I’m Sheryl and I’m an End of Life Coach & Doula. I studied to become an end of life doula at Douglas College in 2021 and continue to expand my literacy in the field with continued education. In 2024, I graduated from Rhodes Wellness College with a Certificate in Life Coaching, with the intention of using those skills to continue to build capacity in this end of life space.

All of this can be very tender and personal work so I thought it only fair that you get to know a bit about me before I potentially get to know an awful lot about you.

Let’s start with the big question I get asked most often: Why do you do this kind of work? (It’s usually followed with: It’s morbid! ). In response to the comment first - no, it is not morbid. Death is an inevitable fact of life; it’s part of the whole experience and, spoiler alert, not a one of us gets out alive!

To answer the question: I consider the opportunity to be a source of information and support to my clients and community to be both an honour and a privilege. While I may be a little tongue in cheek about it at times, it is serious work and we all need to do it. So, on to what drew me into this vocation…

I think it’s accurate to say that this work chose me, as opposed to the other way around. Looking back, I’ve always been drawn to being a helper, I just didn’t know that being an end of life doula was going to be my calling.

During COVID, a dear friend almost lost their life. Watching their spouse struggle to know ‘what to do if’, in the absence of having had the important conversations, was a real motivator for me. Even with my own intimate experiences of death: the grandmother who raised me; a young friend in a senseless crime; my firstborn as a toddler with a medical condition; my sister-friend and my dad, both to cancer; and many others, I started to think that there must be a better way, a smoother process, for people to plan to die. After all, and see above, we all do it.

I still don’t know that anyone is ever really fully prepared to die, or to watch someone they love do so, but I do know we can all be a little better at laying the groundwork so that those we are going to leave behind can take care in their grief and not have to worry about the details, because the best legacy we can leave them is having done the hard work.

That is being mindful of our own mortality. That, my friends, is love.