These Gifted Healers Help Make The End Of Life More Comfortable
Life is a precious gift deserving of intention, but what about our deaths? Care and community are necessary throughout every stage; these doulas help us go gracefully.
There is beauty in each breath we take. Every exhale is another chance to participate, showing up as our whole selves in the gift of life. Just as when we come into the world and our “village” surrounds us, when God calls us home, we deserve to transition with the embrace of a loving community.
Death Doulas provide the care we all need as our lives or the lives of our loved ones come to an end. Like the granny midwives who made birthing while Black a more compassionate experience, death doulas provide care, knowledge, and companionship as we’re dying.
There’s a potent truth expressed when our people say, “I don’t have to do nothin’ but stay Black and die.” It’s a powerful reminder that our time is limited, but we can always refuse to be anything other than ourselves while we’re here.
The reassuring thing about death planning is that we get to leave this world with that same spirit of self-determination.
Alua Arthur, a death doula and founder of Going With Grace, says in her Ted Talk: “The real gift of being with our mortality is the sheer wonder that we lived at all.”
Living in an anti-Black world means that our people often don’t get to live on our terms, but we can surely die on them, and that’s powerful.
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