I pursued EOLD training in 2016 soon after the death of my artist friend and first Bardo ∞ Project collaborator Chris Brunkhart. Right after he died I was at an Arts/Industry artist residency at the Kohler Co. factory, where I was making the first work about my experiences with Chris and his death. It was then that I saw a TED Talk about the role of end-of-life doulas. I realized I was intuitively serving the role of doula within my artistic project, where I collaborate with terminally ill artists to establish legacy projects. Immediately after the residency I pursued in-person training via INELDA under Henry Fersko-Weiss in San Francisco, with the goal of learning how to better serve my artist peers in their dying process. But I quickly realized that the role of an EOLD was also a very good fit for me as a career. The experience of my father’s untimely death and the lack of resources provided by the hospital for my family at that time also informed my path toward educating myself on better end-of-life care options.

Experiencing lots of death in my life as a young person paved the way to a doula career in compassionate caregiving. In 1997 my father died at age 51 when I was 28 years old, of complications from a lifetime of alcoholism. His sudden death changed my life drastically, as I was thrown into the role of making difficult decisions to take him off of life support, make burial plans, and settle his estate. All of which I knew nothing about as a young person! My family was not well supported by the hospital ICU staff during my dad’s complicated death. As a result we all experienced protracted grief. I became a full-time working artist after his death, which was a huge gift after his passing. My dad’s death was a cautionary tale, instilling in me to choose to treat my body well. After his death I began losing a lot of young friends to accidents, complications from drugs or alcohol, and cancer; that set me on a trajectory of grief. But I am a clinical optimist, so rather than run away from death I chose to embrace it, leading me to involvement in health-related activism in harm reduction and in my artistic practice. When I was 46 my best friend, artist Chris Brunkhart, received a terminal cancer diagnosis. He chose to become my first collaborator in my then-fledgling social practice endeavor, the Bardo ∞ Project, using creativity as a form of spiritual care in collaborations with terminally ill artists to establish legacy projects. I accompanied him and his husband, Zeke, on their honeymoon in Iceland so that he could make a last body of photography work. Serious health complications occurred during the trip, and they had to emergently consider end-of-life care plans. I was intuitively acting as a doula prior to any training. Chris died 16 months later at age 47, soon after publishing his legacy landscape photography book. I am forever grateful for his contribution to my work, and I have continued with the Bardo Project for the last 10 years. I also continue to be a private practice doula. Art, life, and death are interwoven for me. My art explores life cycles, death and dying, and transformation. I even provide end-of-life care advocacy materials at my art exhibitions.

Currently I mostly serve in private homes in the Portland, Oregon, metro area. I am very comfortable being at the bedside with the dying process. I don’t mind being flexible, working nights and weekends. Prior to the pandemic I was living in New York City and served as a doula at Parker Jewish Institute for its hospice volunteer program. I spent one day a week there to gain contact hours toward certification and also floated to the dementia ward and the subacute rehab floor. This gave me a well-rounded experience of serving diverse populations.

I meditate to clear my mind of distractions and other forms of work. This helps me to more easily drop any preconceived ideas of what a client and their family and chosen family may need. My mantra is “leave my ego at the door, to remain open-minded and open-hearted to what the client may need, so I can better serve them.” My aim is to create meaningful space for their last physical, spiritual, and transformational shift, and to always LISTEN.

My first private practice client and their family had a complicated relationship to their dying loved one. No one wanted to be in the room when this person died. I was able to guide them to arrive at a place where they all surrounded their loved one, saying goodbye. They felt tremendous relief for their loved one to not suffer further, and felt at peace for having some closure. The spouse who was initially terrified to sit with the body was able to do so and continued to talk and play music for their departed one. They later intimated to me that this was immensely healing, and that it would not have happened without a doula to guide the process. I learned in this moment that you can’t redo, restage, or relive those final moments of a person’s life. Death can teach us so much when we allow space for healing trauma and difficult relationships.

Beyond my initial INELDA training and its online community, my teachers have largely been my peers. We support each other, figuring out along the way what our needs are both professionally and personally, and how to best serve our clients and communities. I hosted a series of end-of-life doula meetups in NYC just before the pandemic began. There were guest speakers from the end-of-life care community, and we shared resources and approaches to care. Some of our early participants were Emma Acker (All’s Well Initiative), Amy Cunningham (Fitting Tribute Funeral Services), Victoria Chang, PhD, and Mangda Sengvanhpheng (Bacii). I also connected with many EOLD and palliative care practitioners through the ReImagine network of community festivals and online events focused on education on death and dying, grief, trauma, and healing. Andrew Ingall, a curator and producer at Reimagine, has been a major presence in connecting me to the larger deathcare and palliative care community. My life partner is an acute care nurse practitioner in pulmonary ICU settings; I gain much knowledge and perspective from their 30-plus years of experience in end-of-life care settings.

I knew as much but wished it were not a fact that it would be a decade after starting my practice to see Western society begin to embrace the role of what the end-of-life doula is and does, and that death is a natural part of life to be honored and celebrated as much as birth, weddings, graduations, and other major milestones. I’m an activist, and being an EOLD has an activistic component, so I am committed to lifelong advocacy about deathcare.

All community care is equally important, and your calling to do this work is very valid. Follow your intuition; the role of an EOLD is a very intuitive one. Training helps in making practical decisions, but trusting your gut feelings can help provide what clients, families, and caregivers need emotionally and spiritually. Bring your joy when you serve the dying—it buoys oneself and those you serve. Prioritize self-care to avoid burnout (I could do better at this.) Grief takes a long time to process; we need to allow ourselves to honor our own grief, and that of our community’s grief.

Thanks for this question! My dream is for our communities to engage with us sooner in the end-of-life process so we can guide and spare unnecessary difficulties in navigating deathcare decisions. I want to see all queer and BIPOC families have equal access to equitable, gender-affirming end-of-life care options, and access to affordable EOLD training. I would love to see insurance cover doula services, as our work creates better outcomes for patients and families. For my own practice, I want to be part of a doula collective in Oregon. I’m a community builder; to be in service with a doula network and related end-of-life care practitioners would be immensely supportive.