04/06/2024
I have started a death doula training to be a companion on the end of life journey.
The warp and weft of my life has had a significant thread of a feeling existential melancholy. My heart resonates and breaks open with grief, with suffering, with loss. I sometimes feel the suffering of the world as a literal excruciating heart ache. And with it I feel alive, I feel love, compassion, surrender.
I can see the beauty of life more sharply with less distractions in the cold light of death's presence. To fully live and love life is knowing that death is always walking with us. A lot of my life I had been avoiding fully being alive for fear of death. Now, my quest to live the rest of my life in expansive love, ease and joy must include a capacity to be unafraid of this companion.
Going deeply into my own fear and healing has lead me to hold a love for others in our common humanity that I could not have if I had not suffered loss, pain, fear myself. Perhaps what I already do a lot is a s*x/life/soul doula, working with the fear of dying an unlived life all the time with people wanting more from their relationships, intimacy, s*xuality and life. People seek me out for s*xual services when they are looking for deeper layers of meaning and connection, hearing a calling to engage with the existential thread of sacred / soul that weaves through the mysterious unfolding of their lives.
And I want to be with others in the end of life journey with death as much as the life journey - that it is the same - we are all on an end of life journey one way or another. To be steady and present through the depths, to offer support, to share the joy of the dark and the gifts found therein.