Home / The LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast / Getting Prepared: Discussion With a Death Doula and End-of-Life Specialist

Getting Prepared: Discussion With a Death Doula and End-of-Life Specialist

By: Kevin Berk • Updated Jan 23, 2025

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Summary

In a world where certainty is scarce, one universal truth remains: we all will eventually face the end of life. Yet, conversations around death and dying remain shrouded in discomfort and avoidance. Thankfully, specialists like Alexis Rebane, a certified end-of-life doula, offer guidance and support, not only to those nearing the end of their lives but also to the living who wish to engage in important end-of-life conversations.

The Role of a Death Doula

During our enlightening conversation with Alexis, she detailed the multifaceted role of a death doula. Unlike medical professionals, death doulas provide practical, emotional, and sometimes spiritual support to those at the end of their lives and their families. They work closely with hospice teams when needed, acting as intermediaries and offering additional support where hospice might not be able to.

Alexis explained, “It varies case by case. When end of life doulas work with people, they are not necessarily right at end of life. Hospice comes on the scene when somebody is expected to live six months or fewer. So, if there is no hospice team involved yet, the death doula would interface more directly with their client, and their client might be the dying person or a loved one of the dying person.”

Breaking the Taboo Around Death Conversations

A significant part of Alexis’s work involves encouraging and facilitating conversations about death well before it becomes imminent. “I’ve really seen from that experience the need for a greater conversation in our culture around death and dying,” Alexis shared. She believes that confronting these topics is crucial to ensuring that individuals’ wishes are respected, reducing the burden on loved ones when the time comes.

Advance directives and living wills are practical tools Alexis helps clients develop, making these conversations more structured and less daunting.

Personal Journeys and Cultural Shifts

Alexis’s path to becoming an end-of-life specialist was influenced by personal loss, notably the death of her beloved partner to cancer. This experience shaped her professional trajectory and solidified her commitment to supporting others through similar journeys.

She also noted a cultural shift towards more open conversations about death, with the rise of death doulas and death cafes—a concept where individuals discuss death-related topics in a safe and agenda-free environment.

Integrating Hypnosis and Other Modalities

In addition to her work as a death doula, Alexis incorporates various modalities such as hypnosis to help clients deal with death anxiety and other grief-related issues. “Hypnosis is a great opportunity for me to use to complement the other services I was offering in this realm,” she explained.

Alexis finds that hypnosis can unearth and address underlying grief that manifests in other aspects of life, such as insomnia or eating disorders.

Supporting Families and Managing Boundaries

A crucial component of being a death doula is supporting families through impending loss. Alexis is adept at facilitating conversations that bring families together, ensuring the focus remains on the needs of their loved one.

“Meeting everybody where they are and not forcing things” is essential, but so is maintaining healthy boundaries. Alexis acknowledges the emotional intensity of her work and employs techniques to manage empathy without absorbing the grief and suffering of her clients.

Connecting and Evolving

Throughout her work, Alexis has witnessed many small-world connections and transformative experiences. The interconnectedness among people seeking her services fuels her passion and purpose, as she facilitates not just conversations but meaningful human connections.

The Path Forward

As an end-of-life specialist, Alexis Rebane fosters an environment where death and dying are no longer taboo topics. By helping individuals and families navigate this inevitable part of life, she empowers them to live more fully and with greater clarity.

For those interested in connecting with Alexis, her website GuardianFoxArts.com provides more information about her services, and she encourages potential clients to reach out for a free consultation.

In the words of Alexis, “Every single experience with death has in some way affected my trajectory. Our universal humanity comes into sharp focus when we recognize that we all live, and we all die.” Through her profound work, Alexis underscores the importance of embracing this reality with empathy, courage, and open hearts.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Kevin: Thank you for joining us on the LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast. LightAtTheEnd.com is a resource for those who want to learn more about end of life topics, but don’t know where to start.

I’m Kevin Berk, and I’m joined today by Alexis Rebane, who is an End-of-Life Specialist. Alexis, thank you so, much for being here today.

Alexis: Thanks so much for having me.

Kevin: So you’re a certified end of life doula, a hypnosis practitioner, a weaver, a writer, an editor a black and white photographer, so you do so much stuff. I feel like we’ll have to bite off one thing at a time.

Understanding the Role of a Death Doula

Kevin: So let’s start here: as an end-of-life doula or a death doula… what does that entail?

Alexis: A death doula provides a dying person and their family – and let’s be clear: we’re all dying, just some more quickly than others – we provide practical, emotional, and sometimes spiritual support to people at end of life and their loved ones. It is not a medical position, but we can provide all sorts of other services that can help a family at the end of life.

Kevin: So, Is it similar to what a person might receive from a therapist or a psychologist they would work with?

Alexis: An end of life doula is more aligned with what somebody might receive from hospice care. hospice teams are wonderful in providing. A wide array of services to a dying individual and their loved ones. A death doula can come in and fill in the cracks or, provide more time than the hospice team might have the opportunity to come in. And, they can… the death doula can be sort of the eyes and ears on the ground, helping to interface between the dying person and the hospice team.

Kevin: Okay, so you work with the individuals, the families, and then the hospice team as well, generally?

Alexis: It varies case by case,when end of life doulas work with people, they are not necessarily right at end of life. Hospice comes on the scene when somebody is expected to live six months or fewer. And so If there is no hospice team involved yet, the death doula would interface more directly with their client, and their client might be the dying person and it might be a loved one of the dying person.

Kevin:

Alexis: Anybody who is 18 or older, regardless of their health can have advance directives and a living will, and I help people to create those things, whether they’re young and healthy or there’s a diagnosis in place.

A lot of times people first decide to take care of getting their affairs in order when they have a life change, like a marriage or partnership or children, and they realize that they have an opportunity to take away any burden that would fall on their loved ones should something happen to them. There is a component of it where, for a lot of people, the idea of focusing on death and dying is too much, or is very emotional, or it feels morbid, but for a lot of people, actually putting their wishes in place and having them be known, it provides a lot of relief and security knowing that how they would like their end of life to go, there are people who are willing to advocate for that happening.

Personal Journey: Alexis’s Path to Becoming an End-of-Life Specialist

Kevin: So what led you to become an end of life specialist?

Alexis: When I look back at my life, I feel like I can find a through-thread that is about death and dying, and I struggled to decide where to go back to when I tell the story of how I came to be where I am now. Certainly there were pivotal moments throughout my life. One of the main ones was my beloved died of cancer when I was 30, and his mother and I were his main caregivers, and it was a transformative experience.

Going through that, I feel like I joined a club (that is not a very fun club to be a part of) and people who have not grieved, struggle to understand where grieving people are coming from, and being able to talk to people about their own grief led me to the sense of, It’s probably the closest thing I have experienced to having “a calling”. So I decided to pursue different avenues to be able to support people when they’re going through grief, whether it’s from death loss or, the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship…There is anticipatory grief that happens for people as they are getting ready for their own death or somebody they love, their passing.

So there are a lot of different ways that I feel like the experiences that I’ve had and the trainings that I’ve taken have set me up for being able to help people at any stage of life.

Early Experiences with Death

Kevin: Did you have much exposure to death prior to being 30 and, as you say, the death of your beloved?

Alexis: I remember very clearly when I was a three year old and my German Shepherd died and, remembering the impact that that had on me and the understanding that I gained in that moment as a very young child about “alive” and “not alive” and, the impact, and how profound that was. And throughout my school years, there were different experiences that I had, of losing classmates, losing people in my neighborhood. And, that was a big impact at a young age. One of my best friends died in a tragic accident and I think I was 15, and I found myself in the role of supporting a lot of my friends through that, and it helped me to understand that I could play that part, that I could do my own grieving while simultaneously helping other people.

Kevin: Did you feel like you were working through it for yourself, even as you were helping them then?

Alexis: Yeah, absolutely. I think that, I mean, every grief that we suffer brings up past griefs, and I think every time we interact with somebody who’s grieving, we do a little healing on ourselves. I don’t think that can help be helped.

Kevin: Did you feel like when you went through that loss that that really made you think “this is something that more people need support in and, I can be that to them, professionally.

Alexis: Yes. It was an opportunity to see what skills I had and what I was lacking. There were times when I had no idea what to do, and there were times when I had a lot of support.

The Importance of Conversations About Death

Alexis: I really saw from that experience the need for a greater conversation in our culture around the topics of death and dying, there’s such a sense of speaking about death being, bad luck or taboo in some way.

And I think it really does a disservice to all of us as we contemplate our lives. And when we go through any big loss, there’s not much support and there’s not much generational knowledge being passed down. Death has been really removed from the home in a big way that past generations had a different experience.

By not having the conversation, we really put a burden on all of the people in our lives.who care about the outcome, who care about our wishes.

The Importance of Advance Directives

Alexis: Anybody who is in a position to make sure that my wishes are carried out, it’s such a gift to them for me to be really clear about what they are.

When I’m working with people on their advanced directives,there are a lot of times that people say, “Oh, I don’t care about that” and that’s fine. I tell them “that’s fine, but the things that you do care about, make sure that your loved ones know about them. You’re not asking your loved ones to make decisions for you. You’re asking your loved ones to speak your decisions that you’ve already made on your behalf at any point that you’re not able to.”

I think that’s a really common misconception and people don’t want to talk about these things out of superstition, out of tradition, out of their own relationship with death and dying, from having the experiences they’ve had… all sorts of things play into our relationship with death.

I think it’s important that we, as a society and culturally, interact with the topic much more than we do.

Kevin: Hmm… Were you able to have the conversations that you spoke of with your partner before they passed?

Alexis: Very few of the important conversations were possible, due to a number of factors. It was really difficult to talk about anything that wasn’t uplifting or hopeful or optimistic when Evan’s mom was around. She was really, understandably, wanting to only entertain good thoughts for positive outcomes.

And while I understand where that was coming from, it made it really difficult to have some of the conversations that I felt were important, to really understand what Evan’s wishes would be in different circumstances. Things like how much pain he was willing to be in, how alert he wanted to be, what sort of service or memorial he wanted to happen after he died…those were topics that were not on the table at that time. And so that really led to a sense of having an opportunity to normalize the conversation and to give people permission to talk about the important things, and to really make sure that those important things are communicated to the people who matter.

Kevin: Yeah, yeah. I feel like if you weren’t able to that because of the situation with him, that must have really underscored for you the importance of doing that with people in the future to say, “you know, this is why it is so incredibly important make sure that that conversation is happening and make sure thatyour wishes are in place, so that. we, we know how to handle things on your behalf if you’re not able to do it yourself.

Alexis: Yes, I think I’ve seen that in my own personal experiences. I’ve been volunteering for hospice for a while and I am on the vigil team, so I go in right at end of life in a lot of cases when somebody is actively transitioning, and I’ve seen firsthand and heard stories as well of how poorly it can go when people are not clear about what’s important to them, and how much trouble could be avoided by conversations in advance.

And again, back to the idea that a hundred percent of us are going to die. There’s not really anybody who wouldn’t be well served by having some of these conversations by giving this some thought.

Cultural Shifts in Conversations About Death

Kevin: Do you get the sense that, that there is a cultural or societal, I should probably say a societal shift to those conversations being had, being had earlier. It’s hard for me to tell whether or not that is a change that is occurring, or it’s merely my involvement and interest in the subject that makes it seem that way to me.

Alexis: I have a similar problem. The exposure that both of us have to this realm is greater than the average person in our society. I do think that the idea of death doulas is taking hold. I talk to people who frequently say, “I had never heard of a death doula. I’ve only heard of birth doulas, but you’re the second or third person to tell me about this.”

There’s more popular media, some books that have death doulas as characters, things like that. So I think in some ways it’s becoming more mainstream, but in others, it’s the oldest tradition and profession that we have, is people to help us into this world and people to help us exit. So I think that there is a trend towards more people getting into this as a career because we have taken death and dying out of the house, out of the home. And so there’s more of a need. And with boomers aging, there’s more of a need now than ever to have people to care for those who don’t have loved ones to support them.

Kevin: Sure.

The Emergence of Death Cafes

Alexis: I think that there are some more opportunities to have conversation about death and dying.

I’ve seen more and more death cafes pop up. I’m a co-facilitator of a death cafe, and that’s an international organization where people gather either virtually or in person to share food and drink and conversation with no agenda about death and dying. And, I’ve seen interest in those increase in the past couple of years, and so maybe that’s a metric that I would gauge that there are more conversations happening than there used to be.

Kevin: Interesting. Is that both people before tragedy strikes and after? Does it serve a similar function to a support group, this death cafe concept.

Alexis: It’s not a support group. It’s open to anybody, anybody. And there are some affinity groups that have more specific meetups that are relative to perhaps an identity that the people share, but the topic of death and dying itself is the main focal point. And it is an opportunity for anybody to come in and share their experiences, share their thoughts, hold space, sit and listen quietly to other people while they’re sharing their thoughts about death and dying. I’ve known people who are at the end of their life who have joined the death cafe to participate, and I know a lot of young, healthy people who are involved and interested in exploring this as a topic as well.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s just concept to me and one that I love.

Alexis: I think deathcafe.org, people can go to and look up, geographically, proximal death cafes or online versions that they might want to join. It’s a pretty interesting opportunity to have these conversations.

Kevin: Yeah, I’ll have to link out to that!

Certifications and Training for Death Doulas

Kevin: So are there certifications and personality traits that should be requisites for a death doula?

Alexis: There are certifications available. They are not required. It’s a certification and not a license, and there is no licensing body there for controlling what must or must not be part of a curriculum for certification. That said,there is NEDA, the National End of Life Doula Association, I believe, that provides some standards that different certification programs can adhere to, to be part of a NEDA-certified situation.

I took my certification through a group called Doula Givers, run by an amazing woman, Suzanne O’Brien, who is a hospice nurse in New York, and she does these certifications that come from a medical perspective in terms of being able to support families through a loved one’s end of life process, but also a practical support lens and a spiritual sense of how to really meet everybody where they are and provide the modalities or the practices or the resources that would be most useful in any given situation.

There’s some debate within the community about whether providing certifications is a form of gatekeeping for the type of people who could become really wonderful death doulas, and my perspective on it is that if there are ways that standardizing death doula work would allow for insurance to be taken by practitioners, that might increase access. And so that’s a factor.

For myself, the reason that I decided to get certified was simply to really learn from others experiences and take in as much as I could, from perspectives that were similar and dissimilar to mine, to just provide, a greater breadth and depth of, of knowledge. with which to support people,

Kevin: Sure.

Hypnosis and Other Modalities in End-of-Life Care

Kevin: So how does, how does hypnosis factor into what you do? Did you become, interested in that before or after, you know, your, your experience with your partner?

Alexis: Hypnosis is actually the most recent modality I’ve been certified in. When I was working as a death doula, a few of my clients came to me with death anxiety, and I did a number of different types of sessions with them to work on things likegetting their affairs in order to take care of that as low hanging fruit for something that could be weighing on them if they have death anxiety.

[We] did some guided meditations that are really useful for confronting death in an easeful and slow process, and then I decided that hypnosis would be a great opportunity/modality for me to use to complement the other services I was offering in this realm. As soon as I started offering hypnosis, I found that so many people were coming to me for problems that they were not necessarily associating with grief, but where grief was an underlying factor contributing to the issues that they were facing.

So somebody would come to me for insomnia and I would help them identify what grief was keeping them awake at night or, perhaps somebody would come to me for eating issues and it would become clear after some work that what the person was eating was grief. And so healing some of that underlying grief took away some of the symptoms that they were viewing as the main issue.

So hypnosis, I started doing really specifically to support people with death anxiety. And then I found that it is useful in so many different realms. I love it as a modality and I think thatit’s an opportunity for people to really allow for their conscious mind, their strong ego, to communicate with their subconscious and this really powerful part of themselves that is controlling so much of their daily functions, but there’s not a really great communication mechanism between the subconscious and the conscious.

So hypnosis is one of the ways that I’ve found to really enable that.

Kevin: So it can help unburden [a person] spiritually before the end.

Alexis: And again, before the end is really like any time for any of us.

Kevin: Yeah, I guess!

Alexis: And so, you don’t have to have a diagnosis to have death anxiety. My first client was a young – when I say young, I mean a 30 year old – very healthy firefighter who had seen a lot of traumatic things and had a lot of fear around what would happen to his family if something happened to him, and death anxiety can really be something that gets in the way of living a full life, improving our relationship with death is part of improving our relationship with life because they are the same.

They are flip sides of the same coin. And so any healing that we do on one side supports the other. There’s… there’s no way around that.

Kevin: Who do you feel like hypnosis is most helpful to? Is it helpful to anybody? Do they need to be in acertain kind of open and available mindset for it to be effective?

Alexis: There are some people for whom hypnosis is not a very efficient approach. I would, I would say that everybody could benefit from it on some level. The type of hypnosis that I do is called “meta hypnosis”, and it allows for my client to make some of the connections and come up with an action plan while they’re still in the hypnosis session.

And so I think that a lot of people question whether they’re able to be hypnotized, and I would suggest that if they’ve ever been startled by the phone ringing or the doorbell when they’ve been watching a TV show, that is an example of being hypnotized, being…

Kevin: Interesting!

Alexis: …focused on one thing and then being in that space so fully that something from the outside is jarring.

Or if you’ve ever driven from someplace, you’ve been a lot – home – and you don’t remember taking that last turn, but you are somehow in your driveway. That’s a form of hypnosis that we experience pretty regularly. So, the people I would say it works the best for are the people who believe that it will work for them.

There is some amount of, I wouldn’t call it placebo, but I would call it willingness to engage in this as a modality, that…

Kevin: Receptivity?

Alexis: Certainly, yeah, exactly. Being receptive to the idea that this could be helpful is… I don’t know about a prerequisite, I think people can receive benefit even if they’re skeptical,but I would say the more open to the idea somebody is, the more effective and immediate relief can come.

For somebody who feels like they’ve tried everything and they know somewhere within themselves that they’re capable of overcoming this thing, and they just don’t know what the next step is, that would be somebody who might benefit from hypnosis.

Somebody who believes in Mind Over Matter, but doesn’t know where to start, or how to instruct themselves to make some changes that are important to them, hypnosis might be a really good opportunity to do that. And the thing that I love about it that feels really magical to me is that there can be profound change that happens very quickly.

For some people, there’s immediate relief. And it’s always so exciting to me to see people feel better than they did when we started.

Supporting Clients Through Various Modalities

Alexis: There’s another modality that I use called “havening” that helps to support people with trauma and It is based on Neuroplasticity and also nerve endings that are soothing and

it allows us to heal in a way that creates more space for the living of life now. In my experience, it helps people turn sort of traumatic memories from hyper color to black and white. It’s not a forgetting of the past, but it’s allowing things to have less of a grip on us, and maybe fewer spirals that result from something that’s activating in our environment, reminding us of the past.

So there are a number of different modalities that I love to use –hypnosis is a great one. It’s really great for people who are willing to give it a try. I suggest usually that people have at least three sessions so that they have an opportunity to see change, but an opportunity to sort of re-up their resolve.

 it really builds momentum and allows for folks to have a bad day and still get benefit, over a course of three sessions. Some people I see them three sessions and then they’re done.

Kevin: Hm.

Alexis: …and some people I see regularly over time, to deal with whatever issue is the most present in their life at that moment, and some people see me for a little “top-off” before they visit family or somebody who might be, a difficult conversation, that kind of thing. and so there are a variety of different applications, but it really is so customized to the individual and what their needs are.

Kevin: So I was gonna say, is there anything general about the approach that you take when working with somebody who may be facing end of life related issues, concerns, fear? I suspect that anybody that you work with it, it starts with kind of taking an inventory of either what they want or what you think is going to be effective for them.

But you’ve got so many tools in your toolbox. How do you kind of get started?

Alexis: To begin with, when a client is filling out my online forms to become a client, my intake forms, there’s an opportunity for them to express what things sound interesting. There are some different options like hypnosis, like guided meditation… Another aspect of, being a death doula that I mentioned is doing the practical side of things.

So, on my intake forms, somebody may be seeing me about grief about a lost loved one, but they see on my website that I can also help with officiating memorials or writing a eulogy, and maybe the process of writing a eulogy with me or with me editing it is part of the processing of the grief. So, yes, it begins with an inventory of what somebody is hoping to get out of sessions together,and there are some components that are regular fixtures of a hypnosis session, for example.

But everybody’s needs are really different. And, I love being able to provide an array of services to people depending on those needs. for a while it felt very random and a little all over the place when I was offering so many different types of services.

And amusingly, I’ve recently started to weave willow caskets and the weaving is the thing that really brought everything together and allows me to look at all of these different facets as different lenses towards the same topic, and different ways to support people with different components of need during end of life or even just when thinking about end of life.

Kevin: I love how many different things you’re able to help people with through arguably the most challenging time they’ll, they’ll have to deal with.

Alexis: Thanks. Yeah. It’s, it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve been editing grief memoirs recently, as well, and that’s been a really interesting change of pace. I also officiate memorials and do sort of event planning with people around around memorials. it’s not always easy, but it’s always rich.

Kevin: That’s a cool way of phrasing it. It sounds like some of these things maybe come up because someone will approach you and say, can you do this? And, and that you probably turn around and go, “just because I haven’t doesn’t mean I can’t, and I, I’d love to help with that.”

Alexis: Absolutely. Thatmost of my clients come to me from referrals, from people in my community, adjacent professionals I work with and network with, or past clients or current clients. and so, yes, I think that is absolutely true. I have been approached on several occasions, to do something that is tangential to this field, but maybe not necessarily something I would have considered within my wheelhouse.

 I definitely appreciate it, that you’re able to take these things on and, and, do them effectively,

If I can, I will, you know, one of my favorite things, I say my Capital P “Purpose” in life is to celebrate interconnectedness. And so when there’s an opportunity for me to connect, People with each other, with resources, with my services, whatever it is. I love being a connector, so if there is something that people ask me, if I can do it, if I can, I will.

Kevin: So back todeath doulas, probably more generally for this question: how do people pay for them? At this point are they all private pay? You mentioned that insurance at this point doesn’t… it doesn’t sound like it covers it.

Alexis: That’s correct. Insurance does not cover end of life doulas. I have heard of some hospices creating positions on their teams for doulas to be involved in that dynamic, but primarily it’s private pay and, There are different sorts of rates that doulas typically, will charge for the type of service.

If it’s sitting bedside with somebody for hours and just holding space that’s not making use of the same training and expertise that helping somebody with advanced directives, might, might do. So, there are different rates that people have for different types of services, but it is all private pay at this point.

Kevin: Got it. That makes sense.

Supporting Families and Setting Boundaries

Kevin: So how do you support families who are navigating a loss or an impending loss?

Alexis: I really love facilitating conversations. It’s something that I feel like is really of the utmost importance when we’re talking about end of life. There is the piece of meeting everybody where they are and not forcing things. But the way that I’ve found to really bring loved ones and families together to support people at the end is to focus on the person they have in common,and to look at what the needs are of the dying person in that case, or the person who’s speaking their wishes in the case of an advanced directives client, and to, to try to show up as authentically as possible, I think really encourages people to be willing to be vulnerable. I try to not make any of my sessions about me, but I am also very open about the things that I’ve experienced in my life because I think that it #1 gives me credibility and #2 provides me with a lot of different resources that I’ve learned about and different tools that I’ve come across.

But it’s interesting because different pieces of information or different things will be more or less relevant to different individuals and so what might really draw one client to me could be completely a turn off to somebody else, but they’re coming to me because this part is compelling the ways that I support families vary as much as the ways I support clients.

It’s really case by case when it comes to helping people navigate something that they may have never done before, but even if they have, it’s going to be a different experience because every death is unique. Every individual is unique. Every passing is unique.

So, back to your question about prerequisites for being death doulas, I would say the ability to hold space without judgment as much as possible is high up there.

I would say additionally, in answer to both questions, an ability to create and hold boundaries is something that is an ongoing journey for me and most people I know, but is a really important piece of working with people who are in such a tender space. I think that that’s a key component of staying healthy myself is meeting people where they are, but not taking on their grief or their pain, having empathy, but not holding on to their suffering.

Kevin: One of the things that I, I definitely wanted to ask that you just led right into was about how it seems like your work must be so intense and obviously you love it and it’s incredibly important, but do you feel like it’s hard to compartmentalize or create boundaries?

It just feels like it would be so challenging to not bring your work home with you and be feeling all those very strong emotions all the time, 24/7.

Alexis: It is sometimes tricky. It’s sometimes tricky to separate from somebody else’s experience, especially if it is a reminder of something I’ve felt. there are times when I will recognize an experience of grief that somebody else is having and it will bring up or activate some of my own past grief. But like we were talking about before, bringing up past grief and working with people on their grief is an opportunity to do healing on mine almost inadvertently.

It’s not that I would use a client’s experiences to do my own work, but there are pieces that I understand more completely by virtue of seeing somebody else go through them. Sometimes when it is heavy, I give myself permission to set my grief down. It is something I give clients permission to do too.

But one of the ways that I have gotten through all of this times of intense grief is to literally set myself a timer for grieving and give myself specific times of the day to feel all my feelings really fully, to express them, to wail, to cry, and then when the timer goes off, I set them down. They are still going to be there, but it allows me to continue to do lifethrough some of the times that are hardest.

Visualizing Emotional Boundaries

Alexis: That is sort of a mechanism I can employ when I’m taking on other people’s grief as well, is to feel that experience of sadness that, somebody else has told me about and then to let it go. I also visualize. When I’m going into a session with somebody or even when I’m just talking to a friend who I know is going through a lot, I will visualize my heart coming out in front of my body and intermingling with their heart coming out in front of their body for the session and then at the end of the session, I disentangle myself and kind of energetically rinse my heart off before I bring it back into my body. And, I don’t know if or how that works, but it doesn’t hurt, and I feel like intentions are so much more literal than, than I ever imagined. sort of…

Kevin: What do you mean by that?

The Power of Clarity and Connection

Alexis: I mean that… I’ve noticed this within hypnosis, but also in other parts of my life where I think some people would probably call it manifesting, or calling in, whatever sort of language you want to use around it.

I think that there’s a lot of value to being clear within myself about what I want, what I need, what my deal breakers are… more globally, not just about death and dying. But in life, I feel like there is value in having clarity about those things and being able to express it. And in being a connector, it’s often through people coming to clarity on their needs and saying them out loud and out loud to me, that allows me to make connections that I otherwise would not know were available or ready to be made.

And so I think that there’s something that’s just really powerful about saying, “I’m going to authentically show up for this person and listen with an open heart to what they’re telling me. And then I’m going to set that down, return to myself, be in my own body, be in my own feelings, and not take on theirs.” And by deciding that, that is the boundary, and the intention of letting go of somebody else’s suffering is, in fact, what allows me to let go of somebody else’s suffering.

Kevin: That makes sense, and it sounds like a very healthy way to approach it.

Alexis: it’s a work in progress. I think we, I think boundaries are probably the hardest thing that we have to deal with as humans.

Transformative Experiences in Grief Work

Kevin: In the kind of role that you play for people, it seems like it would be. Are there any things that that stick out as like, “wow, that was a really successful or transformative experience that a client or their family, had working with you?”

Alexis: I hope that they all are. I hope that every person I work with comes away feeling like I delivered value to them in some form. The transformations that people go through can be small changes that have huge impacts. I think the way that I know that I have helped somebody is a friend or a colleague or loved one of theirs comes to me and says I was referred by so and so.

That is how I know that I’ve contributed to transformation. The thing about the work that I do though is that it’s really easy to not take credit for the powerful changes that are happening for an individual. Like, I feel like that’s kind of the amazing part of my job is that I’m not actually doing the work.

I’m just creating the conditions for somebody else to be able to do these things…

Kevin: Facilitating the work.

Alexis: Yeah, I, I’m facilitating conversations, I’m facilitating the space that somebody might need, I’m asking the questions that somebody might need to hear and I’m providing accountability. Sometimes that’s really the biggest thing that I do.

There are a lot of components to my work that people can do for themselves for free. And I am very transparent about that when I work with clients, and a lot of times even for hypnosis, I’ll work with a client and we’ll come up with a guided meditation and then we’ll record it and that client can go off and and have that self hypnosis or guided meditation to continue to work with the ideas that have come up in session with me, but it’s not about me.

And so I’m really happy to provide the framework that allows people to do the work and healing that they want and need to do.

Yes. It’s a very rewarding part of my job is seeing positive outcomes from things that did not feel like work.

Remote Services and the Role of Technology

Kevin: Alexis, do you feel like people need to be local to you to have your death doula services or the work of any, death doula that they might be working with or end of life specialist, or can those be done as effectively, or nearly as effectively remotely, whether it’s over a Zoom or Meet or phone.

Alexis: I, I would say, it really depends on the service, but a lot of the services are great over video. Especially with hypnosis, which is not quite the same as the death doula work that I do. But with advanced directives and talking to people about their end of life wishes, like with hypnosis, it’s really advantageous for my client to be in a place that is very comfortable for them.

With hypnosis, especially, I would prefer for them to not have to drive afterwards and instead to be able to stay in this sort of liminal space of, contemplating big things. And the same is true when people are working with me, I would say, on the, more logistical questions of end of life.

When it comes to somebody who is maybe transitioning or very close to end of life, having somebody sitting in person with the client or with the patient is, I think a really beautiful and important component, but not necessary for many, many of the services I provide.

Kevin: Excellent. Okay, good. I’m glad we talked about that …and interesting! I hadn’t considered that one might be able to do remote hypnotism.

Alexis: It actually, it works so, so well because just a key component is being relaxed enough to ask your ego to step aside for a minute so that you can listen to your subconscious. If you’re in your own home, maybe on your couch or even in your own bed, the ego’s willingness to recognize that you’re in a safe place allows for a much more intense or productive session.

Impact of Death on Life Perspective

Kevin: Would you say that so closely with death has changed the way that you approach your life? Clearly it has professionally. Personally, it seems like it would be hard not to have that dramatically change the way that you approach the way you live, but I shouldn’t put words in your mouth.

Alexis: Yeah, I think every single experience with death has in some way affected my trajectory. I think that working so closely with death, and maybe specifically my experience of losing Evan… My therapist says my Denial Filter is broken.

A lot of people walk around with the sense of “these really hard things aren’t going to happen to me. My loved ones aren’t going to be the ones in the hospital or dying. I’m never going to have to face these difficult decisions about my own life…” and culturally, societally, we live in denial of death and dying. And having that filter broken has allowed for the intensity that you mentioned. It’s important.

And that is both positive and negative, or maybe not negative, but uncomfortable sometimes. but I think that I probably hug more than the average person and tell my people I love them more than the average person. And I’m really comfortable with having difficult conversations with people. And so that’s affected how I live my life.

I think there are probably so many examples of how doing this work and having the experiences that I had in my life have changed me as a person.

I’m not sure if this is true. I think that one, I think that one of the best parts about being human is our evolution – not as a species, I’m talking about as individuals – but being able to grow and change and be affected by people and affect people and interact and have interconnectedness. That affects my life more than thinking about death does, but I think that it’s also that we die that provides the sweetness to that we live.

And so a regular awareness of that, I mean, has to, has to affect

how we live our lives.

Kevin: Yeah. It, it seems like you’re thrust into such an incredibly emotionally volatile space. How, how can you not have that affect you really deeply and, and pretty much right off the bat, probably from, from meeting and interacting with people?

Alexis: Yeah, I, I mean, I think that small talk is really hard for me. I would rather actually know how somebody is doing when I ask them how they are.

Kevin: I totally agree!

Alexis: I, I think that there’s so much value in connecting and creating community. And people have said, at parties, I should just lie about what I do… let everybody be more comfortable. It’s not a very happy party topic, but I think that the more I can help bring ease to conversations that people find difficulty in having, Yeah, I feel like that contribution of connectedness with individuals is how I can offer my strengths to people who could really benefit from somebody just telling them they have permission to grieve the way they’re grieving or, you know, something that’s, that’s really straightforward.

Because I’ve been through it, that might be, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Kevin: Sure. I would hope that they’re joking at the point that they say that about the way you should introduce yourself, because who better to help normalize the conversation around death than somebody who approaches it the way you do, so…, empathically.

Alexis: Thanks. Yeah. it’s very rare that I feel like death and dying is not the appropriate conversation. I feel like it is such a fundamental component of our lives that it could and should be talked about relative to everything it affects, which is everything.

Kevin: Are there things that you commonly hear from people that you are starting work with, whether they’re questions or concerns that you feel like keep coming up?

Alexis: There are a couple.

I would say that one that I always like to reassure people about is when they tell me when they tell me that their loved one was in an active dying stage and they didn’t make it in time to say goodbye. And I’ve found through my own experience and what I’ve heard from other people in hospice about pretty miraculous moments of people waiting extraordinarily long times for somebody to come or somebody to call.

And then other stories of people who have been ill for a long time, waiting until just the five minutes that nobody is at their bedside, when everybody has gone to the bathroom or stepped out for a cup of coffee, and that’s the moment that they’ll slip away. And so I think that at end of life, often people have way more control over their moment of death than we realize and so when somebody tells me that they just didn’t make it in time to say goodbye, my response is usually that it might be that their loved one wanted them to remember the last time they were together or didn’t want them to have this be the last memory, and that if that can help them let go of the regret of not being there on time, I feel like that’s just a message I want to get out to everybody.

Kevin: Seems like great advice.

Alexis: The other thing that people say to me most frequently when they hear what I do is that they have a friend or loved one who is going through a time of intense grief, and they’re not sure how to help. Maybe their loved one doesn’t know what they need and the person I’m talking to says, “you know, even if they knew what they needed, I I’m not the right person to provide that”, and so it was actually in direct answer to that, that I started a service called In Lieu of Flowers, where somebody can purchase a session with me for a grieving friend, and I offer it at a very reduced rate because I really would like to contribute to the generosity of the giver.

And then I reach out to the griever and work with them directly on what sort of services I have that would be the most useful for them, regardless of where they are in their grief.

Kevin: That’s so kind. I love that. That’s your through your website?

Alexis: People can sign up for In Lieu of Flowers through my website, GuardianFoxArts.com. You can also find me on Instagram @guardianfoxarts.

Connecting Through End-of-Life Work

Kevin: Is there any one thing that you find more fulfilling about your work, than any other? Or is it all just one big package of sort of helping and supporting people that really lights you up.

Alexis: I’m not sure this is exactly an answer to your question, but the thing that delights me is small world connections. I love it when the magic of the universe is visible. it just makes me so happy to be able to see the ways in which we’re interconnected. It feels like just a little wink, a little bit of magic.

Kevin: Do you feel like that comes out working in the end of life space any more or less than, it does in, in just being, having an awareness of “life’s magic”?

Alexis: I think that when people are either at end of life or processing end of life, there is a vulnerability that allows for connections that may not have been apparent in other industries or in other facets of life. I think there is this piece of, recognizing our universal humanity that comes when we’re focused on That We All Live and We All Die. Death and dying is, is the experience that is universal. We will, we will, we will all go through it. We will all go through some version of it and that’s I think when people are in a space of recognizing that there’s an opportunity to connect more deeply than might otherwise be possible.

Kevin: Yeah. And go through it multiple times. I mean, everybody’s going to go through it once themselves and pretty much everybody is going to go through it time and again with their loved ones, friends, co workers. So it really is the great unifier, isn’t it?

Alexis: It sure is. It sure is.

Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Kevin: How should people connect with you? Is it best to do it through Guardian Fox Arts,

Alexis: Yeah, that’s a great place. My website also has additional email and phone contact information for me, and I would love to hear from anybody who’s interested in exploring any of this.

I always offer a free consultation before working with somebody to make sure that it’s a good fit, and I feel like I can help support with the needs that they have. So yeah, please just reach out.

Kevin: That’s super helpful. Thank you so much, Alexis. This has been really… illuminating.

Alexis: Thanks so much, Kevin. Such a pleasure to be here.