{"id":46652,"date":"2021-05-23T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/embracing-death-end-of-life-doulas-growing-in-popularity\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:32:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:32:57","slug":"embracing-death-end-of-life-doulas-growing-in-popularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/embracing-death-end-of-life-doulas-growing-in-popularity\/","title":{"rendered":"Embracing death: End-of-life doulas growing in popularity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ashley
Ashley Scott has worked as a death doula for more than a year and has her own private practice, Benevolent Care. (PHILIP B. POSTON\/Sentinel Colorado)<\/span>Philip B. Poston<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

AURORA (AP) \u2013 Ashley Scott describes the emotional side of her job as a death doula like a fountain in the middle of a lake.<\/p>\n

Her job is to help shepherd a dying person through an experience that is so intimate, common and yet mostly taboo in American culture. Scott wants people to feel comfortable, safe and cared for in their last moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re pouring out this energy and love and compassion and space for them to consume it all,\u201d she said. \u201cI really didn\u2019t realize the amount of energy it took until my last client.\u201d<\/p>\n

The client, a woman who had outlived her husband and daughter, was standing up and alert when Scott first arrived at her home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know who you are,\u201d Scott remembers her saying. \u201cI\u2019ve been waiting for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It gave Scott, who has worked in hospice care for over a decade, chills. She\u2019d taken care of many dementia and Alzheimer\u2019s patients and somehow, even as agitation and bursts of energy can be common close to death, this was different. The statement seemed \u201cvery cognitive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The woman\u2019s room was disheveled, stuffy and a daytime court television show was blaring, so Scott said she put her in bed, turned on some instrumental music, rearranged the furniture a bit, opened a window and dimmed the lights. She rubbed the woman\u2019s arms and her face to make her comfortable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that five hours we were able to hold that space for her and help her go into an active dying transition,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The woman had been in hospice care for more than a year before that day.<\/p>\n

Scott officially started her journey as a death doula a year ago, but caring for people at the end of their life has been her passion since starting as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just so beautiful, like to help and be there and basically just prepare and honor the shell that this person had,\u201d she said of the first death she experienced as a hospice nurse. \u201cAfter that, it was kind of just like if anybody was on the brink, I had this inkling of magnetism to them. I want to make sure they\u2019re cared for and comfortable and loved and appreciated in their last days because it\u2019s their most vulnerable point in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout her career at nursing homes, Scott said she knew there was something missing in caring for the dying. There wasn\u2019t anybody to \u201chold the space\u201d \u2013 a phrase that many people involved in end-of-life care use frequently in reference to death doulas\u2019 work.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until a friend had sent her a link to a Zoom seminar about death doulas last May that it all came together for Scott, who is 32 and lives in Aurora with her fiance. She\u2019s part of a growing number of workers dedicated to making death a more comfortable experience.<\/p>\n

Doulas, by loose definition, tend to all the duties of dying that medical personnel do not. In a lot of ways they\u2019re equivalent to a wedding planner, but for your final living moments.<\/p>\n

They can help arrange funeral services, help complete legacy projects, make sure the aesthetic of a death place is exactly what a client wants and help family members cope after the passing of their loved one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe treat dying like a fast food experience,\u201d Scott said. \u201cAnd it should be treated like a five-course meal.\u201d<\/p>\n

For people who work in hospice care, the arrival and growing popularity of the death doula is welcomed, and it\u2019s changing the approach and culture around an experience everybody will have.<\/p>\n

Evolving care<\/div>\n

Katelyn Van Valkenburg, the volunteer coordinator at Denver-based Namaste Hospice, jokes that she\u2019s a little protective of Scott, who first started volunteering her doula services in November.<\/p>\n

Van Valkenburg said she doesn\u2019t want Scott to become overworked or burnt out because it\u2019s become obvious how necessary doulas are to hospice care. Before Scott, the organization consisted of nurses, social workers and volunteers, but after working with Scott they\u2019ve welcomed five more volunteer doulas.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of us in hospice have grown accustomed to the routine death,\u201d Van Valkenburg said. \u201cThey force us back into thinking about making this unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott arrived at Namaste after two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it felt \u201ckind of like a new beginning,\u201d Van Valkenburg said. For months, hospice nurses had been scrambling to care for patients, some inside nursing or retirement homes. Early on in the pandemic, sometimes Namaste\u2019s workers weren\u2019t even allowed inside facilities and had to find ways to comfort their dying patients from bedroom windows or over the telephone or a computer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shook us to our core,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Nurses and social workers had to become creative, Van Valkenburg said. They arranged the donation of more than 150 radios for their patients, and they put aromatherapy diffusers in patient rooms when they could to make the atmosphere as comfortable as possible.<\/p>\n

This winter, adding doulas to their care model helped hold the caretakers to \u201cbeing fully present,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Even though neither private insurance nor Medicaid covers the cost of doulas, like it does for end-of-life medical care through a hospice organization, Namaste wants to eventually be able to pay its doulas. For now, they volunteer their services, mostly to meet requirements through certification programs.<\/p>\n

Scott started her own private doula practice, called Benevolent Care, where planning services can range from $70 for one hour of Death Day planning to an extensive package where Scott is available around the clock. She said she usually works those costs out on an individual basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is so different, and I don\u2019t want to deny them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While doulas don\u2019t administer medical care, Nancy English, an assistant professor who teaches palliative care at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, says there\u2019s definitely a role for them in hospice settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to look at death as important as birth, it\u2019s a transition from one state to another. We know it\u2019s a major transition, even if we don\u2019t know what\u2019s next,\u201d she said. \u201cThe death doula helps us make it more sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n

English said she recently took a course for death doulas, and while she doesn\u2019t plan on practicing as one, she wanted to see how it could help her prepare students for providing more holistic care.<\/p>\n

\u201cA doula can take the time to actually address some of the things that have been fragmented in care,\u201d English said. \u201cI think nurses are so creative and so caring as a group, and they want to do it, but you have one patient that\u2019s dying in this bed and the next patient is coding. It\u2019s just a difficult role.\u201d<\/p>\n

English, who was a hospice nurse herself for many years before becoming a professor, said the workload just doesn\u2019t lend itself to the kind of one-on-one attention and comfort a doula can provide.<\/p>\n

Scott said she believes her background as a hospice nurse has helped her in becoming a doula because she understands the medical jargon and also the struggle in not being able to comfort each patient as much as they might need.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also good for the families of people in hospice care.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine having someone on your side, someone who is really right there with you walking alongside you in this process,\u201d she said. \u201cSomeone that you could call who was there with you that saw certain things that maybe you missed, and you can call them and just be validated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re drawn to it because either you have a curiosity or an experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The movement<\/div>\n

The moment Scott learned that death doulas existed, she said she knew it was for her. That tends to be the case with most people who work in end-of-life care, said Cindy Kaufman, president of the Colorado End of Life Collaborative.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re drawn to it because either you have a curiosity or an experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kaufman and a small group of other doulas organized the collaborative because they saw a need for a common place for people working in the field. Somewhere they could connect services if they needed or just have a support system. The community has been steadily growing over the years, but Kaufman said she really saw an uptick about three years ago.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s in part because of a growing \u201cdeath positive\u201d movement, she said, which is largely credited to Los Angeles-based writer, activist and mortician Caitlin Doughty. In 2011, Doughty started a collective called The Order of the Good Death, which became a foundation for much of the crusade to see death in a brighter light.<\/p>\n

Since then, death doulas have grown in popularity, according to Kaufman. There isn\u2019t a sure way to tell just how many doulas there are in Colorado because they tend to work in their own private practices or through volunteering like at Namaste.<\/p>\n

The movement has also birthed \u201cdeath cafes\u201d \u2013 groups where people can gather to talk about all aspects of dying \u2013 all over the country. English started a Denver-based death cafe in 2014, which typically met Sundays at the Tattered Cover bookstore before the pandemic. For the last year, she\u2019s been hosting a small group on Zoom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been wonderful,\u201d the professor said, echoing Kauffman that Westerners are beginning to view death in a different way.<\/p>\n

Kaufman, English and Scott each say they see the shift, and maybe the pandemic \u2013 a collective experience of sudden death \u2013 may push forward even further.<\/p>\n

\u201cA life lost is a life lost and we need to honor that, and during COVID we didn\u2019t get to,\u201d Scott said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get to honor the dying process. It literally just happened, and I guess that\u2019s what really drew me into being a doula. We get to honor the process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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