Going With Grace offers an End of Life Training for individuals interested in becoming a death doula or to learn more about how to provide deathcare support for their community. Cake and Going With Grace collaborated to provide a scholarship to one individual, and we’re happy to introduce our scholarship recipient to you: Laura Dewberry. We’ve included some information from Laura below so you can learn more about her and what sparked her journey in deathcare!
What made you interested in deathcare and becoming a death doula?
In 2019, I experienced a very personal death, the death of my grandmother. The matriarch of my family. As an individual I was unable to navigate the grieving process as my grandmother did not successfully plan her end-of-life plans, and immediately after she died, I went into overdrive with managing her estate with no supports. I am drawn to death work because I seek to use my very personal life’s experiences to help others within the Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) communities prevent this from happening within their families and be at peace with their end-of-life experience and plans.
What do you hope to do after completing the Going With Grace End-of-Life Training?
The ability to offer culturally appropriate support to BIPOC communities throughout their death transition and help facilitate a proactive conversation towards end-of-life planning in BIPOC communities. This work is very personal for me and is something that is needed within the death and healthcare space.
What has helped you become more comfortable with talking about death, end-of-life, and mortality?
Knowing that the outcome of every life is death, and that this isn’t something to be afraid of, versus a call to action for us to live our lives fully, and plan for what is to come.
What do you hope for the future and our relationship with death?
That as a society, specifically for communities of color to normalize conversations around death, dying, and grief, and the ways in which communities of color experience death.