The Importance of Showing Up
A couple of weeks ago I was woken up by a call at around 6:30 in the morning. A friend of mine needed to get to the airport and the person that had agreed to take them had canceled at the very last minute. It wasn’t a huge emergency, as emergencies go; everybody got where […]
Self Care When There’s No Time For Self Care
Autumn is just around the corner. Vacations are winding down and kids are getting ready to go back to school. Classes are even starting up again at IDLM! It’s a good time for a lot of people to take on new projects and new responsibilities, before the holidays come around again and everybody gets really […]
The Gift of Trust
A commonly held view among those who work in hospice, or with end of life patients in general, is that most people who need to go on hospice wait too long to do it. Instead of opting for hospice care when they receive their terminal diagnosis, they decide to do one more round of chemo, […]
Music for End of Life
A couple weeks back, I was having a pretty rough day. One of those days where nothing seems to go right, and nothing seems to help, and the only thing you can do is give up, lie in a dark room, and listen to Simon and Garfunkel on repeat. You might have a different preference […]
A Time For Anger
People who are hearing about end of life doula work for the first time often ask what a doula actually does, or what sets a doula’s work apart from standard hospice care. It’s a reasonable question. As we know, the answer to that question can be long and complicated. But I think we can all […]
Whatever You Do… Don’t Panic!
There is a classic science fiction novel you may have heard of, called The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The book itself is not a guide to the galaxy. Instead, it is about the guide, which is an electronic device, a bit like a smart phone except the idea was thirty years before smart phones, […]
Continuing the Journey… Together!
When it comes to helping people on their journeys through end of life and/or grief, no matter howmuch you already know there will always be more to learn. Every person you work with will havesomething to teach you. But it is also your responsibility to show up prepared, with as much knowledgeas possible—your clients will […]
