Celebration • Connection • Care
It felt important to us to name our guiding assumptions and affirmations so you might have a better idea if we're a good fit for you. If something that's important to you is not on this (not-exhaustive) list, just ask. We promise to be honest about where we're coming from.
• We affirm that God, or the Divine, does not belong to any religion or set of beliefs, and that spirituality is not contained by religion.
• We affirm that all creatures are worthy of love, and deserve safety and care.
• We affirm that everyone deserves rituals that are meaningful to them and authentic to their system of making-meaning.
• We affirm that people deserve spiritual and emotional care and support whether they identify as religious or participate in a religious or spiritual community or not.
• We affirm that holiness can be found in all the big and little moments of our lives, in the celebration and grief and triumph and struggle and birth and death and beginnings and transitions and confusion and resolve. In all of it.
• We affirm that gender is not contained in the binary system of "male" and "female," or of the roles associated with those constructs in this time and place.
• We affirm that everyone should be regarded as the gender they identify as.
• We affirm that families come in all different constellations, and are made up of people who love each other and are caught up in life together in many different ways.
• We affirm that love should be celebrated and honored wherever it occurs.
• We affirm that everyone has ability and challenge and should be respected and celebrated for what they can contribute, and that everybody should be engaged and included in the ways that feel most comfortable and appropriate for them.
• We affirm that being a person can be overwhelmingly difficult, and that it is meaningful to acknowledge how hard it is.
• We affirm that we are all spiritual beings, and our spirits are fed by connection with the Divine / the Universe however we conceive of it, and by each other, animals, and nature.
Guiding Affirmations and Assumptions
Death is such a strange, unique, and mysterious thing. It seems like, so often, many of us are taught that we should avoid thinking and talking about death, and maybe even avoid people who are dying. Many people experience thoughts and feelings around their own death, or the death of a loved one, which are surprising to them, or seem bizarre or even wrong. But there are no wrong things to think or feel in the face of death and dying. We believe that making space to talk and think about death is liberating, and can empower people to advocate for themselves and their loved ones.
While we don't believe that there is a right or wrong way to think about death, we do believe that thinking and talking about and planning for death can help lead to a dying process which people can feel safer and more comfortable in. We consider it an honor and privilege to be with people as they consider death (their own or their loved ones'), and as they encounter death and dying.
We are there to help normalize the process and feelings, but also to support you in making your own particular choices about what you need and how you want things to go. We are there to help you have conversations which are hard, to find ways to honor relationships, to set the limits you'd like to set, and to feel as much at-ease and at peace as you are able.
A little more about death and Death Midwifery
