All In Due Time Doula Services

05/07/2021

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GRIEF IS HEALING IN MOTION

Grief is the response to a broken bond of belonging.
Whether through the loss of a loved one, a way of life, or a cherished community, grief is the reaction to being torn from what you love.

As Martín Prechtel teaches, the words for grief and praise are the same in the Tz’utujil language because you can only grieve what you have dearly loved.

We grieve the loves we’ve lost.
We grieve our abilities vanishing through illness or age.
We grieve the loss of faith in our religion.
We grieve our children leaving home. We grieve the paths we didn’t walk. We grieve the family we never had.
We grieve the suffering of the planet.

But while grief may look like an expression of pain that serves no purpose, it is actually the soul’s acknowledgment of what we value. Grief is the honour we pay to that which is dear to us.

And it is only through the connection to what we cherish that we can know how to move forward. In this way, grief is motion.

Yet in our culture, we are deeply unskilled with grief.
We hold it at a distance as best we can, both in ourselves and in each other, treating it as, Joanna Macy says, like “an enemy of cheerfulness.”

There is unspoken shame associated with grief. It is sanctioned in very few places, in small doses, for exceptional occasions such as death and tragedy. Beyond that, it can feel dangerous and weak.
Perhaps because we fear we’ll drown in our despair, or because it means falling apart in a world which values ‘holding it together’ above all else.

But grief plays an essential role in our coming undone from previous attachments. It is the necessary current we need to carry us into our next becoming. Without it, we may remain stuck in that area of our life, which can limit the whole spectrum of our feeling alive.

Grief is the expression of healing in motion.

As you make the seemingly bottomless descent, it helps to remember that grief is the downpour your soul has been thirsting for. Because what remains hidden for too long doesn’t change. It is calcified in place, often sealed by shame, left untouched and forgotten by time.

But when it can finally come into the open to be seen, it is exposed to new conditions and it begins to move.
It rises on a salty geyser of tears, sometimes sung to the surface by a terrific moan, streaming down our cheeks until it moistens the soil where we stand, preparing us for new growth.

Have you ever noticed how beautiful a person is after they’ve wept?
It’s as if they are made new again by the baptism of tears. Indeed, when something stuck can be released through grief, we are freeing up a greater capacity to love.

Excerpt from Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa Turner

Art: .art

05/01/2021

A great piece on the topic of what we do as end of life doulas/death doulas/death midwives.

Freya Bishop shares the story of how "death midwifes" like herself have been supoprting families and those passing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

05/01/2021

Black infants are nearly four times as likely to die from complications related to low birthweight than white infants and Black mothers were twice as likely than white mothers to receive late or no prenatal care, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Health disparities that affect one culture affect everyone,” Sierra says. “A disparity for one is a disparity for all. We need to have these discussions in order to make a change.”

Addition of doula services for Blue Cross MN Medicaid members during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and post-partum aims to improve outcomes.

05/01/2021

“Multiple studies have confirmed the benefits of continuous labor and childbirth support from a doula. It has been found that the benefits of working with a doula include:

A decrease in Cesarean births
Shorter labors
Increase in the likelihood of spontaneous vaginal birth
Decrease in the use of pain medications
A significant decrease in the baby’s risk of a low five-minute APGAR score”

Blue Plus members with a Minnesota Heath Care Program plan can receive up to seven sessions with a doula for pregnancy and childbirth.

04/13/2021

Silver~

“How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.

When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and your children come home
to find their own history
in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?

This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.

I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking."

~ Jeannette Encinias

03/31/2021

Death or end-of-life doulas help people navigate dying. They can help with something as straightforward as writing an obit to being present during death.
Nice to see an interview w our wonderful instructor, Henry Fersko-Weiss.

Death or end-of-life doulas help people navigate dying. They can help with something as straightforward as writing an obit to being present during death.

03/23/2021

This was a terrific EOL piece today from the Westminister Town Hall forum.
The link to the broadcast is in the article.

Barbara Coombs Lee speaks about compassion and choices at the end of life. She’s the author of “Finish Strong: Putting Your Priorities First at Life’s End.”

03/22/2021

Home stretch preparations make a difference!

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I can’t stress enough to lean over a counter, table ect., several times a day in your final weeks of pregnancy. 35+ weeks-let’s just say; every time you brush your teeth, lean over the sink with “legs to spine-in an A shape” vs an “L shape.” 120* degree angle, twice a day for several minutes. Rocking your hips to your bodies needs. No need to do complete inversions. Actually, while we are at it, I don’t recommend complete inversions while at home, unmonitored. There are too many variables; (hypertensive women should not do, polyhydramnios can be a risk, headaches). Inversions have been taken out of context and are being promoted within the birth world by non medical persons. Originally published by Dr. Carol Phillips as a position that is performed for only 30 seconds to one minute. Some websites promote inversions without mentioning risk factors and/or encouraging inversions for up to 30 minutes at a time. This pictured position is a safe, relaxing way to passively stretch the lower uterine supporting structures while allowing babe space to rotate. Relax the abdominal muscles while breathing rhythmically. “Breathe into your belly.”

03/17/2021

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Resharing an old because I come back to this book often. It shaped my own unlearning work as I truly explored what was living in my own body. This should be required reading for all humans but especially for therapists in graduate and PhD programs.
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“My Grandmother’s Hands Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.” This book should be required reading for all therapists. After my Somatic Experiencing, training I’ve been thinking a lot about implicit bias and how that lives in our bodies. I’ve also been exploring my own racialized trauma within therapy and trainings as I come from a family of holocaust survivors. This book is incredible because it leads you through exercises to discover how racialized trauma and implicit bias show up in your body. It’s beautifully written by an SEP, LICSW, and social justice advocate. As therapists, it is imperative that we are able to show up with a neutral stance in the room. If we don’t do our own work, we are unable to do this and may do damage to clients even within slight somatic responses to clients. If you sit in discomfort as you read the pages and move through the exercises, you’re doing your work.•
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03/16/2021

“We learn from one another. Death is one of our greatest teachers about life, if we could just pay attention to it bringing us together and the support system that we need to be there in all different facets. People do not understand what hospice does or does not do...unfortunately, our medical system is struggling and fragmented. At the end of life we have one opportunity to have that go well — we can’t go back and do it again. It’s so important that we step forward and do everything we can to make it happen.”

Public misconceptions about the dying process may have reaching effects on hospice utilization. Developing ties to death doulas could help bridge the gap