“EVERYONE EXPERIENCES GRIEF DIFFERENTLY—EVEN FROM LOSS TO LOSS. MY BIGGEST PIECE OF ADVICE IS TO GIVE YOURSELF GRACE.”
For example, I had a situation where the person dying wasn’t doing well and didn’t have a good relationship with the person who was actually my client.
I tried and tried, but nothing worked. They were just bickering, and it was a really toxic situation. Then one day, the person dying just reached over and they grabbed the hand of my client. They just held hands. They just held hands, and they both cried.
Just allowing myself to be present but not try to control things is really important as a doula. Those little moments and signs of love and beauty happen all the time.
CM: Death is so difficult and complicated, but sometimes there can be moments you do want to carry with you.
KC: Yeah, I think [a lot about] this idea of legacy living.
Take one loss, one relationship, and find something very small to pull out of that and carry into your daily life. For example, my grandmother used to call every child and animal “bum.” It’s really small, but I’ve adopted it. Every single time I look at my dog, I say, “Hi, bum!” She just walks by, and she doesn’t know the difference, but I feel my grandmother is present for me. Even with my dog, who’s passed away, there’s stuff I do for her every day that makes me think about her. It doesn’t need to be anything grand like a life change, a career, or a huge gesture. You can volunteer once a year in honor of them, watch their favorite movie, or listen to their favorite song.
Those moments will still be hard sometimes, but they’ll also bring you so much connection to that person.
That’s where my work really lives—helping people build those connections with people they’ve lost and keep that love alive. Storytelling, dreams, and legacy living can be really good tools for that. It helps us keep that space in our heart full. People tend to think of death as very finite—that the relationship is over, that everything is over, or that part of your identity is gone.
But the more we keep that alive in our life, the more we can feel their presence around us—no matter what we believe.
I’ve found that people really start to heal when they notice those little things and acknowledge them.●
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