MONTHLY GRIEFCARE

Grief and death doulas are people who are unafraid of your grief. We step right into the center of it with you and ask: what do you need?

I often provide personalized support for grieving people by taking a layer of organization and day-to-day functioning of your plate for a while while offering space to process your grief to the extent you wish. Grieving is exhausting and lasts (forever?) longer than most people around us acknowledge. Support is needed far beyond the first few days of a loss of someone of significance.

I can:

  • provide scheduled meals cooked and delivered to specification (including child-friendly options available)

  • organize meal trains and other community support

  • be a flexible and non-judgemental presence to deal with cooking, cleaning, children, grief support, and errands all in the same afternoon

  • help you coordinate end-of-life tasks

  • help you honor the life of the person gone

  • go for walks, read aloud to you, listen to or read something and talk with you about it (podcasts, books, memes, etc.)

  • be “alone together”; often grievers don’t want to be physically alone but they do not want active engagement the whole time either

  • if it’s in my doula realm, I’m game!

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
    the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water
    to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,
    the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,
    the small round coins,
          thrown by those who wished for something else.

— David Whyte

Grief Resources

Herbal Support for Phases of Grief

Griefcare can be shaped as you need it. I have been a lap to weep into, a spreadsheet maker, a meal train organizer, a home funeral organizer, a referrer, someone to hold your crying baby while you cry, a grounded voice during tense moments, and someone not afraid when you scream out in rage or hopelessness. Sometimes we just want someone else to be in the house busying themselves. Sometimes we need anyone who isn’t afraid of our feelings.

Grief only knows how to grow when kept inside and experienced alone. When processed other ways, it can—maybe, with great care and patience—be encouraged to grow into a different shape, one just a bit easier or softer to carry.