If you look at the end of life journey as a trip down a winding river, you can imagine your doula as your river guide. A doula is someone who knows the river well, has navigated its twists and turns (in good weather and bad), prepares you for the journey, tells you what to expect and accompanies you the entire way.

In a nutshell, an End of Life Doula is a person who provides non-medical, holistic, unbiased support, guidance, companionship, counsel and knowledge to a person at or nearing the end of their life. Similar to a midwife during the pregnancy and birthing process, an end of life doula provides a unique perspective and keen insight into the death and dying process to enhance one’s understanding and comfortability with death, dying and mortality. Doulas provide practical, emotional, spiritual and psychosocial support to a dying person and their support system in the years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes leading up to someone’s death.

Doulas can:

• Provide companionship and sit vigil with the dying during the last months, weeks, days, hours and minutes of their life

• Allow family to step out to run errands, breathe, tend to their own needs and regroup

• Perform life review sessions, speaking through, documenting and reliving a person’s life

• Guide a client or family through vital documents like Advance Directives and Portable Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST)

• Navigate anticipatory grief, complicated dynamics and special circumstances

• Connect clients and families with resources, support, recommendations and education

• Provide practical support like tidying up a space, creating a calming environment, identifying signs if discomfort or distress

• Communicate with third parties like hospice agencies, home health, caregivers, family and other support systems to relieve the burden of constant coordination

Anyone mortal can use an End of Life Doula. Although we primarily serve those who are facing the end of their life, a terminal illness, or severe illness, we also serve bereaved families, caregivers and anyone curious about facing their own mortality.

Among the Pines operates from a foundation of lived experience with each of our team members having substantial real-life knowledge of and time spent serving terminally ill people and their loved ones. Our founder, having worked in hospice and dementia-care settings, understands the intimate and nuanced needs of those facing the death and dying process. From young oncology patients battling the decision to utilize Death with Dignity, to World War 2 veterans living in assisted living communities and every dynamic in between, Among the Pines has the lived experience to put our core principles into practices and meet every unique need of those we serve.

To hear stories about these lived experiences, see on our Reading and Resources page.

Unfortunately, life does not stop when we or our loved ones are diagnosed with a serious illness. In fact, life seems to become more intensive, less straightforward and overall more overwhelming and confusing.

Human beings are programmed to rely on their communities to fill in the gaps. Our societies have grown, our communities have dissolved, all making it harder to find the resources and opportunities needed to get the support you need. You aren’t expected to handle your journey alone, and Among the Pines enables you not to have to.