This life takes us through so many chapters as we each make our ways through. I have found that the chapters at the end of life come quicker and more intensely. At the end of life, one of our most potent times, meeting our emotional and spiritual needs can be difficult to navigate. My doula toolkit allows me to listen, offer, share, hold, serve, and advocate. My doula toolkit can open space to prepare, understand, face head on (or from around the edges!), understand, and find caring connection. My doula toolkit can support a person facing end of life and their circle of care.
Which isn’t to say that a death doula can meet all of a client’s emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. But when we open the space together, we can find even small ways that make a difference.
My services range from virtual support sessions, real-time support, in-person support for end-of-life including visits and sitting vigil, legacy building/memorial creation, home clean-out assistance, after-death care including shmirah (Jewish practice of sitting with the body), spiritual and Jewish religious rituals including shiva, and more. In person or from afar, these services are highly specialized based on what feels right for you and yours.
What does it mean to be an end of life doula?
Death is one of the most significant things we do, profoundly, alone. And yet we do not need to undertake the process alone.
It is my honor to work as a doula within a greater circle of care. I provide compassionate, trauma-informed, feminist emotional, logistical, and physical support for the full timeline of end of life.
My mission is to meet you where you are, and to offer the care you need during end of life with humility, warmth, curiosity, vulnerability, pragmatism, and a sense of our creaturely nature.
As a Queer and Nonbinary Doula
It is my great honor to sit with and serve my queer, trans, and gay elders. I got the SAGECare training, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t know already and then some. Serving the elders and full community of lifecycles at CBST (NYC’s gay synagogue) for ten years has helped me understand that we are all we have. End of life can be a uniquely challenging and deeply connected time for us depending on our circumstances, and in our intake conversation we can talk about scope of service options that are tailored to your needs.
As a Jewish Doula
I am moved to bring my embodied ancestral Judaism into end of life spaces. Jewish traditions around death provide opportunity for heartbreak and mystery, humor and imagination. The structures of Jewish death provide us with containers and supports in the end of life process that I am honored to facilitate and navigate. Jewish text, liturgy, and music connect us to our ancestors through time and ritual. Let’s talk about shmirah (ritual accompaniment of the body after death), shiva (days of communal mourning gathering), shloshim (a month following death), kaddish (recitation of the mourners’ prayer), and yahrzeit rituals.
Ariel N Kates 