END-OF-LIFE DOULA

Death has walked alongside me for most of my life. I've lost people young, suddenly, and slowly, enough times that I stopped experiencing death as rare or distant, the way most people are taught to.

The first time it truly marked me was when my mother died. I was nineteen and nearing the end of my first pregnancy.

I stood at the edge of two thresholds at once, one life ending, another about to begin, not knowing how to hold both. There's no manual for that. No one tells you how to grieve and prepare for birth in the same breath, how to sit with an ending while your body is actively building a beginning.

That season changed how I understand death. Not as something separate from life, but as something woven into it, closer and less frightening than we're taught to believe. 

That experience became one thread in what eventually led me to train as an end-of-life doula, alongside studies in Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, crisis intervention, and psychology.

All of that gave me a foundation. What it didn't give me was the room itself. Sitting with a stranger, for the first time, at the end of their life taught me something my mother's death hadn't: it's one thing to study death, another to sit inside it, and no training teaches you how to simply stay.

That's the foundation of this work: not the credentials, but the moments themselves. My mother's death. That stranger's. Those are what taught me what it means to hold space for someone at the edge of life. 

I founded A Courageous Heart because I believe no one should have to face dying, or the dying of someone they love, without support. Whether you're planning ahead, supporting someone you love, or navigating a life-limiting illness, I'd be honoured to walk alongside you. If you're ready, let's start with one conversation.