END-OF-LIFE DOULA SERVICES
END-OF-LIFE
DOULA SERVICES
I warmly invite you into this space where we focus more on the ending than the beginning or middle of this journey. Death and dying need not be unwelcome traveling companions. They join us all, sooner or later. Whether it is you, a beloved family member, or a friend, I will help you prepare. I will support you on the way.
As an End-of-Life Doula, I will be there for you and your loved ones through the final months, weeks, and days of life. My services focus on the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of patients, their partners, friends, and families, and include bereavement support for children, teens, and adults. My training and skills provide compassionate, professional non-medical support as well as resources, education, and companionship as you accept and embrace dying as a period of life, not just an abrupt ending.
I am honored you stopped by and look forward to meeting you.
Grace and peace,
Advocate - Educator - Companion - Fellow Traveler
companion and witness
caring and healing presence
patient advocate and care plan facilitator
vigil coordinator
empathetic listener and skilled communicator
grief coach
resource point person
practical and personal helper
team member, collaborator, and organizer
dying process knowledgable
Learn more about Laura and her offerings at West Michigan Women Magazine.
I will provide a listening ear as you process and live with a difficult diagnosis. I will support your
next steps, which may include realizing unfinished business, completing your life review, legacy projects, and identifying a “bucket list” of dreams and hopes. I will also help you and your family members process early grief.
Working alongside your medical team (doctor/palliative care/hospice), my services may include: supporting the completion of advance directives, creating/adapting living/dying spaces,
organizing care circles of support, planning for the death vigil, providing respite and vigil support, and facilitating funeral or memorial planning.
I will honor your spiritual beliefs, traditions, or practices by holding space without bias or judgment. Through music, rituals, prayers, ceremonies, and other forms of artistic expression, I will help you celebrate what matters most to you.
I’ve been a caregiver for as long as I can remember.
My doll babies never spent a tornado watch alone. When the siren sounded, all of them came to the basement with me, nestled in their little blankies and safe from the storm. When I was 15, I wore my blue and white candy-striper uniform to a local hospital where I made beds, fed the infirm, and lit the pipes and cigars of gentlemen patients in Ward Seven. During the holiday season, I helped my father deliver fruit baskets to elderly church members, often staying to play a game of Flinch or Yahtzee with a lonely soul.
While in college, I worked as a nurse’s aide, was a dorm chaplain assisting in the spiritual care of my peers, and worked for a year with county health department nurses doing intake at neighborhood community/senior centers. Upon graduation, I began a career in education: first, as an elementary school teacher, and later as a trainer/educator of adults in corporate settings.
I’ve supported my husband, grandparents, in-laws, and both my parents through their journeys of illness, aging, and death. One thing I know for certain: being a caregiver is difficult and rewarding, ordinary and sacred, often lonely and yet, life-affirming.
It is my calling.
Mike
Kate
Roger
Julie
BLOG
Quoted from Death is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life’s End by Christopher Kerr, MD, PhD, (c.2020 by William Hudson, LLC)
My logo is a circular design comprised of three sheaves of wheat symbolizing the harvest of a fruitful life, as well as the regeneration of fallen wheat. The stalks and the wheat seeds must be dry so the plants can be easily cut and the seeds stored without spoiling. When the wheat is ready to be cut, the plants are actually dead and drying up. Farmers know that when the wheat head starts to “nod,” that’s the sign it is time to cut the wheat.
In the US, winter wheat is planted in the fall and goes into dormancy over the winter months, growing again in the spring. Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12: 24) In this way, wheat also symbolizes immortality and resurrection.
END-OF-LIFE
DOULA SERVICES
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