SOIL + SKY: End-of-Life Services and Stories

End-of-Life Services and Stories

SOIL + SKY offers end-of-life doula support to individuals and their loved ones who are transitioning through the dying process and their loved ones. A doula provides emotional, spiritual, and physical support to all involved. Together, we will explore your concerns, fears, hope, and life stories. I will listen deeply, holding space for your experience, and offering guidance in living with purpose up to and through your final moments.

A doula:

• Provides an opportunity to speak frankly and openly about dying, offering an expansive perspective on death

• Brings intention and presence to the bedside

• Incorporates traditions and develops new rituals to mark meaningful moments

• Collaborates on the design and feel of the space, curating the vigil to be most supportive

• Provides respite to emotionally and physically exhausted caregivers

• Guides the dying person through identifying life themes and creating a legacy project

• Supports loved ones through the early stages of grief

• Offers spiritual support to all involved

For more information on what a doula can do, visit INELDA’s website.

INELDA’s mission is to encourage the presence of end-of-life doulas by normalizing death, dying, and grief through conscientious education and stewardship, and by fostering community and advocacy.

INELDA’s vision is that all individuals have accessible, equitable, and compassionate deathcare that holistically affirms one’s humanity and supports end-of-life choices.

+ + +

Julie Rada, SOIL + SKY’s doula, was trained by the International End-of-Life Doula Association’s co-founder, Henry Fersko-Weiss, and other INELDA doulas. She is currently working on her certification and is currently offering doula services free of charge.

Julie’s approach is oriented to making space of possibility, even at the end-of-life. Julie’s practice is oriented toward reflection, contemplation, and attendance—attending, with intention, to what is.

She is affirming and culturally responsive, adapting to the spiritual traditions, rituals, and family structures of LGBTQIA+ folks and BIPOC individuals. Julie sees death as a natural part of the vibrant process of life. It is also an opportunity for advocacy, destigmatization, and justice.

SOIL + SKY aspires to build an oral history archive created from edited audio stories from dying people, with their express consent and only if desired, so that their narrative can live on. This archive will be made public and artists, filmmakers, writers, and storytellers are encouraged to source these stories for creative work.