Today we’d like to introduce you to Selena Jong.
Hi Selena, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born in Vancouver, BC Canada and moved to California in 1989. After some back and forth up the west coast from Los Angeles to Sacramento, I settled in San Diego after college and started my career as a civil engineer. Having worked in the land development industry for some 20 years, I retired in 2021. I never felt like I fit in as an engineer. I had imposter syndrome and I was longing for something more. I have always been drawn to the esoteric and existential ideas of dying since death was so prevalent in my life. Yet, no one around me wanted to talk about it.
I’ve been in the company of death since I was young. My mom died of lung cancer a year after her diagnosis in 1988. I watched a vibrant artsy musician wither away to an 80 lb skeleton. Her cancer moved to her brain and after a fatal seizure she died two days after my 13th birthday. My best friend died when we were in our 30’s of breast cancer. She kept her cancer a secret from me until she moved away and confessed she was sick. She died shortly after. I didn’t get to say good-bye. Year after year, someone in my life was diagnosed and died. Friends, relatives, even co-workers. It was years of grief work, cracking open old wounds, a profound medicine journey and the death of my father in 2020 that launched me into death work.
When my father died suddenly one day of a brain aneurism, I realized quickly after having only 10 minutes to be with him at the hospital, I had to quickly get his affairs in order and figure out how to tend to his body. It was a stressful process as we never talked about death or his wishes. I questioned why tending to his affairs was so difficult. Having to sift through papers and his belongings wasn’t what I was planning on doing the next few days after he died. I wanted to be with my father, to speak to him, to process my emotions, but I couldn’t. I had to tend to all the logistical aspects of his death. I was alone, tired and sad. There had to be a better way. I was grieving and wasn’t able to.
When I decided to launch Moving Through LLC, I was surprised how many people wanted to talk about death but had no outlet. I have had several people say they want to discuss their end of life wishes but their spouse/partner does not. “Don’t talk like that!”. Talking about death has opened my mind to being more present with family and friends. When you know you have a finite amount of time here, you spend your time more wisely. Conversations with friends and strangers become more meaningful. After all, we are all going to die.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The most challenging part of being a Death Doula is education. A Death Doula is a (fairly) new concept and death is not an easy topic to discuss. People are not thinking about death until it is knocking at the door. The death industry has been in place and the same since the early 19th century. Our ideas of death and how we tend to our bodies have been ingrained in us for a century. Our cultural ideas of youth and aging is distancing us from a healthy relationship to death. Educating people that it is ok to discuss death, that death is natural and inevitable has been a welcome challenge. Fortunately, the conversation is shifting for the better.
Having conversations with people who don’t want to talk about death is challenging. Being confident about what your own wishes are and talking about your journey helps open up a safe dialogue. It gives other people permission to talk about death if you speak gently, directly and comfortably about death. Using straightforward language like “death, dying, and died of cancer”, rather than “passed away, is in a better place or lost a battle with cancer” helps normalize death and provide clarity, rather than soften the topic with euphemisms. I ask a lot of questions and also sit in silence, actively listening. Most of the time, people want to be heard without judgement or unsolicited advice.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a certified Death Doula, also known as an End-of-Life Guide. Death Doulas are non-medically professionals who provide holistic support to individuals and their loved ones during the dying process. Death Doulas offer compassionate care and guidance to individuals, and their care circle, as they navigate the end of life. We work alongside medical professionals, hospice teams, and caregivers to ensure the individual’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are met during their end-of-life journey.
Death Doulas provide a range of services, including (but not limited to):
– Emotional Support: Offering a listening ear, companionship, and validation of feelings for the dying person and their loved ones.
– Practical Assistance: Helping with practical tasks such as creating advance directives, making funeral arrangements, and organizing end-of-life preferences.
– Education and Advocacy: Providing information about the dying process, available resources, and advocating for the individual’s wishes and needs. Eco-friendly burial option education.
– Spiritual Support: Assisting in exploring and addressing existential or spiritual concerns, providing comfort, and facilitating rituals or ceremonies if desired.
– Legacy Work: Supporting the dying person in reflecting on their life, sharing memories, and leaving behind meaningful legacies or messages for loved ones.
– 11th Hour/Bedside Care: Assisting the dying and their care circle at the 11th hour, at the transition and time of death.
– Home Funeral Guide: Assistance and guidance if one chooses a home funeral.
– Tending to the body after death: Assistance with tending to the body after someone has died. Communication with funeral home or disposition facility so the care circle can be present with their loved one after death. Providing grief resources.
Educating people about how to tend to our bodies in an eco-friendly way after we die has also been an important part of this work. Conventional burial and flame cremation is what people default to, but there are other methods now which are more responsible for the environment and can even be cost effective, such as water cremation (alkaline hydrolysis), terramation (composting), natural burial, and home funerals. The funeral business is a billion dollar corporate industry. If we know what we are paying for ahead of time and use smaller locally owned funeral businesses, one starts to realize a lot of what we are being told and sold is unnecessary and outdated.
I also assist those who choose and are eligible for Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), offering them support and assistance throughout the process. Dying with Dignity is legal in California and allows people with a terminal diagnosis of 6 months or less to choose how they want to live the rest of their life.
I volunteer at hospice and sit bedside for those actively dying at Sharp Grossmont Hospital. I also host a free monthly Death Cafe discussion group in Encinitas. Held every 4th Saturday of the month at Seaside Center for Spiritual Living (1613 Lake Drive Encinitas, CA 92024), Death Cafe’s are meant to bring people together to discuss, with no agenda, any topic related to death and dying in a safe, judgment free environment while sipping tea and eating cake. Death Cafe has been around since the 80’s and can be found in over 80 countries (www.deathcafe.com).
I am part of The Death Network (www.thedeathnetwork.com). We collaborate together to provide death related events for the community. Besides Death Cafes, we have been hosting shrouding demos and mock home funerals (how to shroud and tend to your loved one who has died at home), workshops on how to plan your death (creating an end of life binder), grief circles, green burial education and death dinners. We want to open the dialogue, create a safe space where community can gather and do death differently.
“Having a Death Doula is letting someone else drive the bus. There is a guide looking out for them, and they don’t have to be responsible for anything other than what they are feeling” – Dr. Sarah Kerr, Sacred Death Care.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Do some volunteer work. The best way to get experience is to volunteer at hospice. Hospice is a great way to gain experience by providing companionship and respite care.
If you have ever experienced death, don’t let your own grief get in the way of your service. There are times when being with the dying, their family and friends will be hard so being a space holder for someone else’s grief and trauma is important. We will have tears and experience emotions as a Death Doula and that is ok. We are also human. However, make sure any of your own past traumas, wounds, and anything that could get in the way of you being 100% present with your client, is managed.
“The grace in dying is in the acceptance of death as part of life, not as its failure. Dying is not the end of wisdom; it’s the seed of it.”
– Stephen Jenkinson, author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.movingthrough.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/movingthroughdeath
- Other: www.thedeathnetwork.com
Image Credits
The Death Network
