Online and In-Person Trainings | View Schedules Here

SUMMER 2023

 SUMMER 2023
INELDA Newsletter - Notes for the Journey
NEWS BRIEFS MEDIA INELDA UPDATE PRACTICE CORNER EVENTS
Strength in Numbers: End-of-Life Doula Collectives
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: END-OF-LIFE DOULA COLLECTIVES
by Loren Talbot

While some doulas choose to work solo, there are many end-of-life doulas who have formed collectives around the United States. Each doula brings different skills, focuses, and areas of expertise to a collective. Additionally, more and more death workers are recognizing how beneficial collaboration can be when working with individuals who may have higher needs. There are also lessons we can glean from birth workers who have modeled and shown the importance of working in partnership for decades. Whether you have been engaged in providing doula support for years or are just arriving to the field, there are some reasons you may want to consider working with other doulas.

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doula Profile
RoseAnn Simeone

RoseAnn is an INELDA-certified end-of-life doula, certified Emotional Freedom Technique practitioner, registered medical assistant, certified grief educator, and grief movement therapy coach. RoseAnn creates legacy projects of clients’ life stories as well as vigil plans for the final days of life designed by and for clients as they write the perfect ending to their life story. She also provides respite and companionship for the family, guiding their path through the transition from life to death and into grief and beyond. RoseAnn also works with cancer patients, their families, and caregivers, providing support and teaching them self-care techniques. RoseAnn resides in Maryville, Tennessee.

Doula Profile - RosAnn Simeone
Q&A with RoseAnne

When and why did you decide to become an end-of-life doula?

In December of 2014, I received an email from a dear friend who had just attended INELDA cofounder Henry Fersko-Weiss’ class and had invited myself and 20 others for a weekend workshop with Henry. Once I read the email describing what an end-of-life doula was, I knew this was something I was called to do. After my husband died of cancer, I felt there was so much more that I could have done to advocate for his quality of life and prepare better. When the invitation came to train as a doula, I knew this was the missing link to what I was feeling when my husband died.

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 INELDA In-Person Trainings - Fall 2023
UPCOMING EVENTS
End-of-Life Doula Training Refresher Event - August 14 - 16 End-of-Life Doula Training Refresher


August 14-16 | MON-WED 6-9pm ET

“Refresher” is a shared learning space where you can continue cultivating your gifts, connecting with the community, and exercising your creativity. This training is for those interested in accessing the latest concepts and techniques explored in our current end-of-life doula curriculum. If your INELDA training occurred before September 2021, we have much to share with you. Click to see the full schedule | REGISTER

Intensive End-of-Life Doula Training Event August 24 - 26 •INTENSIVE• End-of-Life Doula Training 


August 24-26  | THUR 6-9pm ET, FRI & SAT 10am-7:30pm ET

This ONLINE doula training is for those who intend to serve the dying independently, as part of a hospice program, in a hospital or care facility, through a community program, or in a doula collective. Topics include model of care, deep active listening, ritual and ceremonies, vigil planning, and more. This class is open to all and will meet for three days on a Thursday evening and full days on Friday and Saturday. Limited to 30 individuals. Click to see the full schedule | REGISTER

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MEDIA OF THE MONTH
So Sorry for Your Loss: How I Learned to Live with Grief, and Other Grave Concerns
“So Sorry for Your Loss”: How I Learned to Live with Grief, and Other Grave Concerns

by Diana Gachman

Dina Gachman is an award-winning journalist, Pulitzer Center grantee, and frequent contributor to The New York Times, Vox, Texas Monthly, and more. She’s a New York Times best-selling ghostwriter and the author of Brokenomics: 50 Ways to Live the Dream on a Dime. She lives near Austin, Texas, with her husband and son. READ EXCERPT

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How to Be Grief-SMART for Young People
by Michelle Cove, director of communication, Experience Camps
We are a culture that has long struggled to figure out how to talk openly about grief and show up for one another while it’s happening. People who have experienced grief know this all too well, and research backs it up. Based on a recent Harris poll conducted with Experience Camps for grieving children: While 89% of Americans agree that everyone should learn to talk about grief, only 30% say they know what to do or say when someone is grieving.
How to be Grief-SMART for Young People

That’s a problem. Especially since every single one of us will experience the grief that comes from the death of someone close to us. It is unavoidable.

And it’s most definitely a huge problem for the 6 million kids who will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they’re 18. As the director of communications and a volunteer camp counselor at Experience Camps, I hear firsthand from young people how lonely and isolated they feel in their grief. For doulas who may be supporting those with children, understanding some basic facts about grief and young people is important.

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INELDA UPDATE
PARTNERING WITH THE ARIZONA END OF LIFE CARE PARTNERSHIP

We are excited to be joining in community with the Arizona End of Life Care Partnership. The organization’s mission is “to enhance the way we live by fundamentally changing the way we talk about death. READ MORE

Arizona End-of-Life Care Partnership


2023 IN-PERSON TRAININGS

INELDA educators are so happy to be able to be back in person. Join us this fall for one of three in-person end-of-life doula training sessions. Looking forward to seeing you in one of these three-day training sessions. 

Contact [email protected] with any questions.


BIPOC PEER MENTORING MOVING TO EVERY OTHER MONTH
After hearing from community members this past month, we are moving BIPOC mentoring groups to every other month versus quarterly. VIEW SCHEDULE INELDA’s Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Mentoring Group

AUGUST WORKSHOP: CREATING VISIBILITY
Interested in creating an action plan for your doula work? Join us on August 3 for a two-hour evening workshop on Creating Visibility.Whether recently trained as an end-of-life doula or having served the dying for years, participants will walk away with ideas, tools, and best practices to implement their plans and ways to market their doula services. Creating Visibility Workshop - August 2023

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

Twin Cities Metro Area

We have a volunteer opportunity for newly trained EOL doulas at Providence Place in Minneapolis. This is a unique opportunity to gain a great deal of experience being with residents through the entirety of their end-of-life journey.

Providence Place | Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation

 

CONTACT

Central New Jersey

Embracing HospiceCare, based in Monmouth, Middlesex, Mercer, Ocean, and Somerset Counties, is looking to recruit INELDA-trained doulas as volunteers.

Embracing HospicecareCONTACT

STAFF UPDATES
We would like to congratulate Zuri McLeod in her new role as program development coordinator. Thank you to Lydia Callender for her previous service in this position. We wish you the best!

IN THE NEWS
  • INELDA-trained doula Casey Jo Turnage and her client were featured in a Brut film directed by filmmaker Léo Hamelin. Thank you for sharing your stories and your beautiful visions.
  • AARP published an article which featured executive director Douglas Simpson and other doulas throughout the community about the support doulas give.
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INELDA’S AUGUST WEBINAR
Monthly Webinar
Deathtech for Doulas
August 30 | WED 7-8:30pm ET

In recent years, we have seen a rise in technology companies that provide services in the deathcare space. There are also doulas who have adopted some tech spaces to provide their end-of-life services. Join us next month as we welcome Donna Byrd founder of Blue Butterfly, Daniel Shaw co-founder of Autumn, and INELDA-certified doula Carole Silvoy of Good Death Companion to discuss deathtech. Together we will explore virtual and live-streamed memorials, resource databases, avatar-led grief groups, and how to navigate the growing resources and tools available to us.

Donna is the founder of BlueButterfly, a virtual memorial services and memorial pages company that is reinventing the funeral planning process. The company helps coordinate online memorial services that allow families to receive support from their community, honor their loved one and reduce costs. Daniel is the co-founder and CEO of Autumn, an end-of-life marketplace that helps bereaved communities manage life after loss and end-of-life providers find new customers and grow their business. And doula Carole provides Holding Space sessions for individuals, and as support with other doulas to far-flung beloved folk. Twice a month she leads a Death Cafe in a virtual world.

 

Webinar Speakers - Donna Byrd, Daniel Shaw, Carole Silvoy

INELDA educator, Omni Kitts Ferrara, will moderate an evening of conversation that will explore some of the newest innovations to help doula’s support and honor the dying.

 Cost: Free with INELDA Tier 2 & 3 membership | Tier 1 and nonmembers $15

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PRACTICE CORNER
TOOLBOX TIPS
Tool Box

The best thing I have found when everyone in the room is anxious about something is to affirm that anxiety is common and it’s OK. Thank them for trusting you to come into such an emotionally charged, intimate space, and see if there are specific aspects of death they would like to talk through. Most of all, keep a calm, even demeanor and invite the energy in the room to match your own.

—Lindsay Felt

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SHARING SOURCES
National Widowers’ Organization

The National Widowers’ Organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization formed in 2009 to help widowers deal with the death of their spouse or life partner. It has expanded to developing a better understanding of men’s grief and promoting support for men and their families dealing with all forms of grief.

Sharing Sources - National Widowers' Association

They provide a safe and supportive community where widowers can connect with others who are going through a similar experience. The organization offers resources and information about grief and coping strategies, as well as online forums and support groups.

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ASK INELDA

Ask INELDA Image - Eucalyptus Branch

How do you navigate a situation when the plan of the dying person is not recognized? This happened to me recently with two family members. As a doula, where would my responsibility lie?—Training participant

Educator Omni Kitts Ferrara: When a family or person hires a doula, there’s a certain acceptance that comes with that decision. The dying person probably said all along, “I’m gonna have a doula for this. I would like this as I am dying.” The family themselves may be asking for doula support and for facilitation. So it is a different situation when you have a doula versus supporting family members. That said, I would advocate for the dying person and remind the family what this person wanted. READ MORE

 

Please submit questions to [email protected]
Self-Care - Reflecting on Our Impulse to Care
SELF-CARE
 

Reflecting on Our Impulse to Care

 

It is a natural human impulse to want to reach out and support others in their grief, and often that impulse arises for us after we ourselves have suffered trauma or loss. Compassionately caring for others does not require that our motives are somehow “pure,” that we have resolved or brought closure to our grief, whatever that might mean. The question, instead, is whether we have an honest recognition of where we truly are in the moment. Have we examined whether turning toward the pain of others is integral to our own path of becoming or is instead a strategy for running away from our own grief?

Take some time to consider your own impulse to care. If you feel a strong desire to show up for others who are in pain, is the desire matched by a willingness to bring the same loving attention to the grief of your own life? Has grief become for you a path of self-illumination, or do you tend to turn away from the voice of your own pain? READ MORE 

Dr. John Eric Baugher, PhD

 

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News Briefs
by Brandon Glick
Global Morphine Disparity in Lower-Income Nations
Though its reputation has been tainted by recreational abuse over the last century, morphine has been an essential part of palliative care and pain treatment for far longer. In a public report by the World Health Organization, the disparities surrounding how morphine is used and distributed is growing increasingly skewed toward wealthier countries. READ MORE  News Brief - Global Morphine Disparity in Lower-Income Nations
Texas Adopts Longer Waiting Period for DNR
Over the last 25 years, the Texas Advance Directives Act dictated the end-of-life care procedures in hospitals and medical care facilities in the state.  The act stated that patients could pen a directive to physicians to explain how they wanted procedure surrounding their end-of-life care to go. READ MORE
News Brief - Global Brain Health Study Targets Inequities
Global Brain Health Study Targets Inequities
A new report published by the Global Council on Brain Health focuses on the multitude of factors that can contribute to diminished brain health and cognitive decline throughout one’s life. Obvious factors, such as an unregulated sleep schedule and a non-nutritious diet, are highlighted at length. READ MORE

The Final Word
Tickled Pink
by Kevin Kling

At times in our pink innocence, we lie fallow, composting, waiting to grow.
And other times we rush headlong like so many of our ancestors.
But rushing or fallow, it doesn’t matter
One day you’ll round a corner, you’ll blink
And something is missing
Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a person
An innocence is gone
Your path, as though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted, and has left you in a new direction.
Some won’t approve
Some will want the other you
And some will cry that you’ve left it all
But what has happened, has happened, and cannot be undone.
We pay for our laughter. We pay to weep. Knowledge is not cheap.
To survive we must return to our senses…touch, taste, smell, sight, sound.
We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in breath.
With each breath we inhale, we exhale.
We inspire, we expire.
Every breath holds the possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song.
Every conversation is an exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue.
Every scar is a monument to a battle survived.
When you’re born into loss, you grow from it.
But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it.
A slow move to an embrace,
An embrace that holds tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque,
An embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance, a dance of pink.

 
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Accessible, Equitable, and Compassionate Deathcare

© INELDA 2023 International End-of-Life Doula Association is a
501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization
Tax ID#: 47-3023741

Email us: [email protected]Phone: 201-540-9049

 

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