Death is not a medical event
One of the most impactful lessons I received as a nursing student came from a diabetes educator.
She said there is a tsunami of an aging population descending on a healthcare system ill equipped to deliver the level of care and the quantity of it that this group of people has learned to believe will be available to them.
And so as I learned to become a death doula, I put these things together and I recognized that what we need in our healthcare system is not more nurses, not more beds, but more capacity to be with and accept death and to recognize that it is not a medical event. That it is a normal part of life.
Your fear of death is a signal from your body that there’s more life in you to be lived, more vitality to be expressed, dreams to be actualized, regrets to be righted, seeds to be planted, legacies to be passed on.