My grandmothers hands.

I spent a lot of time holding these hands in her final days, reading aloud from her prayer book, listening to stories of her life and mine, and being present for those last sacred moments, when she would leave us and become and an ancestor. 

This was not the first time I sat with the dying. In fact, I have been doing this work since 2001. In college I spent 2 semesters as a massage therapist at San Diego Hospice, where holistic practices were utilized alongside western medicine. I was 20 years old when I first held the hand of a dying person and assisted in caring for the family that huddled around to grieve and support their loved ones transition. 

Over the years since then I have worked an as in-home caregiver to the elderly and disabled, often providing end of life care. With each new client I am presented new and different experiences, however the most common challenge I see time and again is folks walking into the end phases of their life with little to no support and guidance when it comes to in-home care, paperwork, managing hospice services, planning a funeral and establishing end of life wishes. 

Our culture today glorifies youth and denies the inevitable truth that we all age, and we all will be faced with the difficulties of making these end of life choices. As a caregiver I have watched family members struggle through the piles of paperwork while providing around the clock care and grieving, making all the tasks more difficult.

And that's why I'm taking the next step in my education as an in-home care provider. I have recently connected with a death doula in Los Angeles who mentors end of life care providers. She provides support and training for folks like me who aspire to support the dying and their families through the process including critical training in hospice and end of life paperwork, completing an Advance Directive, setting up a care team as well as marketing and website development. 

I'm asking for help with this training, because like many of you reading this, my entire business plan and all the goals I set for my farm came to halt in April this year and I am faced with the decision to pivot to another line of work. I was hoping to step away from caregiving this year and focus on farming and farm education. Looks like those dreams are a little further off in the distance for now, and in the meantime I have been struggling financially this entire year, just barely scraping by and accruing debt along the way.

I'm asking for help because I am near my breaking point and can not continue to work only as an in-home care provider, doing physically difficult and draining work and receiving a low wage to do so. I need to diversify, offer more services, work with folks virtually and verbally, and save my physical strength for growing pumpkins.

I'm asking for help to cover the cost of the training and cost of building a new website to support my business- Holistic Death Steward.

My vision is to provide Holistic care to the dying and their families, which is deeply aligned with how I walk in the world already. I hope to assist families in an organic and natural way, to allow for the unfolding of the death process to be as graceful as possible, filled with moments of connection and wonder.

I feel that my role as tender to death and the dying is a service to our community, an extension of my love for humanity and my desire to see all beings honored and cared for. Many of our elders and dying folk are facing an impossible task, alone or with just one or two trusted friends and family members by their side, without clear and safe guidance. I want to be there for those people, for your people, who need a caring person nearby to help make sense of the process.

I'm hoping y'all can help pay it forward, help me get this additional training, and then maybe one day, we will be together at your mothers bedside, or your sisters, or perhaps it'll be your hand I'm holding as you step across the threshold in light, and love, with a peace of mind that comes from being exquisitely supported and very well prepared.