Episode 9: Loving Support During Your Dying Time

Be prepared to feel your heart fill with wonder and gratitude as our conversation unfolds today with special guest, Sarah Hill. Sarah is an end-of-life doula who brings keen insight and profound presence to an individual's dying time. Sarah unpacks for Dr. Jan and listeners how she prepares and companions the dying and their families to approach this sacred time of life. Just as doulas have been present at the birth of babies for eons, so have loving companions, known as death doulas, been present as a beloved human leaves the physical world. 

Our conversation includes these highlights: 

• the basics about who can be a death doula, what they do, how they serve

• how Sarah was drawn to this work, even as a child

• how the loss of her own mother at a young age impacted her views of death, dying and bereavement care

• what a doula does while companioning the dying 

Sarah shares some meaningful stories too from her bedside experiences, describing how this work is life-giving even amidst the reality of death. This inspiring interview invites us to re-think how we might approach our own dying time to have it be focused on a more gentle and meaningful parting where Love surrounds all. 

Bio: Sarah Hill, East Bay Doula for the Dying

 As an end-of-life doula, Sarah provides support to those who are dying, and their constellation of caregivers. She approaches her work from an emotionally engaged and intuitively aware place, while also tending to the pragmatic essentials needed at the end of life. Sarah’s path to becoming a doula began in early childhood, but she resisted its pull until her forties. At the height of her consulting career supporting large-scale change management efforts in the corporate sector, the call to pivot to what is arguably the greatest change we each will undergo had become too loud to ignore. Sarah is humbled each day by those she encounters in her work and often marvels at the expansiveness of the human heart. Taking the path less traveled has helped her round out her own edges, too: exchanging achievement for fulfillment is among the best decisions of her life. Sarah began her private practice, East Bay Doula for the Dying, LLC in 2019, and is a founding member of the Bay Area End of Life Doula Alliance (ELDA).

Visit her website: https://www.eastbaydoulaforthedying.com/