A Conversation with Death Doula Kelly Hayler

In episode 8 of Seeing Death Clearly, my guest today is Kelly Hayler.

Kelly is a trained End of Life Doula based in New York City with a deep understanding and respect that everyone brings their own fears, beliefs, and experiences to the topic of death and dying. 

Her background is in project management which means she knows how to get organized and address your needs as quickly as possible. She is here to assist with your questions and navigate the path forward by talking about what you want, and what your options are and helping to prepare you for this phase of your life. 

Kelly and I talk about her work as a death doula in New York City and her work with the LGBTQIA+ community.

Kelly was never afraid of death but in our culture today, we have made death so clinical and gotten away from community support. 
 

We talked about how she had a similar experience to me during her training to become a death doula. 
 

I found through first-hand experience that the more I came to terms with my thoughts and feelings about death and dying, the more present I became in my everyday life.

Kelly and I hope to share that with you too in this episode, how you can live a better life by having a healthier relationship with death and dying. 
 

She shares about the death of a good friend and the experience they both had while Kelly supported her through her illness and the end-of-life process.

Our conversation also centers around grief, all types of grief, not just for the death of a loved one.

“Grief is about loss but doesn't mean it has to be about death only. It's about loss, we don't give ourselves a society enough kindness and gentleness around what it means to end a relationship or have to say this is not a healthy exchange, and I need to separate myself from that. You're coming from a place of feeling wounded or knowing that something wasn't healthy for you. There's still loss around that. You have to grieve that even if it was your choice or not.” 

You can find Kelly at https://deathdoulanewyork.com/
or
https://linktr.ee/deathdoulanyc

Chapters

• 1:26 Kelly shares about where she is from and where she is now
• 3:34 Kelly’s religious background growing up
• 5:19 Conversations Kelly has with her family about death and dying
• 7:11 Nursing school led to end of life doula training
• 8:34 How end of life doula training changed both Kelly and Jill
• 14:43 Grief work and our relationship with others
• 17:39 Grief is about loss, but doesn't mean it has to be about death only
• 20:53 The similarites between a birth plan and a death plan
• 24:10 The growth of the death positive community and death doulas
• 24:47 Kellys experience supporting a dear friend through breast cancer and her death from it
• 27:00 Medical Aid in Dying, Compassion and Choices organization
• 31:46 The role of death doulas; our job is not to enforce our beliefs on anybody else. It's to ensure that they get what they want at the end of life.
• 33:26 Kellys focus as a death doula is in the LGBTQIA+ community
• 34:40 Kelly works virtually and in person

Transcript

Jill: Welcome to Seeing Death Clearly, I am your host Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach.

Seeing Death Clearly is a show that challenges you to think about your beliefs about death, dying, grief, and living life. 

In episode 8 of Seeing Death Clearly, my guest today is Kelly Hayler.

Kelly and I talk about her work as a death doula in New York City and about how she had a similar experience to me during her training to become a death doula.  

I found through first-hand experience that the more I came to terms with my thoughts and feelings about death and dying, the more present I became in my everyday life.

Kelly and I hope to share that with you too in this episode, how you can live a better life by having a healthier relationship with death and dying.  

Thank you for being here with us.

Welcome, Kelly. I'm so excited you're here. Thank you for coming on. 

Kelly: Thank you. Me too. I'm really excited to be here.

Jill: Awesome. So let's start off by telling me a little bit about your background.

So how old are you and where do you originally come from? Where do you live now? Anything that you wanna share with us? 

Kelly: Okay. So I'm 45 and I'm originally grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, in a very small rural community. I currently live in Astoria, New York. I've lived in New York a little over 20 years. I've lived here longer than I did at home. I consider myself a little bit more of a New Yorker, although I know I'm not officially from here. I've been doing my doula practice now, my first training was in 2017 and then went through ULA LA's program in 2020 during Covid, and I've been practicing more diligently since 2021.

Jill: I don't think I knew that you were from Virginia originally. That must be a huge change to go from, you know, rural Virginia to New York City. I mean, it's like so different. 

Kelly: Very different. My grandma always jokes that I'm the city mouse and my sister's the country mouse. My mom is from northern Jersey and so as children our summer vacation was, two weeks in New Jersey.

My grandpa worked in the city. He worked in Battery Park. My mom did as well when she was 18, her first job was downtown. We grew up as kids exposed to New York City and going in and taking the train to Hoboken and all that kind of stuff. So I remember at eight years old being on the ferry, going to the Statue of Liberty, and I turned around and looked at my grandpa and I was like, I'm gonna live here someday and I didn't stop talking about it until I moved here. I've just always felt very connected to being in New York and just the energy and the people and the diversity and all the things that you can do any time of day or night and all the different kinds of people you get to meet. And it's just, I've always found it super exciting. I love living here and it's been an amazing and interesting time since I've lived. 

Jill: I love New York City as well, but I grew up close to it. I grew up in South Jersey, I lived in Virginia for a little while. I lived in Norfolk, Virginia, and I know even Norfolk to the Jersey, Philly, New York City kind of area. It's a big difference. 

When you were growing up, were you a religious family at all? 

Kelly: I was raised Catholic with a strong Methodist hand in the background. I left Catholicism after I was confirmed when I was around 15. No offense to Catholics, totally get it. It just never quite resonated with me as a person. I always sort of struggled with the doctrine and the belief structure. Particularly in my church, we had kind of an old way of thinking. It wasn't very progressive. Challenged a lot of things in my teen years and decided after I was confirmed that I wanted to get a job so I could afford to pay for school and my car and all those sorts of things. Other spiritual teachings were of interest to me at that time and I decided to pursue those instead.

I would say I do still identify as a practicing pagan but really dove into that when I was in my late teens, all through my twenties. I was a solitary practitioner, so stepped away from it a little bit, but still very spiritual. I would say right before Covid really Step back into it, green witch and I think that's kind of led me to the green burial movement and that sort of thing.

I don't think I'd identify as one particular belief structure. I think I pull a lot of different things in from different areas, so I'm spiritual for sure, but it doesn't really land in one specific category. 

Jill: How do you think the way that you were raised, being down south, being Catholic, how did that affect your beliefs about death and dying when you were younger, and really how does that differ from what you believe now? To me, the pagan kind of green witchy energy is so rooted in the environment and how we are all connected and very different I was raised Catholic as well as my Catholic upbringing. So I really wanna hear all about that.

Kelly:  I've talked about this with my family quite a bit. My grandma and I actually talk about it quite often. She's 96, she's a born-again Christian, very, very devoted to her faith, and has taught and studied the Bible for 60 years. We always kind of talk about death in a very matter-of-fact sort of way. In reflection on that, I've noticed that actually I grew up that way.

It was never a topic we weren't allowed to talk about. My parents were very forthcoming in what that was and what that meant, and I think growing up Catholic, of course, there's a lot of ceremony and ritual, because of that, I felt like there was closure. as a child, you know, I didn't have a lot of experience with people passing.

I lost a close friend and Girl Scout who is a year older than me. When we were young she, unfortunately, perished in [a house fire. And then I had some older people in our community who would pass. I understood grief and I understood mourning, and I understood the impactful of someone leaving this earth or this plane.

But it was never a faux pas topic. I grew up in a family too where anything that can be a little heavier and intense, we can make off-color jokes about, so we always sort of grew up with this kind of funny, but a matter of fact, relationship with death and dying. I think about it all the time, like ever since I was little.

It's not something I've ever been fearful of. I think I've had a very profound respect for it, but also, I'm not fearful of it. It's just a matter of us as beings in this world, it's part of our process, part of our journey. I think I've always sort of understood that. Also growing up Catholic the funerals that I did go to always ended in drinks and food and song and joy.

Some messy things as well cuz all families have interesting family dynamics. Because of that it also took a little bit of that fear away that we can still celebrate that person and find joy and revelry even in a sad moment of grief.

As an adult, I was exposed to end-of-life work. I was in nursing school and wasn't feeling satisfied with the level of connection I was having with patients while I was in school. I was a nursing assistant and I loved that work because day in and day out you're engaging with people and helping them get comfortable and help to make sure they have what they need and they're safe and provided for, and I just loved that.

In nursing school, it just felt like I was getting so far away from that. It was a lot more clinical and maybe if I had stuck with it longer I would've gotten to the other side of that. I had a dear friend who is a professor who said, have you looked into end-of-life doula work?

And I had no idea what it was. She turned me onto INELDA who was actually coming to Seattle to do training, and I, at the time was living in Oregon. It was a three-day session and I think about 20 minutes into it I knew I found my tribe, I found a purpose that I thought was just really important and meaningful and powerful.

As a society and in American culture, we've made death clinical, we don't touch it anymore. We don't talk about it anymore. We're not exposed to it in the same way. We keep ourselves isolated while we're going through these processes, and I find that really unfortunate because I think we need community in those spaces. I think the family needs community.

The people who are going through that transition need community. We're still here, even in the process of dying. 

I was just so changed by the work that we had to do and facing your own mortality and, you know, things that I thought I was totally fine with. I clearly wasn't.

 It was great. I was just so-called to it and knew this was where I needed to be. 

Jill: You're right that when we have to face our own mortality, even those of us that grew up really interested in death. I was kind of fascinated by it.

I wasn't afraid of it. If anything, I wanted to gravitate toward it, but then I was kind of labeled as weird, and then so I kind of pulled away from it, but then I just kept getting drawn back to it, and I didn't think I had fears. I didn't think that I had anxieties, but they were there. They were just hidden.

I was doing a great job of keeping them hidden and learning about death and dying and grief through the death doula training. We did have to face those things as they come up, you have to deal with them. But I found that the more that I faced them and the more that I dealt with them, it really did change my perspective on life.

First off, I realized, yeah, how short it actually really is. You know, there's definitely been times throughout my life where I've kind of thought to myself like, oh gosh, how much longer do I have to do this? Like, why do I have to exist here in this human body, in this world? And it felt  like almost like you're trapped, where now I'm like, oh, this is gonna be nothing.

It's gonna be done and over with before I know it. For good or bad, it's gonna be done and over with before I know it. But it really has allowed me to have much more gratitude for things in life. It has allowed me to face my fears, like starting this podcast, I was scared to do it and then I was like, you know what?

I don't wanna be on my deathbed looking back and thinking. I didn't do it because I was afraid it wasn't gonna be perfect, that the sound's not perfect, that all of these things aren't perfect, and you know what? Whatever. I don't care. I wanted to do this. I wanna have these conversations. I don't care if it's perfect because when I'm dying, I'm just gonna be happy that I did it.

I'm much more present and much more patient with the people around me, my family especially, which is to me the most important thing. I really go out of my way to tell them, probably way more than my children want to hear how much I love them and how much I [00:10:00] appreciate them. My son definitely does the, I know mom, you tell me like 10 times a day and I'm like, you're right, I do.

And what I don't wanna say, which I don't know, maybe I have said it at some points, is that one day I'm not gonna be here to tell you 10 times a day. And so I wanna make sure that they know in their core, That I love them. I don't ever want them to question at any time in their life, like, I don't know, like, did are mom even want us?

Did she even love us? Because I know sometimes I haven't always been as patient, and I do tend to sink myself into work, which is something I'm still doing. Working towards. The more that I learned about the regrets of the dying, so much of what people talk about is I worked too much. I didn't spend time with my family.

All I did was work and work and work. And I know that I've been that way, but now I could be really honest with myself. The more that I've done my own healing work. Separate from death and dying, but also very tied with. The more that I could see that I have my worth very tied up with how much I work.

If I'm busy, if I'm productive, I feel like I'm worth something. Mm-hmm. If I'm busy, then it doesn't allow me to sit with my thoughts. And sometimes, my thoughts want to return to my regrets and my pain, and my trauma. And so as long as I stay really busy, I don't have to face that. I don't wanna be on my deathbed thinking, wow, you know, all I did was work and I missed things with my children and I wasn't able to be fully present with them, even though sometimes it is annoying.

You know when you have little kids and they wanna show you things where you're like, really, I don't need to see their weird video on YouTube, or, I don't need to watch you play this game. But I also know that one day I'm gonna look back and those are the things that we're going to really appreciate.

It's not gonna be the work meetings, it's not gonna be, whatever it is that we feel is so important. Sometimes what's really gonna be important is that time that we took with the people that we love.

Kelly: I totally agree with you. Everyone that I have had the honor and privilege of being with while they're passing or in that space, being witness to that and the dynamics of the people around them and their friends and their family. For me as, as an adult, I have let go of a lot of petty things and been like, why am I carrying this energy anymore? It doesn't serve me, it doesn't serve this relationship. It doesn't serve this person.

Like you, looking back, when I get to a point where I'm reflective of my life, , I don't wanna have regrets, but in particular, I don't wanna have that with people. I don't wanna carry around things and dynamics that just don't serve us as people in our relationship. I've learned that by watching others go through this process of dying, and it's been really eye-opening for me as far as like friendships and family dynamics and just, you know, saying, I love you. I don't wanna engage in this, this isn't how I wanna spend my time with you. It's not how I wanna have our energy exchanged. Life is too short. no guarantees of how long we're going to be here.

I'd much rather leave my relationships in a place where people know that I love them. we're able to get through conflicts and we were able to talk things out or whatever it may be. Now I know that's not always possible, but I think as a doula, that is something that I've learned in my work in this space.

And it's something that I try to encourage others. This has changed me being exposed to this and being led into this intimate space with people and for the better, you know? And I think, yeah, we have to unpack our own mortality and that's really intense work that I think we're always gonna work on.

Grief work is something we always are gonna work on because it's ever-changing and it's amorphous and it looks different for everybody. The importance of. What do I wanna feed into a relationship? And if a relationship isn't feeding me back, and it just feels like it's sort of, it's okay that organically those things may be ebb and flow and you may be tight and close with a moment, and then that might have some distance and I might circle back again or not.

But I wanna look back on the people in my life and know that like these were beautiful relationships that I've learned and received something from. 

Jill: You touched on something too of that it can be difficult sometimes when you are doing this internal work and you're coming to these realizations and you wanna make things right with all the people around you, and they are just not there yet.

They may never be there, and sometimes we have to be okay. making it right within ourselves. Mm-hmm. And then also saying, I don't wanna involve myself in this drama. Right. And so, if this is the way our relationship is going to continue to go, then I'm gonna need to make some changes. I mean, that's, that's what boundaries really are because people really don't understand what they are. People say that they have boundaries when really it's just rules that they're trying to place around other people. So I can't force anybody to face the relationship that we have in the same way that I wanna face it.

But what I can say is that if we're not going to get to a place where we can lose the drama, we can lose the arguing and the tension, then I am just going to have to remove myself from this relationship or distance myself. That's my boundary. I'm not gonna try to force you to do what I'm doing. . It's so hard because sometimes we love people so much, especially family.

Yeah. Our family, our friends that we have that we really want to have the relationship to be healthy and beneficial for both of us. But sometimes we have to just be able to. Let go a little bit, and then there's so much grief tied with that as well. I don't think as a culture, we honor the grief that we need to experience when we end relationships, whether it's friendships or romantic relationships, or even relationships with our family.

So often you hear people say, but it's your family. It's your family. Yeah. Well, you know what? If your family's toxic and it's making you physically and mentally ill, Then it doesn't matter that they're related to you by blood. It might be a relationship that you have to end, but you can also still feel grief over it.

Just because you're choosing to end it doesn't mean you're like, woohoo, this feels amazing. No, it can still feel sad. You can still grieve it and you need to grieve it in order to move on. 

Kelly: Grief is about loss, but doesn't mean it has to be about death only. It's about loss, we don't give ourselves a society enough kindness and gentleness around what it means to end a relationship or have to say this is not a healthy exchange, and I need to separate myself from that. You're coming from a place of feeling wounded or, you know, knowing that something wasn't healthy for you.

There's still loss around that. You have to grieve that even though it was your choice or not. Grief seems to be a word that I'm starting to see more often now. I don't know if that's because I'm in an environment where we talk more openly about it or if it really is shifting.

I think Covid, one of the things that I appreciate that has come out of this situation is that we are talking about mental health differently. We're talking about grief more openly, or at least starting to understand what that means. Not putting parameters on what that should be for someone, whether it's loss of a relationship or loss of a person.

It's different for everyone. It lasts how long it lasts. Personally, I don't think we ever really stop grieving. losses in our life. I think you always, that's a makeup of who you are and how you experience life going forward. That's my own personal opinion, but I think to me, it has been kind of a nice shift to see that the narrative of that is we're softening, we're opening it, we're poking at it, we're letting it back in a little bit.

We're talking through what that looks like for different people. And I, I hope that. continues because I think as a society we need more open discussion around it. Just like death. We need to talk more openly about it. There's no reason to do this alone. There isn't. You shouldn't feel like you have to.

I'm one of those people, I'm part of the death-positive community. I will talk about this topic until you tell me to shut up. I know that sometimes it can come off of I'm excited, it is excitement. I want to hear what other people have to say. I want to hear their fears.

I want to hear what worries them and what their concern is. We need to, as humans, connect with each other on this momentous part of our life that we don't really talk about. and all of us have different engagements with it. We all have different experiences. Family and religion and society and economic structure.

All of that affects how that process has gone for us. It's important that we share that with each other. I took this amazing course when I was in school and we really went into the way different cultures approach death and dying. And it changed. Me a lot. I'm starting to look at the different ways, different cultures sort of celebrate or embrace or honor. I felt like it was information I needed, and again, it changed my point of view on what I want that to look like for myself, what I want that to look like for the people that are supported in that space, exposing them to different options and saying you are in control of all of this. You can have this, can in a lot of ways, can look how you want it to look in this space. We should all have the opportunity hopefully to have control, and autonomy, and be able to navigate what we want and don't want when we're in that transition of death and dying.

Jill: The only way we'll be able to do this is if we can start having these conversations. 

There are death doulas and there are birth doulas, right? We work on different ends of the spectrum. There are a lot of similarities now. When I had my children, I had my birth plan, I had it all written out.

You know, I, it was in my head a bet it was gonna go this way and that way. Well, of course, my children had others. My son decided he was gonna be upside down, so I had back labor. It was really long. His head was giant. It took forever to get him out, right? My plan didn't go as I had planned it to go, but the fact that I had thought about it and I had really come to the conclusion of I really don't want pain medication.

Unless I like really absolutely have to have it. I don't wanna a C-section unless I absolutely have to have it. These different things can go wrong. Okay, so in those cases than 100% Go ahead with it. If I hadn't thought about it if I hadn't planned for it. I potentially would have during the experience, gotten really stressed out and really upset because I wouldn't have known what was going on.

Why was I in so much pain? Why was it taking so long? There would've been a lot more fear and anxiety if I hadn't thought it through and planned it out on a piece of paper that I brought with me to the hospital. Death is very similar in a lot of why it's so stressful and it's so difficult on the people that are dying as well as their family members. This is because we've done everything we can do to avoid having the conversations to avoid thinking about the realities of death. And there's also, it's, it's a societal problem. Doctors aren't honest a lot of the time with what's happening to somebody.

They're not honest with what you can expect based on the treatments that people are getting. We don't know what the end of life really looks like because nobody tells us so even when I faced it with my grandmother, if I would have known that it was so different than what it looked like on tv, then maybe I would've asked more questions.

But until I was in it and all of a sudden I was like, this is, this is not what I was expecting. I don't know what is going on here. Then thankfully I was able to ask hospice about it, and then almost like my fascination and my pull towards death and dying. Then once they just kind of were like, look, a bunch of weird stuff's gonna happen. It's normal, it's natural. Then all the weird stuff that started happening, I was able to relax into it and observe it, right, and experience it. And so when she's telling me that there are women standing behind me singing to her, and I don't see anybody, rather than getting stressed out and upset. I was like, well, this is kind of cool, I wonder what's going on. 

Yeah, like, are they really there or is she just thinking they're there because that's what her brain is doing as it's starting to get near the end of life? The whole thing was really interesting to me, whereas if you're not interested in it naturally. And if you've done everything you can to avoid it, it could be scary and overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be.

It could be a beautiful time to spend with your loved ones. Agree. And that's why death doulas are amazing. I am so excited there are more and more of us. 

Kelly: It's amazing to see that the community is growing so much and that there's. A lot of people who are interested. What's great is seeing people who know that I do this and then, oh, I saw this article or did you see this short documentary? I love that now they're hearing the words out in culture and remembering, oh, I know someone who's, who does this. I wonder. It's just nice that those connections are being made. I lived on the West coast where doula work was a little bit more well-known, and coming back home and moving back east, we still have a little bit of catching up to do as far as the understanding of what we are and what we do.

I had, a very, very dear friend who passed away from breast cancer, she was in remission and then found. It had spread pretty aggressively and was with her for the three and a half years that she faced the transition of dying. I will always be eternally grateful for her allowing me to be in that space with her. And you're right, I learned a lot. I mean, she was at the Cleveland Clinic, which was great because they really allowed her to sort of dictate what felt good and right for her in her treatments when she was very spiritual, she was in a shamanic community. These are things that were really important to her and they never once dismissed that for her. They brought that into her, her treatments, and when she didn't want something, they respected it. And when she wanted something, there was a conversation. Being along with her in that space where we could ask questions of the doctor, like, what can we expect here and there, we could talk to hospice and say, so what will this look like?

She went with confidence knowing she had done a lot of spiritual work, she understood the medical side of things. That helped a little bit in facing things because she had knowledge on her side. 

Especially in the last two weeks that she was with us, I think knowing what to expect from her body helped her ease a little bit in that space. Because I know it was a struggle and I know it wasn't easy for her. And the same thing remembers being with her at one point where she was clearly having a, a really intense conversation with someone.

I like to think it was someone who helped guiding her through that process on the other side preparing her spiritually for what she was about, to go through. I was lucky enough to be exposed to that. And then now, questions and things, to make sure people understand or let them know these are things that are available to you and these are options. You can dictate how you want things to be. Cuz, unfortunately, you're right. We live in a medical society where their jobs are to keep you going, keep going, keep moving, whatever we need to hook you up to. That's why I've been really in really big support of MAiD, Compassion and Choices is an amazing organization that wants to ensure that people who are in a terminal illness space have the option to make a choice for themselves. 

We have to trust that a human being, a person knows what is best and right for them. If the quality of life is a question. I think it's honestly very inhumane for the medical world to say, nope, we have to keep you hooked up and plugged full of medicine if that's not how you wanna spend the rest of your life. We need to honor people making that decision and give them safe routes to pursue that should they want to.

Jill: I agree completely. Medical aid and dying, MAiD, is something that is very important for us to have as an option. Doctors need to be better educated about medical aid and dying. Mm-hmm. , and I'm not saying that I don't, I have a lot of respect for doctors. I really am so grateful for the advancements that we have in medical care.

So I'm not trashing that, but I do think right, they are still human doctors are still human beings. They come in with their own set of beliefs and baggage and all these other things, and they're also taught nothing really about death and dying. They're only taught about extending life. There needs to be a more well-rounded education that our medical establishment goes through and realizing that for some people, keeping them comfortable is better than putting them through really long treatments that are just gonna cause a lot of pain and suffering, and most likely aren't gonna work to extend their life anyway. And then being able to say to them, now we've tried some things there is this option, medical aid and dying, that when you feel it is right to end your pain and suffering, here is this option for you, but we're not there yet. Exactly. The more that we talk about this, the more that people understand it. Honestly, I didn't know that medical aid and dying were really a thing.

I think all of us heard about, what was the doctor's name back in like the nineties that they were like he was killing people you know. 

Kelly: Oh, Dr. Kevorkian. 

Jill: The idea that he was euthanizing people seems so terrifying. When really that's not what medical aid and dying is. If you were to speak to a lot of people and you were to say to them, you or maybe your spouse, they have cancer. They've gone through treatments. At this point, the treatment's not gonna work. They're in a lot of pain. They're in a lot of suffering. Would you want that suffering to end in a peaceful way? They'd say 100%. Of course, I would. Yes, of course, I would. Absolutely. But that's not the way that the conversation goes.

They would think to themselves, well, no, I don't want them to commit suicide. But to me, suicide and medical aid in dying are very different. Suicide is something that you're choosing to do to end your mental suffering, but to me, medical aid and dying is you have a disease that is killing you, whether you want to die or not, it is going to happen.

It's just giving you control over when you die and how you. , and that to me is amazing. It gives people their power back, essentially at a time in their life when life [00:30:00] feels very out of control. 

Kelly: Right? It's about quality of life and quality of death, right? if I were faced with a decision of, you know, my quality of life rapidly deteriorating and I would just be in pain or heavily medicated and not really present.

I would not wanna stay in that decision. It's not just for me, but for the people who love me and who are taking care of me, that is an intense space to be in for a prolonged amount of time and stressful and heartbreaking. Allowing people to have the choice if they wanna continue and if they don't, it's all about respect, right? If you don't feel called to that and that feels not comfortable, I respect that decision, but I just think. We should be able to provide that option to people who should they want to.

I've just heard a lot of really incredibly wonderful testimonies from people through compassionate choices who have dealt with this through family members or partners and how profound it was to be able to have the options to be together to make that choice together, to know that this person wasn't going to be going through undue suffering.

I wish every state had this as an option. I wish people understood more about what it is and what it's not. And hopefully, we'll get there. You know, over time, I mean, more and more states are adopting this, which is great. So hopefully, in the future, this will be something we have access to everybody.

Jill: Your point too about medical aid and dying, not being for everybody. That's a really important point when it comes to death doulas because mm-hmm. we all have our own beliefs, but our job is not to enforce our beliefs on anybody else. It's to ensure that they get what they want at the end of life. So even though I support medical aid and dying I realize that a lot of people still are not there, and so I would never impose my beliefs on any of my clients. No, because it's not for everybody, but right. Making sure that people do the best that they can to make sure that people get the care that they want. The end of life is really what it is all about.

Kelly: I agree with you. My point of view and the way I try to conduct myself in this space is I want the person who I'm working with to feel informed, and supported, that they are in control of decision-making processes that I am there as a person of support.

I am not there to tell you what you should and should not do. I by no means am an expert. I'm learning. I'm constantly trying to learn more and more so that I can better be of support to people that I am within these spaces. I've worked with people who are, you know, all denominations of different religious beliefs. Maybe I don't subscribe to 'em, but I respect that is your decision and that's how you wanna hold yourself in that space. And I will do everything I can to honor you. And if that means I have to educate myself a little bit to understand certain things, happy to, happy to. And I know that's not for everyone.

For me as a practitioner, I'm really focused on the LGBTQ plus space. I am a queer lesbian. My partner is non-binary. And I just navigating the world with them and just as myself recognize that we as a community need more support in this space. I try to approach everyone with whatever you bring to me, I receive and I support.

And of course, if you're being harmful, that's a whole nother thing. But in general, I respect wherever you come from. I wanna respect your pronouns. I wanna respect how you identify. I wanna respect what your family looks like, and that could be the family you've created or the family that is your by blood or mixture.

I'm a facilitator. I like to say I'm the worker bee. I'm there to buzz around and make sure that the things are in place that you want them to be. If I can alleviate something or educate or communicate or make something happen, that's my job. My job isn't to question your choices. That has nothing to do with me. I wanna ensure that you have a good death and that the people around you feel supported in that space. Yeah, 

Jill: That's beautiful. And we definitely need more of that. Do you only work with people in person, or do you work with people virtually as well?

Kelly: It's actually a mixture. I would say. Because of Covid a lot of it's gone virtual and there are quite a few things you can do as a doula in the virtual space. I mean, I do advanced directives for people. You can do funeral planning, you can. Research, hospice needs and interview nurses and hospice care and all those sorts of things.

There's a lot that can be done virtually. Even just grief check-in, you know, how are you, what are you doing? That sort of thing. I've had a friend who has been reiki for clients virtually. There are a lot of things that are available, but there are some things you can't do virtually.

I do things in person. Sitting vigil is best to do in person or running errands and that sort of thing. Another interesting part of becoming a doula that I have discovered is, the baby boomer generation is aging clearly, and I think a lot of us have parents who are in that age range and navigating the fact that maybe we don't live in the same state or the same country and navigating their needs as they get older, medical things that pop up and the dynamics of that. There's a growing number of people that, I think they're in that 40 to 50 ish, in that age range with aging parents where.

Maybe a medical situation, maybe someone's had a stroke or a heart attack or something medically has, they're not dying, but they've had a traumatic medical situation that's changed their quality of life. And I have found that people are reaching out to me more and more in that space, which is a lot of those things I can do virtually as well.

It's just, organizing support teams and therapies and, researching different pT options and things like that. So that's been kind of interesting also coming out of Covid, how that shift and how that can also toggle between virtual and in person. 

Jill: That makes sense. And so if somebody wants to find you, what's the best way to reach you?

Kelly: Well I have a website which is either you can go to kellyhayler.com or deathdoulanewyork, all spelled out. It'll take you to the same website. I'm also on Instagram and I'm on TikTok. So most of the TikTok is just me talking about what a doula is and talking about grief and just more of an education platform.

And yeah, but everywhere else you can find me, and yeah, see my services and find a little bit more about me. 

Jill: Perfect. I'll put links to all of that as well in the show notes. So it's gonna be easy for people to find you if they want to. And is there any last things that you wanna leave the listeners with?

Kelly: Don't be afraid to approach this topic in your own mortality. It's not light work, even if you are just willing to accept a little, start a little, and let me see how this feels. Or let me think about how do I want maybe my funeral to look like, or just any little kind of nugget I think will lead you to unpack a bigger thing that is only going to serve you in the long run.

And I know it's not easy work, and I know there's a lot of stuff that goes around it. I don't think it's as scary when you get in it, as it feels like before you step in. 

Jill: Yeah, and that's actually some of the work that I do as what I would call an end-of-life coach.

It's not technically a thing, but I had so many people say to me, you almost sound like you're a life coach. And I was like, I guess I'm an end of life coach because I am here to help support people doing this work so that if they do start to feel some emotions come up and they're not sure what to do with the emotions I do some activities and things with people to help just move through some of those feelings because it's important work.

And it can be a little scary. It's scarier to think about doing the work than it is to actually do the work once you get started. I agree. Let's just all get started. Honestly, if you're listening to this podcast right now, you must have started the work because you wouldn't be here.

You wouldn't be here if you were not willing to at least think about what we're talking about.  

Kelly: There's a whole community of us that are willing and open and happy to receive and talk about this with you. And also Death Cafes, they're all over the country. I used to host one myself.

It's not there to tell you what you should do, but it's a really great opportunity to just meet with people who are curious, have questions, uncertainties, and just kinda make connections in that space. those are also good resources for people. 

Jill: I'm running death Cafes now in my Facebook group, so I have a Facebook group End of life Clarity Circle, and I'm calling it a death-positive community. And I started doing death cafes now once a month just for people to hop on because yeah, it is important for us to just have these conversations or even, not even be part of the conversation, but just sit back and listen to what everybody else is talking about. Whatever your comfort level is. So anybody that's listening to, or you too, Kelly, if you ever wanna hop on, I do My death cafes. I would love to. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. It was awesome talking with you, and I really am grateful for you showing up for this conversation with me.

Kelly: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been really awesome. And thank you for creating this space for us to talk about our feelings and our emotions and our experiences around death and dying. So thank you for creating that for this community. 

Jill: Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly.  

My show next week will be a little different than the ones I have done already.  

My guest is Mary McMonagle and when Mary and I recorded the episode she was going through the experience of her father being on hospice, but her father has since passed away so we recorded a brief update that is at the end of our interview.

Please consider subscribing to the podcast and if you enjoy it, give me a 5-star rating and a brief review.  

This will help get the podcast out to more listeners that could find benefit from the conversations.

I would love for you to send me a message on Facebook or Instagram and tell me what you thought about the episode and any key takeaways you may have had.

I have a workbook you can download called Living A Better Life.

I created the workbook for people that don’t want to become a death doula but want to experience some of the transformation that Kelly and I talked about in today's episode.

There is a link in the show notes.

Take care and I will see you next week in episode 9 of Seeing Death Clearly.