Last week IDLM held the final graduation ceremony of 2023, celebrating a new cohort of end of life doulas as well as doula students completing training in the areas of End of Life Planning, Grief, Pediatrics, and our new Pet Doula course. What a wonderful way to round out the year!
Just from the list above, it is clear that IDLM offers some of the most thorough doula training available anywhere. But finishing training doesn’t mean being finished at IDLM, because IDLM is more than a school. It’s a community. It gives us a place to connect with other doulas when we need advice, guidance, support, or just a place to vent. The work we do is not the kind of thing everyone else can understand. Knowing there is at least one place you can go where people will “get” what you’re saying is absolutely invaluable.
Seeing how much our community has continued to grow over the past year has been incredible. And what that tells us, at the end of the day, is that there is a real passion for the work that we do, and a real need for it.
Every new doula is a blessing to the world. Each of us has been called to this work for our own particular reasons, and we have our own individual knowledge, experience, and insight to offer that no one else can. And on top of that we all have the ability to make each other greater, by sharing our knowledge and experience, teaching and learning from one another. The more of us there are, and the more we actively reach out and connect with one another, the more IDLM will thrive as a community and the stronger each of us will be individually as we serve the communities in which we live.
So to all our brand new graduates, to all the graduates who have been around a while, to the instructors, to the people who have not taken any training yet but are curious—welcome. Thank you for being a part of our doula community, thank you for bringing your light and sharing it with us. May our numbers continue to grow, may we all help one another shine brighter in the coming year and well beyond.
We are so happy and grateful that you are here.
