Knocking for Entrance
January is the gateway to the rest of the year. So it’s time for us at INELDA to focus on the year ahead. We believe this will be an exciting year for us and for the fledgling end of life doula movement. We have 12 public trainings scheduled with a growing number of hospices and hospitals planning to work with us on creating programs at their organizations. One of the difficulties in birthing this movement is having enough opportunities for doulas early on to utilize their new skills. At the same time, awareness of the end of life doula approach hasn’t yet spread enough to healthcare organizations and the general public to generate broad demand. These are the challenges we face this year.
On March 1 of this year Conari Press will publish Caring for the Dying, The Doula Approach to a Meaningful Death, by our Executive Director, Henry Fersko-Weiss. The book has been endorsed by many important people in the field of end of life care, and rights to the book have already been sold to Orion Books in the UK for publication there in the fall. We believe that this book will gain recognition for the field and help to generate a groundswell of demand as the public becomes more aware of what end of life doulas do.
INELDA will also make a push this year to market our program to more hospices, hospitals, and other organizations, as well as communities. And this is where we need your help. As someone who follows what we are doing and has an interest in seeing the work of doulas spread, you can contact the end of life care organizations in your area, make them aware of our work, and get us the contacts that can make the decision to bring us in.
Ultimately we all have to work together to establish the end of life doula approach as a vital part of end of life care, no matter the setting in which people die. We can’t do this alone. Talk about this approach to everyone you can, talk to organizations, bring the word to death cafés in your area, make a monetary donation to help fund our efforts. Even small steps help. And thank you from all of us at INELDA for being a devoted follower of our work. Let’s make this the year that changes everything.