What the Fuck Is a Death Doula?

what happens when a musician starts to train as a death doula

This is the first entry in a new series: part diary, part descent into a chapter of my life that, ironically, feels more punk than anything I've done on stage. After years of touring, performing, and witnessing people burn out in every imaginable way (myself included), I decided to do something different. I signed up for a death doula training course in London.

Gustave Léonard de Jonghe (this is someone sick in bed, not dying. But I refuse to use artwork of skulls, Jesus and/or the grim reaper to portray death—which is what came up when I googled.)

Before training to be a death doula, I tried to enter the "grief space" the way most people do now—through a Zoom call.

It was a free introductory session for a grief counseling certification program based in LA. Within the first 10 minutes, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. Every face on the screen was full of Botox and filler, and the "educators" all had their own podcasts they were promoting, along with tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

It was a remote circle jerk. Ego-stroking so intense it felt dirty. Nobody could finish a sentence without someone "gushing" about it. That was the word they all used—gush: I just want to gush about how you said that! I'm absolutely gushing right now. You're making me gush! I cannot stop gushing!! They kept going on about "creating safe space," but the gushing felt strangely aggressive, like a sexual innuendo repeated over and over by someone who doesn't understand why the joke isn't landing.

It felt less like a grief training and more like a cult initiation. Gabor Maté was invoked like a minor deity. Trauma was the product, and TikTok was the storefront.

I didn't want to help people grieve if it meant becoming a content creator for the death-industrial complex. It all felt deeply performative. Like I'd just traded one stage for another.

So, I closed my laptop and decided I wasn't going to become a grief counselor after all. If leaving the music industry meant joining a new kind of hustle culture where vulnerability is monetized, and empathy comes with a merch table, then no, thank you.

Then, a friend of mine told me about death doulas. I assumed I knew what she meant because doulas have been on trend among the privileged white women of LA for a while now (birth doulas, not death ones). Unlike in other countries, having a midwife isn't the norm in the U.S.; it's a flex. It's a status symbol: My doula is helping me give birth in my bathtub. My doula is freeze-drying my baby's placenta. Oh, and that creamer in your coffee? It's my breast milk. My doula said it's sooo good for you. You get my drift. So yeah. Death doula? Sounded excessive.

i’d sell my soul for Badu to be my death doula

And then I learned that Erykah Badu is a death doula.

That changed things. Because if she's doing it, maybe it's not just influencers charging $3,000 for glamping retreats where you sob into a ceremonial pillow and walk away with an office printable certificate (doula-ing is an unregulated space, so there are a lot of grifters out there).

I started researching what real death doula work looked like. What I found was very different from the American influencer death space.

A death doula or end-of-life doula is not a hospice nurse, a priest, or an influencer with a ring light and a crystal collection. We're not here to cure, fix, or manifest anyone into the afterlife.

The job is much less glamorous (but way more meaningful) than that: we sit. We listen. We help people plan, reflect, remember, cry, say what they need to say. Sometimes we hold hands. Most importantly, we shut up and listen.

At its core, death doula work is about showing up—not just during the dying process, but often before and after. We provide non-medical, holistic support that complements hospice and palliative care. We help with the stuff no one wants to think about until it's too late—advance directives, legacy projects, vigil planning.

And when death gets close, we become the advocate for the dying—their voice, their witness, their backup. Unlike family members, we don't have a dog in the fight. Our primary focus is to ensure that the dying person's wishes are heard, respected, and carried out.

After someone dies, doulas often stick around to help navigate the logistical nightmare that follows. The paperwork (it’s way more complicated than filing taxes). The funeral arrangements. The phone calls. The tiny, brutal details can feel crushing to grieving loved ones. We're not funeral directors, but we can help families understand what needs to be done, when, and how to do it.

Only 5% of the time that a patient spends at end of life is in front of a doctor or a nurse. 95% of time for a dying person or a grieving person is spent alone, or with family or work colleagues or, with their dog, or with the television or the internet. A big public question in end-of-life care is 'What are we doing in the 95%?' Professor Alan Kellehear

Doctors and nurses can't sit beside you all day and help you emotionally process your own death. That's not their job. But it is ours.

And while the term might sound suspiciously Goop-adjacent, this work is anything but new. Before death got outsourced to institutions, we used to know how to die. Families, neighbors, midwives, and elders would shepherd the dying through their final hours. It was intimate and communal. Deaths happened in bedrooms, not behind curtain dividers. Bodies were bathed and dressed at home. People knew how to sit with the dying.

Cultures around the world still honor this practice. In most Eastern traditions, death is a transition. In Mexico, Día de los Muertos turns mourning into celebration. In many Indigenous communities, the dying remain surrounded by family and song. Meanwhile, in the West, we've compartmentalized, outsourced, medicalized, and monetized the whole thing. Cha-ching.

In London, the death doula training is rigorous and grounded. It takes nearly two years to complete. It's not one weekend in Ojai rubbing crystals together and calling it a calling. Though, I suspect it may actually be mine.

I found a program called Living Well Dying Well which offers the only certified End of Life Doula training in the UK. Without hesitation, I signed up. Why not? It’s not like I’m trying to finish a record or get ready to play a show in a couple weeks. Heh…

The following are excerpts from my notes and reflections on the first segment of training.

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+ Diary of a Death Doula (in training): Part one

On the morning of day one, I was still skeptical. The death doulas I'd seen online were either Eat Pray Love, woo-woo moms, or Hot Topic "witches." I was nervous I'd walk into a room full of steampunks who drink nettle tea, smoke cloves, and crush on Robert Pattinson. No shade if that's your thing—I just didn't want death work to be so easily stereotyped.

But the moment I arrived at the training venue in Marylebone, I exhaled.

No one was trying to impress anyone. Or sell anything. Or fix anything. Most people were older. Many had spent decades as nurses. One person was ex-military. Another made jewelry. There was a social worker, a lawyer, a writer.

Everyone was different. Everyone was kind. Everyone listened. No one was trying to be the center of attention. Nobody gushed.

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+ You’re Your First Client

The first thing we learned is that we are our first clients. If we want to support someone through death, we have to be willing to face our own.

So we did.

We planned our ideal death settings. Who we want around us. What we want to see, hear, and smell. Who we trust to wash our bodies. Who speaks at our funeral. Who inherits the mess.

Before this course, I didn't know what a DNR really meant. I didn't know CPR usually does more harm than good. I didn't know that embalming isn't legally required or that cremation is bad for the environment (that put a wrench in my existing plans). I didn't realize you could be buried in a mushroom coffin and literally feed the Earth (new plan!). And I definitely had no idea how much peace I'd feel putting it all down in writing.

I was surprised by some of my own answers. The people I want in the room when I die aren't the people I expected. I wrote down that I didn't want music playing in my final moments—unlike many of my fellow trainees. For someone whose entire life has revolved around music, that was surprising to people.

But that's the thing. Facing your death teaches you who you actually are. Not who you are projecting to be. Not who your Instagram profile or Wikipedia page portrays you as. When you plan your death, you don’t dare fake anything for optics.

I'm not excited to die. But if I am lucky enough to get to do it the way I planned, it might be the first thing I've ever done peacefully.

a mushroom coffin

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Before now, I didn't think I was spiritual at all. However, this week, I realized that my spirituality is rooted in nature. In animals. The natural world that overwhelms me. The things I can see and get lost in. The things that don't require the suspension of disbelief.

This course isn’t “spiritual” in the LA sense and doesn’t require us to be either. The spirituality is subtle. We each have our own version of what it is.

Everyone in the room comes from different belief systems. Many, like me, don’t have any. But I can tell that we all feel something unspoken is happening. We’re creating deep bonds between each other, though we are strangers.

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+ Death used to belong to all of us.

This first segment of the course is called a "citizen's course" because this work doesn't belong to professionals. It belongs to everyone. Because we and everyone we know will all die.

Before modern medicine and fluorescent-lit hospitals, death was something we did at home. People knew what to do. There were rituals. It was personal and intimate.

Now, we die behind plastic curtains with machines beeping and whirring while families argue over who pays for what and who gets which piece of jewelry.

Dying well often just means being asked what you want if you end up having an expected death. A question most people don't take the time to answer.

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+ I used to think dying was the worst.

After watching people suffer and experiencing my own immense hardships, I started to suspect that death isn't the worst thing.

Now, I'm starting to believe that if it's expected and handled with care, death can actually be peaceful. Still scary, sure. But not the monster we've made it out to be.

Most importantly, I'm beginning to understand that accepting death is the only way to fully live.

He who would teach men to die would, at the same time, teach them to live

- Michel de Montaigne

Salvador Dalí’s illustration for Montaigne’s essays on dying

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+ But who wants a bitchy death doula?

I question if I’m really cut out for this. I'm not exactly a beacon of maternal warmth. I'm anxious. I'm dry, sharp, and sometimes cold. Can I really be soft enough to hold someone's hand while they die? Can I be still enough to bring peace into a room?

Erykah Badu is a death doula, but she radiates that chill AF energy. I do not. Nobody has ever described me as chill...

But Badu is also an artist. Maybe being a musician gives me something valuable, too. Something different. Maybe there are dying people who don't want a woman in a caftan whispering affirmations. Instead, they want someone like me: a little raw, sassy, and…funny.

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+ I’m committed to it. And I’m excited by it. A Rare combination for me.

I've toured the world. Played to thousands. Burned through more stages and more heartbreaks than I can count. But I can honestly say this death doula course has been more inspiring and enriching than anything I've ever done.

In LA, I'd often return from a night out revolted by everything and everyone—including myself. I'd go home feeling empty with no faith in humanity. I worried that I was too self-absorbed, too jaded, too checked out to ever do anything truly meaningful.

Every day, I've come back from the death doula training feeling exactly the opposite. I've been energized, inspired, and hopeful. I haven't been able to shut up about how meaningful it's been. I want to share it with everyone. A few people haven't been into it. One said, "Ew, that's depressing." Another rolled his eyes and immediately dismissed the whole concept. But the majority of people surprised me with their interest, and how curious and open they were.

It made me realize that this work is wanted and deeply needed.

I'm unsure what this path will look like in the long term. But I know I'm committed to being on it. I don't believe in signs or fate, but finding myself here makes sense. Death has been a recurring theme in the past several years. I’ve lost best friends, the grandmother who raised me, and nearly my own life due to my lung issues. Instead of turning away from the conversation and education, I’m leaning in. It's already the most challenging thing I've ever taken on, and I've barely scratched the surface. But I genuinely feel like I'm arriving at something.  

More soon. After all, death doesn’t wait…

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c u next tuesday.

XX CARRÉ

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