DEATH DOULA

Death has been a constant throughout Helena’s adult life. She discovered she was comfortable close in, and took courses to become a more skilled volunteer in Hospice.
She also travelled to the US and undertook a programme as a Rites of Passage Guide. Just as birth doulas are now more present in maternity wards, she anticipates a growing acceptance of death doulas to ease our dying.
This book happened along the way, when she was asked by her daughter, very much alive, if she did not have something for her to read, that would assist her to be more mindful of the possibility of death, that can happen at any time in our lives.
While Helena’s starting point was a desire to work with Hospice as a volunteer, her own journey of listening to stories as she wrote this book has lead Helena to understand how closely entwined life is with death. She believes we should live our lives ever-ready for our mortality. And that if we seriously live with our impermanence as an ever-present possibility, there are consequences for how we choose to live and our readiness to die.
Helena’s willingness to sit with the dying will always be part of her, but after completing this book she anticipates using her coaching skills to facilitate conversations with clients who decide they want support on working out how they want to live and their preferences of how they would prefer to die. She is currently completing a work-book that is aligned to the nine themes presented in Before Forever After which will be available online, together with the option of personal coaching.