Heather Gallagher has been working as a doula for over a decade. She moved to Winooski, two years ago, having supported people in their life and death transitions across Austin, TX, and New York City. She is also a documentary photographer and is exhibiting artworks in the show “Invisible Labor” at Firefolk Arts in Waitsfield. She was asked to elaborate on her work as a caretaker.
What does your work as a death doula look like?
I’m a full-spectrum doula, meaning that I support people and their loved ones around birth and death, in any age, for any reason. This includes death due to natural causes, a diagnosis or suicide. It includes infant loss due to miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth. Doulas provide emotional and practical support for people who are going through whatever the transition is.
On the death side of things, a lot of my work can be about helping people to accept the fact that they are dying – that its imminent and real. Sometimes folks can’t hear things from certain people, so I can be a neutral third party to synthesize information coming from the medical care team, or I can help figure out who the right person is to deliver it, after establishing a relationship with the dying person.
Once they’re there, it’s about presenting them with options. It can be about helping to control the environment they’re in, in terms of who has access to it and what it feels like. Or helping them with practical things like advanced directives, creation of a will, finding legal resources or getting prescribed medications. It be visually guiding people in a meditation if there’s a lot of anxiety– sitting with them, to help bring a sense of peace to it all. The care is relationship-based.
How did you get interested in working as a death doula?
I was around death a lot as a child. I brought my mom back to China when her mother died, and watched how nobody explained to my mom what was going on. She wasn’t given permission to grieve in the way that she’d hoped to in the moment. I saw this gap in care, where it felt necessary to remind folks that you don’t need permission to grieve in the way that works for you. That extends into my practice with all my doula care, no matter the transition. I think the biggest thing I bring to the table is, I’ll never promise to be certain about anything. Each person’s experience is different. I’m not there to tell you how to experience it, but to walk alongside you and validate you.
What other gaps in end-of-life care have you observed?
I think there’s a big emotional gap when it comes to health care providers. They either want to set you on a path of recovery, or tell you there’s nothing left they can do. They don’t hold your hand through the emotional roller coaster of it all.
How did you learn to do this work?
I’ve been in birth spaces for 13 years as a documentary photographer, and was then invited into other intimate spaces. I had a birth client who had a stillbirth, so that was my first time holding space for other people, for a death that was significant for them. The learning came with being given access to these kinds of spaces for so long – where folks were getting abortions or had just received a terminal diagnosis, and building trust with people. I took a death doula training with INELDA (the International End of Life Doula Association) – more to see what the industry standards were, and to think about the business side of things. But I intentionally didn’t certify because I see that as an unnecessary barrier to entry. There’s no legal certifying body for doula work – no authority that can tell me that I am qualified to hold space for people or not.
