Writer. Researcher. Doula. Grief Advocate.
Hi! My name is Monica. I’m a writer, researcher, avid baker, and doula.
2020 was the year I lost my person. Breast cancer took my mom that April as I was already reeling from other losses: my husband and I were dealing with an unwelcome diagnosis of our own, COVID stole community, a career opportunity, and my business, and then of course, there was the heightened collective grief around police violence.
The space opened by pandemic lockdown gave me room to break open though, to be curious and to explore the ways the registers of personal, professional, and collective grief are interwoven. My heart broke wide open and spilled its contents all over the floor. Because of lockdown, there were no visitors to need to sweep it up for. There was no job or career to pull it back together for. There were no requirements or pressures or timelines or tacit understandings of normalcy to squeeze my soft body into. No compulsory performances of ‘ok’ to sustain.
As a result and amidst deep despair, I said fuck it and invited grief in. At the time, the move felt almost nihilistic. I really was too broken to put up shields. Do your worst, I said.
I did not grieve perfectly. I stumbled through and grief teaches you real quick that no such perfection exists anyway. But because I invited it in and felt what I was feeling, grief shared certain gifts with me. Some of these included
–a different, richer quality of gratitude,
–a deeper comprehension of the way my own tangleweb of emotions is woven inward and to the past and outward with others
–that there is no grief healing outside of community
–a brave and vulnerable curiosity.
Things “returned to normal.” I returned to work. And as all the places prematurely reopened, the spaces where I felt I could safely feel, and listen and respond to what grief had to share with me seemed to close up!
Those spaces holds the gifts. I became a grief doula to open it back up for myself and for others. Through my peer-to-peer work, I hold space and serve as a compassionate witness for humans interested in feeling—experiencing and listening to their grief for what gifts it has to offer them. I keep judgment, artificial timelines and expectations at bay. Grief has things to tell us. I listen to and with you. I ask questions and suggest practices that help you hear and feel to heal.
***
In my research and writing, I am interested in looking at grief through the lens of work, place, and food. Food especially, in particular cake ceremony, has helped me understand the sensate and the threshold work involved with good grieving. The natural world of my homeplace (the pine and oak forests of Georgia) of course teaches me about expansion, contraction, death and aliveness, cycle, season and entanglement.
In my peer-to-peer work and as my own experience continues to unfold, I keep re-learning that individual healing does not take place in a vacuum. My passionate belief is that our own ability to authentically feel and move through grief depends on the space created by compassionate witnessing and supported engagement. My practice is founded on questions, and deep listening for answers:
—How can we better companion one another on our grief journeys?
—How do we trust our hearts enough to learn what grief has to teach us?
—How do we walk its path when we’d rather gate it off?
—How do we leverage imagination, ritual, wonder, breath and body as space makers and bridges when we feel closed off and disconnected?
—How do we practice good grieving in ways that open new relationships across time and registers—even as we honor and release old ones?
I don’t have all the answers (some days I only have more questions) and it’s definitely rough emotional terrain but I know we can walk it together. We have to insist: we will not be separated from ourselves!
***
I earned certification through the Going With Grace End of Life Training in 2022 and served as a student guide for an incoming cohort later that year. I earned my proficiency badge from NEDA (National End of Life Doula Association) shortly thereafter but struggled to find consistent hospice volunteer opportunities to deepen my practice. My dad had died a year after my mom and I was also still doing a lot of soul searching on my own grief journey that needed attending to. I wanted to serve but I wasn’t sure how AND I was looking for more answers!
David Kessler’s Grief Education training seemed a great way to reinforce what I wanted to contribute to this work. Some of which includes:
Offer grief support that centers deep listening and compassionate space holding. Support that can work in tandem with but that also extends beyond therapeutic modalities.
Promote grief literacy by sharing my own experiences and what I learn along the way on my own grief journey
Work to de-stigmatize non-compliant grief (which is what I call grief that doesn’t fit neatly into the imposed timelines, systems and structures of state and capital)
Continue to learn and share ways of tapping our senses, our creativity, our inner and outer landscapes, and our relationships with each other and with the more than human world for lessons in good grieving and healing towards capacity.
These days, I volunteer with The New Normal, a UK-based non-profit offering peer-to-peer grief support and I offer one-on-one grief support sessions of my own as well as the occasional workshop. I am slowly learning the essential work of the full-spectrum doula and devising and sharing the rituals that might help us navigate through this era of polycrises and collapse—even as we dream together what’s next!
Need support or know someone who does? Have ideas for a project? Want to go for a walk at Arabia Mountain? Please reach out. xx