The Caring Death Doula
In a world that rushes past death and ignores grief, The Caring Death Doula stops to listen with tenderness, truth, and time. Whether you are grieving right now or here to learn how to help those grieving, join your host, Frances, a certified grief educator on the journey of finding connection, conversations, and comfort. Let's make grief and death a natural part of our conversations.
The Caring Death Doula
Gentle Grace in Grief
A birthday arrives, the phone stays silent, and what lingers is not just absence but the weight of everything left unsaid.
In this episode I share a personal story about my birthdays and my dad. We didn’t have the closest relationship, but he always called first thing in the early hours to wish me a happy birthday. That simple ritual—quiet, consistent, and unspectacular—became a compass for what love looked like in an imperfect relationship. When the calls stop, the mind rushes to guilt: I should have said more, visited more, made more of an effort.
We discuss the pull of self-blame in grief. Instead of hunting for perfect closure, we focus on how care hides in patterns: the check-ins, the remembered dates, the small gestures that repeat over time. I share how a hard day arrived before the birthday itself and how tears came early. Together we explore how two truths can live side by side: a relationship didn’t meet the dream, and there were real acts of love that mattered.
If you’re wrestling with unsaid words or a bond that never had time, this episode offers compassion.
Grief is heavy enough without the extra weight of guilt and regret.
Join me to honor relationship complexities, to recognize love in its quieter forms, and to extend grace—to your loved one and to yourself.
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Hello, and thank you for joining me today. Today, I would like to talk to those of you who maybe are beating yourself up. Maybe you did not have the relationship with your loved one that has died. You didn't have the relationship you wanted. Or maybe you didn't get to say goodbye. You didn't get to say I love you for the last time. And so those memories come up, the loss of not being able to fix the relationship. There's no way, no time, no way to make the relationship better. Or you're beating yourself up, you're guilty, you're just harassing yourself, you're putting a burden on yourself because you didn't say the words, I love you. You didn't make that last phone call, you didn't go visit for that last time. You know, whatever is on your mind today, whatever you are being hard on yourself, I'm asking you to stop. Give yourself some grace. Be gentle with yourself. Grief is hard enough. We don't need to add anything else on it. Today's my birthday, and my dad was always the one that would call me first thing in the morning. I mean, early morning. He was pretty much um outside of maybe some people, you know, some family members that I was living with. He was the one that would call me and be the first one to say happy birthday. He would call me very early in the morning. And somehow yesterday I was really having a hard time. It was, it was really, it was really interesting. I um I was thinking about that, how you know, tomorrow was gonna be my birthday, and and uh it was gonna be the second birthday that my dad wasn't gonna call me. And of course I cried. I mean, I teared up and I cried because that always made me feel so special. And so today was a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be. It didn't, I guess, because all the emotion came yesterday, and it's been kind of just mulling around in my head, that it didn't bother me as much this morning. I mean, when I thought about doing this episode, I started tearing up, and so I didn't do it as early as I wanted to. I did not get it out there to you, but I just want to encourage you that if you're didn't have a good relationship with your dad or your loved one, whoever your loved one may be, and maybe you're not so sure they loved you, or you know, just the whole, your mind can just take over when when there's guilt and you know, relationship that didn't get to be patched up, words that did not get to be said. I want you to look because when I when I stop and think about it, it's like that's how my dad was showing me that he loved me. You know, we didn't have the greatest relationship. And of course, now we don't have the time to improve that. But he would call me every year on my birthday, first thing in the morning. And it's like, if that's not love, I don't know what love is. So I just want to encourage you, if you're going through that today, please be gentle with yourself. Know that your loved one did the best they could with what they knew and where they were at, and you did the best you could. My heart goes out to you. I'm holding space for you. I am the caring death doula.