Guided By Joy: A Conversation with Alua Arthur
On being a death doula, empathy v. compassion, toxic self-reliance, boundaries, celebrating celebrations, and so much more!
Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.
I first came across Alua Arthur when a friend posted a video of Alua speaking about her work as a death doula. Bright eyed, slightly-mischievous smile, gentle-yet-powerful energy, and bursting with life, Alua seemed about as far from death as one could get. I would later learn, that beautiful life-loving energy came from sitting intimately with death, day after night after day.
A few years before, after a near death experience, a conversation with a terminally ill stranger on a bus in Cuba, a debilitating depression, and advocating for her beloved dying brother-in-law, Alua, a lawyer at the time, felt called to leave her old life behind and help people die with grace. She followed her highly vocal intuition and has since become one of the leading death doulas in the country, founding Going with Grace a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Alua has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, InStyle and more. And she’s given a fantastic TedTalk.
Alua’s book Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life By Getting Real About the End is simply beautiful. Direct, honest, vulnerable, funny, it’s full of much needed insight and practical guidance, plus, gorgeous glimpses into Alua’s own life. I’m so grateful that I was able to speak with such a lovely, kind, and wise soul.
I’m also grateful Alua was game to read one of my favorite passages from the book for us! (Substack no longer offers closed captions on embedded videos. Argh.)
I hope you enjoy the interview! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
xJane
Can you describe what a death doula does?
Gladly. A death doula is somebody who does all the holistic, non-medical care of the dying person and the circle of support through the process. We also work with healthy people to create comprehensive end of life plans or work through their fears of death. When somebody knows what it is that they're going to be dying of, we help them create the most ideal death for themselves under the circumstances. Then after a death, we can help the loved ones wrap up all of the affairs of their loved one's life. We're basically journeying with people in their mortality.
That’s beautiful. Do you have a particular way that you approach it?