About Helen
“How we die remains in the memories of those who live on.” ~ Cicely Saunders
My Story
I was still young when my grandmother died… young enough that death was a stranger to me. But I have never forgotten her face in that final moment: a soft, unmistakable smile, as if she were greeting something beautiful just beyond our sight. I’ve returned to that smile countless times over the years, wondering what she saw, what she felt, what met her there. It was my first quiet understanding that death is not only an ending. Something about it cracked me open – and though I couldn’t have known it then, it set the course for the rest of my life.
That wonder followed me into nursing, where I was blessed to stand inside so many of life’s most sacred moments. In Labor and Delivery, I witnessed the miracle of new life. Later, as a hospice nurse, I came to know the equally profound sacredness of life’s final chapter. Families taught me what it means to show up fully – with tenderness, patience, and love as someone they cherished approached their final journey.
Those years changed me. I realized that while our culture carefully prepares for the arrival of a child, we rarely prepare for the end of life – something every one of us will meet. Yet just like birth, death is not a medical event but a deeply human one, deserving of presence, planning, and reverence.
Today, as an Elder Care and End-of-Life Doula, it is my greatest privilege to walk with others through this final passage – helping individuals and families move through the journey of aging and dying with dignity, comfort, and love.
My Mission
To make sure no one faces the end of life – their own, or someone they love – feeling alone, unprepared, or in the dark.
I walk beside individuals and families through aging, serious illness, and dying, offering the time, presence, and honest guidance a busy medical system often can’t. So much fear comes simply from not knowing what to expect, so a great deal of what I do is teach — gently explaining what’s normal, what’s coming, and what the body knows how to do on its own. Alongside that education, I offer practical planning, emotional companionship, and holistic comfort, helping people meet this tender passage with dignity and with as much peace as it’s possible to have.
My Vision
I hold a vision of a world that stops turning away from death.
For too long, dying has been something we hide, fear, and refuse to name and that silence leaves families frightened and unprepared for something every one of us will one day face. I believe it can be different. I imagine communities with a deeper death literacy: an unhurried, unafraid understanding that dying is not a failure or an emergency, but a natural passage the body already knows how to move through; as much a part of life as being born.
I picture a culture where hard conversations happen early and openly, where people are taught what to expect long before they need to know it, and where an End-of-Life Doula is simply a natural part of how we care for one another as ordinary and welcome at the end of life as a birth doula is at its beginning.
This is the shift I’m working toward: through education, honest conversation, and steady presence, to help weave this understanding back into the fabric of everyday life… so that dying, like being born, is met not with dread, but with reverence.
My Background
That early wonder eventually led me to nursing, and to more than four decades at the bedside. I began in Labor and Delivery – crying, I’ll admit, through nearly every birth, before finding my way to hospice, where I sat with families through the last breath. Over the years, somewhere in the middle of all of it, death slowly stopped being something I feared and became something I could recognize as sacred.
Along the way I earned my Master’s in Nursing and spent more than two decades walking with individuals and families through serious illness, aging, and the end of life… in hospice, in homes, and out in the community. That experience taught me both the gifts and the limits of our medical system: how skilled and devoted our nurses and doctors are, and how little time they’re ever given for the human parts of this work. The gaps I saw are the very gaps I set out to fill.
When I discovered there was a name for this calling ~ doula ~ I pursued the training with my whole heart. Today I’m a certified End-of-Life and Elder Care Doula, NEDA-proficient and INELDA-trained and certified, an Advance Care Planning guide, a Reiki practitioner, and an educator and speaker on all of it. But beneath every certification is the same thing that started me on this path as a young woman: the belief that no one should have to face life’s final chapter alone, unprepared, or afraid.
I Work Alongside Your Medical Team – Never in Its Way
If you have hospice or a medical team, you might wonder where a doula fits. The simple answer: I fill the gaps they don’t have time to. Your nurses and doctors are skilled and devoted, but their minutes are stretched thin, and much of what a family needs at this time isn’t medical at all. That’s where I come in – not to replace anyone, but to add a steadier, more unhurried layer of care around everything they do.
What that looks like:
Time and Presence
unhurried visits and real companionship, without a clock running in the background.
Continuity
a stable, familiar face amid the rotation of providers, so you’re not re-explaining yourselves to a stranger each week.
Watchful Eyes
an extra set of attentive senses to catch subtle changes early and pass them along to your team.
Caregiver Relief
respite and gentle guidance so the people doing the caring don’t run themselves empty.
Education
clear, honest explanations of what to expect and how to prepare, so less catches you off guard.