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.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
8:18
Grief gets policed in quiet, everyday ways and it can make you feel like you have to earn the right to mourn.
I’m working hard to help us push back on that. I talk openly about why this show started, what it took to hit record for the first time, and what it means to hear from listeners who say my words helped them through loss when nothing else did.
I share the turning point that shaped everything: walking beside my dad during a painful death journey and realizing how many families need clearer support around dying, hospice, end-of-life planning, and grief. You’ll hear why I trained as a death doula, what that role can and cannot do, and why I still care deeply about protecting vulnerable older adults who live alone and depend on caregivers without nearby family oversight.
Then the conversation shifts to the place I keep getting pulled back to: grief. We discuss why death and loss are still taboo in families, and how that silence lands on kids. I share a listener story about being kept from a grandmother’s funeral and carrying anger for decades until a simple reframing finally brought release.
If you’re navigating bereavement, pet loss, anticipatory grief, or a loss nobody else seems to understand, I want you to hear this clearly: there are no rules in grief. No right or wrong way to grieve.
If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs permission to feel, and leave a review so more people can find real, raw support when it matters most.
Join the private FB group for “behind the podcast” and advance notification The Caring Death Doula Podcast. A safe place to ask questions and to learn more.
Thank you for joining me today for the real and raw talk about life and death. If you're new here today, welcome. If you are a returning listener, I thank you. I thank you for returning.
I started this podcast back in August of 2025. And I was nervous. It was my first podcast. I wasn't sure what I was doing. I had no idea where it was going to go, how long it was going to last. Was anyone going to listen? And if they listened, would they come back? And I am very pleased to share with you that many of you have reached out to me. Many of you have told me how much my words have helped you. And that means a lot to me. Because this is not a job, this is not a business, this is not a way for me to make money.
This has been my heart. I went through a very difficult time watching my dad on his death journey. He had a horrific experience. And at first I thought, since I didn't want anybody else to go through this, that I was going to become an end-of-life practitioner. And I did. I took the course and I created the name the caring death doula. And I had all these plans where I was going to work one-on-one with people and with and with individuals and then also with their families. Because a death doula is kind of a mediator between you and your family, or you and the um the hospice. You know, we're not medical personnel, but we're there to help guide you to maybe know what to ask and just to help you understand some things. And so I thought that's what I was going to do. I even thought I was going to go so far as to open a caregiving agency in in, you know, in the future. And I still may do that because my heart goes out to those who start aging and they live alone and their family lives hours away or even out of state, perhaps out of country, but they they're not there. And I you're kind of left at the mercy of whatever hair caregivers you you hire. And if you don't have family to oversee that, family that's near enough to oversee that, you could be mistreated. And I think there's a lot, you know, my first thought was I'm going to educate people on death because there's so much that we don't think about that we need to plan for, we need to think for. How do we want our last days to look? You know, do we want visitors coming in? Do we not? There's just a lot there that you don't really think about and no one talks about.
Surprisingly, I found myself shifting more into grief and wanting to be there to support people in grief. Because I began to see that we don't talk about death, and the experiences of death are so different, and there's so many different kinds of grief. There's so many different kinds of reasons why you would grieve, why you would feel a loss in change.
And so my first podcast was about getting comfortable about talking about death and grief. You know, I had someone who came to me and said that when she was in eighth grade, her grandmother died, and she really wanted to go to the funeral. Her parents said no. And she has carried this her whole life. She's, I believe, in her 50s. And she's carried this her whole life. And listening, after listening to one of my podcasts, she approached me and she told me how thankful she was for what I said because she finally understood and was able to release some of that anger that she had towards her parents. Because this was a grandma she loved, and she wanted to, you know, she wanted to be at the funeral to say goodbye and all the things. And she just, she was angry. She couldn't understand why her parents said no. And through the podcast here, she was able to see that adults don't know how to handle the grief that their children are going through while they're in their grief. And the value, the importance of talking about death and grief within our families, within our communities, so that no one has to feel alone or left out or neglected or pushed aside.
I mean, how many times do adults stop talking when children enter the room? We think it's it's more than they can handle. When in reality, if you would sit children down together and let them just talk, you would be amazed at how well that they can handle it. So that's the purpose of this podcast.
This is why I am entering into my second year. We're going to be kind of upgrading our wording and just our podcast a little bit to really emphasize that this is real and raw. And I know it's hard. I used to do two episodes a week when I started, and I've I've moved it to just one a week because I understand it's very hard. It is very hard to hear a grief podcast. You just sometimes you just can't, and I understand that. But I'm here for when here for you when you are ready and when you need it.
And in celebration of our one year, entering into our second year here, I want to remind you. I want you to hear me. There are no rules in grief. No one, and I mean absolutely no one has the right to tell you that you can't grieve something, that you're doing it wrong. That you can't talk about it. No one. The way you loved somebody, the way you loved your pet, the way you longed for a dream, no one has the right to say that that is ridiculous to grieve that, or to grieve that long, or to grieve that hard, or to grieve this way or that way. Nobody has that right. No one. Your grief is your own, your grief path is your own, and it's not gonna be like anyone else's, it's not gonna be like mine, and nobody may understand within your circle. You may feel very alone, and I'm hoping my podcast will help you not quite feel so alone. Because I am here for you. I am the caring death doula and we talk about life and death. Real and raw, holding nothing back. So until next time, know that I'm here for you.
