What is the difference between a Soul Midwife and a Death Doula (or End of Life Doula)?

I am asked this often and so here is the definitive answer. In essence, on the one hand there is not much difference at all between soul midwives and end of life doulas and yet, on the other there are some subtle, some semantic, differences between the terms and the roles.

First of all it should be said that soul midwifery is the term coined by and used by Felicity Warner and as such once someone coins a term we can't just come along and use it. All credit and respect to Felicity for carving out the concept and bringing it to the world. 

The belief in a soul and the transition of the soul back to Source is a worldview that many people hold but not all. The role of a psychopomp that accompanies the souls of the dead between realms is borne of cultures and societies in which the community at large accept the worldview of "souls" and "realms"; and one cannot underestimate the importance of culture, ritual, traditions, ancestral wisdom and land and place consciousness in upholding a worldview and the role of the practitioner within that worldview.

We prepare doulas to make such peace with their own worldview that they do not need to impose it on others. We serve people of all faiths and none including people for whom there is no soul and no afterlife. We would recognise that the use of the word "soul" is only useful to those who have that worldview and we meet people where they are at, in their belief system and work within that belief system using language that is appropriate and refraining from ever imposing our own beliefs on them.

Modern clinical use of the term midwife has also, for the majority of people, the mainstream, very much corrupted the concept of "midwife" turning it into a clinical and active role - as compared to the archetypal midwife of the ancient ways who was very akin to a psychopomp, within a culture and community and traditions that support that worldview - of a soul coming into the world and leaving the world.

So, to borrow a term from the Eastern traditions as no decent terminology exists in our broken culture - there is Yang (active) roles and Yin (yielding) roles and the archetypal midwife and the doula need to occupy the Yin, yielding, position rather than "doing" or actively informing, driving or changing the situation - the archetypal midwife and doula are informed by, driven by and changed by the circumstances. It is not our place to try to change anything but to be of service to what Is.

Just worth saying here too that the word "doula" is loaded, troublesome and probably has had its day - but that is also frustrating as the world is beginning to catch on and learn more about doulas and what they bring in service just at a time when we need to find a better word for what we are (do).

We shall use it for now though - and I think the main distinction between the idea of midwifing a soul and serving as a death doula is that we prepare our doulas to tend to the wider field of the family, the caregivers, the friends, the community as well as the person who is dying. We pay attention to what is in the field, the wider collective and tend as we are led to, to where we can best be of service - and that may be with the family rather than the individual who is dying.

Death doulas also do not just work with the dying but also are available after a death, to support in the wake of a sudden or violent death, self killing, or loss of a pregnancy or a baby death. We know that if we believe in a good death for one person then we believe in a good death for all people; and people dying in a hospice bed are the most privileged people on this planet, they are the least likely to need death doula support. So death doulas are social justice advocates and believe in the power of community and context.

The thing to understand though is that this is still "psychopomp" work but through the medium of nurturing community and culture. If a person is well supported in their dying, they know their loved ones will be looked after once they are gone, they have their affairs in order, they are ready psychologically to die and the family let them go, they are mourned and receive good death rites by their community... then the role of the psychopomp is minimal. So doulaship, in tending to community and to mourning practices and death rites, is working on this side of death to make the experience on the other side of death easier.

The problem we face in our modern world (and you may like to check out the Lost Rites trilogy of books which cover death rites from the personal to the collective to the systemic) is that successive generations of dead without proper death rites have left - in this world (and if you believe it so.... in the next world) a clag, a knotted tangle, fragmented, disparate voices - unmourned, unresolved and not integrated. If we take the premise that death is Entropy their bodies have not decomposed into the earth but been cremated or buried in lead lined coffins. And "That" which is formless, the emotions, the psyche (some might say the soul) has not found it's Entropy back into the great Formless because it remains lodged and trapped in the fabric of our modern world.

So, in the 21st century, in the so-called modern, so-called western world... is there such a thing a singular soul making its solitary journey back to Source any more? Or are we not faced with a new challenge, the kind the ancients never encountered, requiring ever more collective and community consciousness of the shared ancestral and unseen field? The family, the community and society at large, ideally, would be seeing every death at the individual level as great cosmic blessing and opportunity for healing of the collective field. If we were to tend, together, to those that are unmourned, unresolved and remain - whatever the opposite of entropy is - (cue Google) "negentropic" and encourage the communities alive to mourn and release them... then this would also clear and resolve the way Home for the individual.