## Death Doulas Rise to Meet End-of-life Care Needs in Michigan
YPSILANTI – Kimberly Wamba realized what she wanted to do with her life in watching members of her family die.
She always had a desire to help people, a desire that started in childhood watching her grandmother work as an aide.
“My grandma used to go to different clients’ homes and take care of them,” Wamba told Bridge Michigan. “I really admired what she did.”
Wamba would earn a doctorate in information technology. But she took on a new role when her father got sick, returning to Michigan to help ease him through his “threshold of death” as he succumbed to illness.
“The very day of his death,I was able to be at his bedside,and I was able to hold him and look directly into his eyes,” Wamba said. “While I didn’t know anything about being a doula at that time,that experience stuck with me.”
Her father’s death led Wamba toward her work as a death doula – a wide-ranging, usually non-medical role that assists individuals and their families navigate dying – joining a small, but growing number of people in Michigan and nationally who have pursued roles in providing “death care.” The goal, Wamba said, is to fix a “broken” system of services for people at the end of their life.
“For me, being a death doula is basically like somebody who walks with someone during that process of moving through transition, whether that be at the time when they’re closest to death, or even quite a bit before than,” Wamba explained.
Now the president and founder of the Metro Detroit-based non-profit Sacred Life Care Initiative, Wamba is able to work with those at a critical juncture between life and death.wamba, who lives in Canton, generally focuses on clients in hospice who are closer to the end of their lives, acting as a “companion” for those who want to talk about their last moments.
That work came full circle when she became her grandmother’s death doula.
In the last months of her life, the two shared meals and spent nights together. Other times, when other relatives were “dog tired” from providing the day-to-day care, Wamba said she was present for deep introspection and conversation.
“I was also able to listen to her wishes, things that she wanted us to be aware of before she transitioned,” Wamba said. “She could talk through those things with me, and there would be a level of acceptance to
The Growing Field of Death doulas
“I feel like it’d be good if we all got training on how to be a death doula and how to be able to hold space for people grieving,” says one advocate for end-of-life care.
Death doulas, also known as end-of-life doulas, provide non-medical support to individuals and their families during the dying process. This support can include emotional, spiritual, and practical assistance. While it’s a growing field, making a full-time living as a death doula can be challenging due to the intensely personal nature of the work and the limited capacity for each practitioner.
“We do this out of just our passion, our care. So most doulas work off a sliding scale,” explains Hasselschwert, a part-time fitness instructor who also works as a death doula.
currently, there’s no formal licensing process to become a death doula. Though, numerous programs across the country offer training and certification. The National End-of-Life Doula Alliance has seen significant growth in membership, increasing from approximately 250 in 2019 to over 1,600 in 2024.
Organizations like Going with Grace offer extensive training through webinars and group studies. Alua Arthur, the founder of Going with Grace, describes the core purpose of a death doula in her 2023 Ted Talk: “My goal is to help them answer the question: ‘What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully, holding both at the same time?'”
An aging ‘crisis’
In Michigan, deaths have exceeded births, highlighting the increasing need for end-of-life support. Bridge Michigan reports on this demographic shift and the growing demand for services like those provided by death doulas.