Alua Arthur became doula from the death to fight depression. The 45-year-old Los Angeles resident, former lawyer for the Legal Aid Foundation, chose this profession after a series of fortuitous coincidences that led her to think about death. Before her, her meeting with a peer suffering from uterine cancer on a trip to Cuba made her reflect on the ease with which the two talked for hours about profound topics, fears and hopes. Then she happened to care for her brother-in-law, Peter Saint John, in the final stages of cancer, comforting his sister, her four-year-old niece and her entire family.
She therefore decided to enroll in a training program to become a death doula, aassistant end-of-life program that helps people settle their affairs and feel more comfortable facing the end of their lives. His profession, still unknown to most, is described in the memoir “Briefly Perfectly Human”, released in English on Wednesday 16 April by Harper Collins. Arthur, the daughter of political refugees from Ghana and raised in Colorado, also founded a company, Going With Grace, that has trained more than 2,500 death professionals in 17 countries.
What is a death doula
The job of the death doula is to offer listening and comfort to the terminally ill person and their family, encouraging them to talk openly about the end of life. The doula is dedicated to relieving anxiety and relieving you of guilt and other negative feelings. He protects the wishes of the patient and does not leave him alone, watching over him until the final event with any prayers or rituals, depending on the spirituality or religion he belongs to. It can help the family manage the practical and psychological aspects of the post-mortem. Also find personalized ways to honor the deceased.
The profession is gradually spreading in the United States but is unknown in Italy. In 2023 So.crem organized the “End of Life – Doula” course in Genoa to train death doulas.
Death according to Alua Arthur
“I think it’s healthy to think about our death,” Alua Arthur said during a Ted Talk. She highlighted that hiring a doula is a privilege, as is imagining your own death. Being able to visualize it means feeling safe in body, mind and life. And she recalled the discomfort of the medical staff when faced with the death of her brother-in-law: “I knew that someone was needed, who was present, who was with us, who accompanied us.”
His profession does not fix pain or death. Its purpose is to help people ask themselves “what do I need to do to be at peace with myself, so that I can live with awareness and die with grace while reconciling both?” Seeing his own death peacefully allows Arthur to clearly understand who he wants to be, how he wants to spend his time and what he wants to leave behind of herself. He allows her to consciously manage his life.
The explicit invitation to enjoy life
According to Alua, people are too busy making one commitment after another rather than enjoying life in its little details. An emblematic case, which represents many that have happened to her, is that of a client who, suffering from an aggressive bone tumor, discovered that she was a foodie after a lifetime spent on a diet. She «she lived more in those eight months with the help of the hospital service, than she had ever done before».
As for the legacy we want to leave, Alua says we leave one every day. With smiles, kind words, confident or uncertain actions, we show people who we are and so they will talk about us when we are gone. “We are fallible and messy humans” who must absolve themselves of the responsibility of necessarily finding a great purpose in their lives. The invitation is to enjoy the “magic of everyday life”.
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