A Participant’s View – Emma Dixon
My alarm rings at 5am on a rainy Friday morning in May and, for once, I bound out of bed and get ready to hot-foot it across town for my train to Manchester. End of Life Doulas are gathering. Avengers, assemble!
This will be my first ever in-person Gathering. For me it’s a chance to re-connect with my doula practice as I get ready to begin a new volunteering role as a Healthcare Support Worker at a hospice in Wales. I need to step fully into the doula role, I need to feel held and supported as I take my first tentative steps as a fully-fledged End of Life Doula.
Arriving at the venue, a converted mill by the canal in Manchester, I am greeted by rainbow-coloured bunting and by a fellow doula welcoming me at the door. I have arrived! As I ascend to the beautiful Silk Loft where many of our activities will take place, I feel an amazing energy and I know I’
m in the right place. I am home.
Forty-five or so doulas are assembling, drinking coffee, exchanging hugs. And there are so many doulas I know and love – people from my Foundation, those from my Diploma, my beloved teachers (special shout-out to Anna and Ninon), those from my doula teacher training course, people from London Region, EOLD Directors, and lots more.
As we get underway, made welcome by Penny and Emma, I attend a session on the Death Café movement (thank you Penny and Mariana) before the first outside speaker session, run by a fantastic woman from Child Bereavement UK. I’m so heartened to learn they work with young people up to the age of 25 (when so often children’s services stop abruptly at 18) and we have a thought-provoking discussion about whether, and how commonly, bereaved children require therapy or other specialist support.
What I’m really here for though, other than the energy, is the opportunity to plunge myself into activities and this I have the opportunity to do on both Friday (participating in a grief circle, beautifully held by Anna and Ninon) and on Saturday when I join a poetry workshop with Sharena Lee Satti. The grief circle leaves me absolutely drained and so I choose to spend the rest of Friday afternoon at a film screening where I also take the opportunity to lie down and nap. It is a mark of how entirely at home and at ease I feel here that I am soon fast asleep! And so I will leave it to others to review Dead Good, a work of mime, music, and masks.
On Saturday morning I grab a spontaneous chance for breakfast with a Manchester friend and arrive just in time to join the end of an interactive session on diversity in the doula world, with small groups in animated discussion about all the different ways we can reach out into new communities and learn from other cultures and ways of being & doing. I am particularly struck by Mariana’s story of organising a death café in the Indian community in Sheffield and the event that emerged from this, with henna tattoos, celebratory Indian food, and cathartic, healing dance.
A real highlight of Saturday is a speaker from The Swan Song Project, founder Ben Buddy Slack. The Project helps terminally ill and bereaved people to write and record their own original song. After introducing the project Ben hands over to Mari Isdale, a 39 year old woman with terminal bowel cancer, who speaks about what the Project means to her and then introduces a video of the song, To the Stars and Back, she composed and performed with Swan Song. I can’t be the only one who is absolutely sobbing. Utterly overwhelmed, I barely have time to inhale a sandwich before going to the Canal Side room for poetry writing. We are beautifully led by Sharena Lee Satti through a series of exercises, culminating in each writing our own poem on the theme of “Letting Go”. There could not be a more fitting end to a wonderful two days.
I have re-found my place. I have grieved, and created, and celebrated. I have felt held by so much love. I have been in awe of my fellow doulas, their energy, commitment, their individuality and their determination. No words of mine can do justice to the experience of being there.
With my heartfelt thanks to Penny, Emma, and everyone who made this event possible. See you next year?
Emma Dixon – May 2023
