Bio
My name is Melanie Sheckels. I am an RN (registered nurse) and a death, grief, and trauma educator and guide who has helped hundreds of humans move from fear and freeze into possibility and ease. My end of life doula practice, Threshold Doula, was founded in 2019 after I had spent 7 years as a cardiac nurse at Carle Hospital and a hospice nurse for OSF Hospital. As a doula, I offer advocacy and guidance that helps people navigate the healthcare system and dying process with greater understanding and confidence. As a speaker and educator, I help people have meaningful conversations about death and loss in order to foster the most peaceful, regret-free lives possible. My clients include families, community members, and caregivers who have experienced profound loss that has made a significant impact on their lives.
Beliefs
Death is a sacred rite of passage, not a medical event. Even amidst great loss and difficulty, we each contain an inherent, unbreakable blueprint of health and wholeness that we may return to with deep, consistent care and connection.
Strengths
As a doula, I rely on years of experience as a nurse, ongoing education on best practices, an understanding that each person’s experience is unique and requires its own specific resources, and a positive attitude and calming demeanor. As an educator, I rely on storytelling, deep listening and awareness, and a focus on cultivating safe and brave community practices that honor each individual’s sense of self and encourage belonging.
My personal story
In 2017, I had the opportunity to care for my mother at the end of her life. We had an intensely complicated relationship, fraught with wounds of intergenerational trauma that led to passages of time in which we did not speak to each other. My medical training had taught me to tend to a wound and reveal the regenerative tissue beneath. Yet I knew little of how to dress my own emotional wounds and repair my relationship with my mother. While at her bedside, I began to learn the meaning of true healing and understand what is required of us to pass through thresholds of intense change with dignity and without regret. Despite our complicated history, we were able to come together, achieve tremendous peace, and heal our relationship as she was dying. As my mother lay in a hospital bed in her final days, barely able to breath or speak as she was overcome by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, I became her advocate and her voice. In doing so, I revealed my own true voice. That personal experience was the missing link and inspiration that allowed me to grow into the doula I am today. In the ongoing process of grieving my mother’s passing, I have begun to understand the recipe for a “good death”.
Registered nurse (RN) with Illinois State Board of Nursing since 2012 (license: 041.103001)
ADN in 2012; BSN expected in 2023
Cardiac nurse, preceptor, and charge nurse at Carle Hospital in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., 2012-2016
Float nurse (nurse-of-all-trades) at Clark-Lindsey Village in Urbana, Ill., 2016-2018
Hospice nurse at OSF Hospital in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., 2018-2019
Certified Sacred Passage Doula, Conscious Dying Institute in Boulder, CO, 2018
Threshold Doula end of life private practice, 2019-present
Somatic, body-based trauma resolution coach, ReBloom, 2022
Spiritual mentorship and grief ritual education, Carolyn Griffeth (Earth Keepers Wisdom School), 2020-2021
Specialized training in anti-racism and pregnancy loss
Embodied study of non-violent communication
