24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY OCTOBER 2-8, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com beloved uncle who had a highly aggressive brain tumor. “It put a light bulb over my head. This is what I want to do,” he remembers saying. He acted as a death doula at the care homes he owned for 27 years. Currently he serves as a content contributor for the end-of-life doula certification program at the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. Hahklotubbe says when he first started contributing five years ago, there were about a dozen participants. Now there is a waiting list. Hahklotubbe has also shifted his career toward speaking and writing books, although he still provides doula services. He has two books coming out in 2026: Urgent Messages from Just Up the Road, featuring curated wisdom from people on their deathbeds, and Go Fly Your Kite, about working through grief and regret. For Goulet, it was experiencing extreme grief after losing six people close to her within about eight months that started her on a journey toward becoming an end-of-life doula. After sobbing uncontrollably for a weekend, she went to an emergency room where she was given a prescription for Prozac. A pharmacist friend told her to throw out the pills and gave her the name of a good therapist. “You’re grieving,” the friend told her. “My spirit being what it is, I thought: I better dive into this and familiarize myself with, what is this death and dying thing?” Goulet recalls. She started volunteering with a hospice and loved it. She did that for 14 years, before taking a break for about five years. She later returned to volunteering with Jerry’s Place, a nonprofit social model hospice in Seaside, offering a home-like atmosphere for people who are dying but for whatever reason do not have a home where they can be in their final days. “There is something particularly meaningful about helping someone with your presence to step into something unknowable. It’s a scary time for most people, and if you can be in what I consider a real honored position of just witnessing and being compassionately present in that moment—for me that’s about the best spiritual employment that I can imagine,” Goulet says. As she approached retirement from teaching in public schools, Goulet decided she wanted to dive in further to the work around death and dying. She began training with the company Lifespan Doulas, which originally was focused on training, certification and continuing support to birth doulas when it was founded in 1999. The company later added training and certification for death doulas. Some doulas provide both kinds of services. “To me it’s sort of the same,” she says. “You come in and have some assistance in as non-intrusive a way as possible, in a supportive, loving entrance. I like to think that you could do the same for the outro.” One explanation for why death doulas are more sought after could be explained by the decline in membership among faith communities in the U.S. A Gallup study in 2021 found that church membership among Americans had fallen below 50 percent, the lowest point in 80 years. Clergy and lay clergy historically provided emotional and spiritual support as families faced the prospect of a death. Legg says he and Chapple had never belonged to an organized religion, but they were spiritual. “We’ve always been meditators. It was nice to have someone non-denominational and yet had a real spiritual persona,” he says Part of the doula code of ethics includes respecting clients’ beliefs and remaining neutral. “We honor and support whatever spiritual beliefs a person holds, as well as their cultural rituals and customs,” Wheeler says. Hahklotubbe agrees. “As a doula you’ve got to be neutral, and your job as a servant leader is to give the person what they want,” he says. For the last few years, Central Coast VNA & Hospice has been offering volunteer death doulas as part of meeting requirements by Medicare that volunteers be part of the hospice team, which includes a registered nurse, social worker and chaplain or spiritual counselor. “Not everybody wants to have a chaplain come to visit them, so the doulas are for those who don’t identify as religious and they want something that they don’t perceive to be threatening,” says Trevor Jones, VNA’s bereavement and spiritual care supervisor. VNA started out with one doula and now has three, in response to greater demand. It’s unclear exactly how many death/end-of-life doulas there are in Monterey County—there are several listed on national databases and there are also volunteer doulas working around the county, like those in conjunction with Central Coast VNA & Hospice. One local company, Peggy’s Home Care, is now offering the service. That death doulas/end-of-life doulas are gaining in popularity “is both a good thing and a bad thing,” Hahklotubbe says. “The good thing is it’s in the consciousness and people are aware now and they’re thinking premeditatively, because that’s the key to a successful exit for all parties—doing the research and knowing what you’re doing before you go into crisis level,” he says. The pitfall, he says, is that people are jumping into it with potentially not enough training and with no oversight or regulation. “It’s buyer beware,” he says. Hahklotubbe sees a “glimmer of hope” in New Jersey, the only state that covers death doulas under Medicare, in addition to there being private pay doulas—all other states only have private pay end-of-life doulas. “Those death doulas [covered by Medicare] have to go through a lot of scrutiny, and they have to qualify,” he says. New Jersey is “leading the way into the future and at some point doula services will be covered, similar to hospice.” (California is already allowing coverage of birth doula services under Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.) He hopes that one day there will be a regulatory body that vets doulas and requires education. Despite the fact that doulas are becoming more sought after, they still see resistance in the culture to face up to the eventuality of death. Wheeler says one thing she wants people who are in fear or denial to understand is that once they take small steps toward planning and reading information “it actually lessens fear, and it can be gently done,” she says. First steps include completing an advanced health care directive—a legal document communicating wishThings to Consider Where to find an end-of-life doula—and questions to ask before you hire one. By Pam Marino WHERE TO FIND A DOULA PEGGY’S HOME CARE (831) 273-4184, peggyshomecare.com CENTRAL COAST VNA & HOSPICE Volunteer end-of-life doulas are offered as part of VNA Hospice’s services. (831) 372-6668, ccvna.com INTERNATIONAL END-OF-LIFE DOULA ASSOCIATION inelda.org INTERNATIONAL DOULAGIVERS INSTITUTE doulagivers.com LIFESPAN DOULAS lifespandoulas.com QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE YOU COMMIT TO A DOULA What’s your availability? How much do you charge? What specific services do you provide/ do not provide? Are you certified? What was your training? How many other clients have you helped? Can you provide references? What is your philosophy of care? Ask yourself: Does this person seem like they will listen to me and respect my wishes? “YOU JUST GAVE HER THE BEST EXIT THAT SHE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE.” es for medical treatment or appointing someone should one become incapacitated—and sharing with family what medical interventions are acceptable or unacceptable. “Whatever planning we do in advance is a gift to our loved ones, and it sets the stage for a more peaceful passing, both for us and our family members,” she says. Planning ahead for the inevitable can also help people feel less fear, and live life in a way that resolves the regrets of the past. It’s something Hahklotubbe urges people to consider. “Tomorrow’s not promised,” he says, “and the folks who are the most fulfilled are, number one, the ones who die with the least regret and, number two, the ones that die without fear.”
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