs:
I have made a list of programs I’m aware of within this document that you are welcome to browse through.
Can you do this full time?
I do this work part-time. I don’t make a lot of money on it. It’s work that I’m privileged to be able to do and something I’m passionate about in this stage in my life.
If anyone is getting into this work to be able to move away from their full-time jobs, it can take a long time to make sustainable income from this work. Often the doulas who succeed in making more full-time type income are also heavily death educators.
Get Involved In Your Community!
Come join my events and other local doula/death worker events. Check out the Prairie Death Care Collective page on this site as well as our events on Instagram and Facebook
Join Prairie Death Care Collective as a member in general. We have tons of different experience levels and people coming into the industry from different directions.
Host your own Death Cafe, Death Over Drafts, or custom events
Attend the free grief facilitator training at Collective for Hope and volunteer in one of their amazing programs
Connect with local libraries to host events and workshops
Suggested Books
Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life by Megory Anderson
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller
Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion & Fearlessness in the Presence of Death by Joan Halifax
Death Doula: Tools & Techniques for End-of-Life Support by Kelly Ruby Hanson
Death Nesting: Heart-Centered Practices of a Death Doula by Anne-Marie Keppel
The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski
Bring Community Death Care Back!
If you are willing to sit with the dying, you are a death doula. That’s all you need, along with a caring heart.
I hope, as a community, we can bring this knowledge back into the mainstream so that we can all have access to better death care, more autonomy, intentionality, and sacred and social moments when our loved ones and ourselves experience our own dying and death.
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