Since its founding in 2018, the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, a professional organization of end-of-life practitioners and trainers, has grown to nearly 800 members; membership nearly doubled in the last year, said its president, Angela Shook. Interest has increased in training programs with the International End-of-Life Doula Association, Doulagivers, and the Doula Program to Accompany and Comfort, a nonprofit run by a hospice social worker, Amy L. Levine.
Much of the growing interest in these programs has come from artists, actors, young people and restaurant workers who found themselves unemployed during the pandemic and recognized that they could still be of service.
“People were reaching out from a variety of different ages, younger than we would normally see, because they realized that people were dying in their age category, which doesn’t usually happen,” said Diane Button, 62, of San Francisco, a doula facilitator at UVM and a member of the Bay Area End-of-Life Doula Alliance, a collective of death workers. “It made them more aware of their own mortality and really made them want to plan and get their documents and advance directives in order.”
Rebecca Ryskalczyk, 32, a singer in Vergennes, Vt., had always felt “kind of comfortable” with death. She lost two cousins in a plane crash when she was 12 and a friend to suicide four years later. When Covid put her performing schedule on pause, she enrolled at UVM. Her goal is to let people know that they don’t have to be afraid of death; nor do they have to do it alone. “Being able to help advocate for someone and to spend the last moments of their life with them and help them stick to their plan when they may not be able to express that is an honor,” she said.
Before the pandemic, Kate Primeau, 35, also worked in the music industry. Last June, after her grandfather died of Covid-19, she began researching how to host a Zoom memorial and came across the concept of a death doula. “I felt a huge gap between the amount of grief everyone was feeling and the resources available,” she said. She got certified as an end-of-life doula through Alua Arthur’s company, Going with Grace, and also volunteers in a hospice program. “I can’t believe how much I’m geeking out over all this death education.”
During the pandemic, of course, doulas had to shift the way they worked. That was one of the main challenges: They couldn’t interact in person. So like the rest of the world, they resorted to Zoom calls and FaceTime. Families often reached out for their own healing.
