A Death Doula's Guide to a Meaningful End (Paperback)

Most people don’t know how to have a “good death”―but Jane Callahan does. Years after watching her mother’s traumatic death in a broken health care system, Jane found herself working an unfulfilling job as a marketing writer for corporations, but on nights and weekends she’d volunteer with terminally ill people awaiting death in hospice. After training as an end-of-life doula, she has spent years witnessing how our culture’s resistance to talking about death leads to preventable suffering. Jane supports her clients and their families through all stages of dying, from navigating end-of-life care to preparing emotionally for the moment of death and the grief that follows.

In A Death Doula’s Guide to a Meaningful End, she peels back the curtain on one of our most taboo subjects and walks readers through what happens when someone is dying. With vignettes that weave through patients’ lives―and her own―she reveals to readers all the things they didn’t know (or didn’t know they needed to know) about our last great adventure. Along the way, readers will uncover knowledge on the raw realities of being mortal and learn how death positivity can take some of the anxiety and fear of dying out of the equation.

Surprisingly funny and often cutting, this memoir meets end-of-life planning guide outlines practical steps for patients, families, and caregivers, while acknowledging that some questions don’t always need answers. The account of Jane’s up-close-and-personal experiences with the emotional, physical, logistical, and (dare we say) spiritual aspects of dying shows that when we talk about death, we’re actually talking about life.

Jane Callahan has been a death doula for nearly a decade, initially completing training with the International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA). She holds a certificate in end-of-life planning from the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, is certified by the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA), and has worked with four hospices in two states. Jane has been published in PBS’s Next Avenue, Raleigh News & Observer, Commercial Observer, Reno News & Review, and Next City. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.