This week we would like to spotlight one of our lovely International Doula Life Movement graduates, Denise Johnson. If you would like to participate in our Student Spotlight, please reach out to Aurora Nibley through direct message on the Movement.
What first brought you to end of life work?
On the surface, my journey into death care was set in motion by a series of unrelated and unlikely events. Beneath the surface, death was always a very prominent part of my life from the time I was old enough to have a conscious thought.
In 2009, after living in India and the UK for almost a decade, I returned to the U.S. to visit my family. What was meant to be a short visit unexpectedly turned into an 11-year stint as my mom’s caregiver following her stroke during my visit.
Fast forward — as my mom’s health declined in the last three months of her life, I serendipitously hired a death doula named Narinder. Under her guidance, my mom’s death was extraordinary, and in ways I never could have imagined, her death was transcendent and altered my understanding of, and relationship to, death and dying. It molded me into the death doula/educator I am today.
How did you find IDLM? What made you decide that IDLM was the right place for you?
After completing two death doula certification programs, and a 9-month apprenticeship with Narinder, what was still missing for me was the momentum and community support I needed to put all of my training into practice.
While searching for a death care community to join, I stumbled into IDLM’s Business 101 course and simultaneously discovered their doula training course. Maybe it was a stalling tactic, but I convinced myself that another certification program definitely couldn’t hurt, it included a life-long membership community, and was very affordable. It was an easy and practical decision and I’ve never looked back. I will always be grateful that I followed that fork in the road.
Please talk about something you have learned through IDLM or through end of life work that has meaning for you.
Throughout my caregiving years and before, during and after my mom’s death I was in awe of how fortunate I was to be able to make such a profound difference as my mom neared the end of her days. It was by no means easy, but it was a profoundly transformative experience for me in every imaginable way. I was, and am still, profoundly grateful for having Narinder on my mom’s care team and I can’t imagine how different it would have been without her.
When the dust settled, and before I could figure out what was next for me, I had this recurring and very compelling thought that gratitude was not enough. Narinder was a gift to me and my family and I wanted to find a way to pay it forward. I wanted to do for another family what she did for my family but didn’t have any idea how that could happen. I was passionate but clueless.
I pursued my initial doula trainings with the modest ambition of helping families walk the path that I had just completed. I knew at the very least that I could fulfill on that until I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. What I didn’t know until much later was that death care was my life’s calling, my dharma, my raison d’être.
No matter where you are in your end of life work journey, there will always be those who are still behind you. What advice would you give to them as they move forward on this chosen path?
My best advice is to begin without attachment to an end game. Trust uncertainty. Get in where you fit in.
Gain exposure. Try on different hats until one fits.
Explore the terrain before deciding how to cultivate it — let grace be your compass.
In my experience death care requires a lot of flexibility and deferred expectations. You can’t possibly know how the divine forces of nature will guide your journey, who you’ll meet along the way, what opportunities will come knocking on your door. You can’t know what you don’t know until you do!
You may end up somewhere you never envisioned but the territory you traveled won’t be wasted; each step lays the groundwork for the destination you couldn’t possibly have predicted. It took a lot of trial and error to find my sweet spot because making meaning of death invites more questions than answers. It was only through trusting the early stages of my journey – totally unsure of my direction – that my vision became crystal clear.
