A channel, a vessel, a container.

There are so many beautiful, beautiful souls in the world offering their gifts to support the journey with death, dying and grief. And the more my deathwork emerges, the more I am realizing that, for me and for those whom I’m holding space with, it’s not actually about death. It’s about uncertainty. It’s about the feelings that arise within us when we are not in control. It is about that liminal space – where we’ve neither fully left nor fully arrived – where we want to know where we are going, and we want to know where others have gone. We want to understand what is happening, and we want to know what is going to happen.

We yearn for certainty so we can feel safe…because we’re scared. And it hasn’t been our nature or practice in modern Western culture to live comfortably with fear. I could point to the many examples where our practices of “managing” fear create circumstances where we feel soothed for a moment, yet still hang in the balance of the unknown. We make plans and want everything to work out the way we’ve envisioned because that will make us feel “better.” We buy and put value into material things to make us feel “better.” We’ve built systems and religions and movements around how to feel “better,” but we’ve done so in a way that perpetuates these things as virtuous, as true, as real and as “right.” To try and eliminate the unknown, instead of holding space for it. And by doing so we’ve created a world that fights for these things – we are fighting as communities, but ultimately for individualism. On scales both big and small – both externally and internally. It’s as much about politics as it is religion as it is how we approach our day-to-day lives. It’s a plan and a vision vs. a reality and an experience.  And at the end of the day, there is still the uncertainty.

There are prolific thought leaders and luminaries and practices that can help us to live and even thrive within the uncertainty – and we don’t have to make an ultimate choice to claim one as “right” and “true” if we can always save space for the unknown.

And we need more spaces to feel supported in not knowing. Religion tries to hold space for this, i.e. God as the mystery. But it is still articulated by human creation of text and constructs and creeds as what is “true.”

I am writing this because a challenge of mine is not being able to properly explain who I am or what I do as it pertains to being a death and grief doula, but that is because it is so much broader than what an elevator speech of succinct sound bites can relay. How do I share that I perceive so many of us having these deep fears, and that I am feeling called to companion it – to sit with it, and witness it, and hold it with care? To soothe it not by making more plans or goals (like a coach), or by naming it and applying a specific modality or treatment (like a therapist), but to be present with it? To explore how it is arising for you in your lived experience with hopes that you will feel heard, seen, held, supported…and maybe soothed. Soothed enough and comfortable enough to access your own inner knowing and explore, for yourself, how you can find ease in an uncertain world. Maybe it is then seeking a coach or a therapist to further explore. Maybe it’s exploring somatic and physical healing modalities. Maybe it’s exploring mindfulness and meditation, nature immersion, community involvement. It is not my scope to prescribe solutions, but to listen and to reflect back what I am hearing, and to make you feel safe. To offer possibilities and explore with curiosity…to walk alongside you so that you do not feel alone in the fear and know that your feelings, your stories, and your experiences are all valid. They are all the traveled roads of your unique lived experience based on the systems and structures that have been created for our human lived experience…and everybody has one, and none of them are right or wrong, they just are.

So, who am I and what do I do? Well, I know that the these questions come from conditioned ideals born from a capitalistic society and a need for definitions to find understanding. But not from an ego-need for self-identification, because I know that this work is not me, it is an offering and an extension of love coming through me from something much, much bigger, deeper, and broader. I am just a channel, a vessel, a container. Here to be with you if there is anything that my presence can offer.