Whether you are aging or planning ahead for serious illness, or face a life-limiting diagnosis, conversations about death take courage, motivation, and time. In my doula practice, I can help clarify paths and options to reduce fear and distress.

Advance care planning and directives help guide the medical care you would or would not want if you cannot speak for yourself. I will help you create or modify your directives to address not only medical care, but physical, personal, spiritual, and emotional care as well. Articulating and documenting your hopes, fears, beliefs, values, and expectations about how you want to live and how you want to die can help bring you and your caregivers peace of mind.

Guidance and support services include:

• Facilitating end of life discussions with family and loved ones

• Navigating information and choices around palliative care, hospice, and caregiving

• Preparing and completing of personalized Advance Care Directives

• Providing community or individual education about end-of-life decision making

• Meeting with individuals and family/care partners to facilitate communication and explore options

• Empowering people to document and understand their values and wishes

• Reviewing and modifying existing directives

• Clarifying common end-of-life concerns and health care scenarios

As an end-of-life doula, I am trained to watch and listen deeply in order to provide personalized and nonjudgemental care. I am available to support you in your home, care facility, or hospital, and my services complement the care you receive from family and friends, your hospice team, and other health care providers. I can help you create a non-medical comfort plan to convey your wishes for a “good death.” Your comfort plan includes how you might prefer the last days of life to look, sound, and smell, and who you would like to be present. I will advocate that your wishes are followed as closely as possible with your circle of support, paid caregivers, and clinicians.

I will help your family recognize the signs and symptoms of approaching death and can help connect with community resources for additional caregiving support. When death becomes imminent, I am available to provide presence at the bedside, to provide emotional, informational, and psychological support, and to provide respite for caregivers. At the time of death, I can assist in providing last acts of care for the body and facilitate rituals according to your wishes. Following death, I can work with the family through early grief, bereavement, and healing.

Guidance and support services include:

• Coaching and respite for caregivers and circle of support

• Liaise with medical and hospice care teams

• Advocacy for end-of-life wishes and care plan

• Personalized guided imagery, visualizations, and breathing exercises

• Education about terminal illness and death processes

• Connection with community resources

• Support for people choosing Medical Aid in Dying or Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking

• Plans for post-death care

• Rituals to process loss and grief