Death Doula Randi

10/17/2026

👣An autumn walk gives grief room to move at its own pace. There is no need to maintain eye contact or fill silence. You can speak for a bit, then listen to your footsteps. In grief support, walking beside someone makes room for words that are hard to find when we are sitting face to face. What catches your attention may surprise you. You notice a dog carrying a stick far too large for it and laugh before remembering how much they would have enjoyed seeing it. For a moment, you reach towards the familiar pleasure of sharing something. That small, interrupted impulse can hold an enormous amount of missing.

👣There are also walks when nothing feels particularly meaningful. The air is cold, your shoes are uncomfortable and you would rather be home. Nature does not need to deliver a message every time we enter it. You are allowed to move through a beautiful place without feeling restored by it.

👣The changing season can stir feelings about time itself. Another autumn has arrived without them. You have lived through experiences they never got to hear about, and sometimes that distance hurts. We can acknowledge that directly. There is no need to turn the passing year into evidence of progress.

Today, take a short walk and pause once wherever you feel comfortable. Notice something around you, then ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now?” Answer in a few words, without adding “because” or “I should.” You might say, “I feel lonely,” “I feel calm,” or “I’m not sure.” Continue walking when you are ready, allowing the answer to remain exactly as it is.

Deathdoularandi.ca

10/16/2026

🫶🏼There are conversations we keep saving for another day. We assume there will be a better time to explain ourselves, ask the question or tell someone what their kindness meant. Then a death approaches, and words we have carried for years begin asking for our attention. Autumn’s gathering season offers a way to consider what we want to bring forward while the opportunity is still here.

🫶🏼Some of those words are loving and surprisingly difficult to say. “You make me feel safe when I need it.” “I noticed how hard you work.” We can spend a lifetime appreciating someone without knowing whether they understand why. Speaking that gratitude gives them a chance to receive something they might otherwise never hear.

🫶🏼Other conversations hold regret. An apology can matter deeply when it names what happened and takes responsibility without asking the other person to make us feel better. “I hurt you, and you deserved different from me” leaves room for their experience. Adding “but I was doing my best” can pull the attention back towards our need to be understood before their hurt has even been acknowledged.

🫶🏼Difficult truths need that same thoughtfulness. Honesty can help someone feel known, but timing and consent matter. “There is something important I would like to talk about. Do you have the energy for it?” gives the person a choice. Their tiredness, their privacy and their right to end the conversation deserve attention alongside our wish to speak. Sometimes the conversation we hoped for will remain unfinished.

🫶🏼Harvest asks us to recognise what is ready to be gathered. In relationships, that takes discernment: choosing what matters enough to speak, considering who it serves and respecting what another person is ready to receive. Tonight try writing 3 sentences start with, “What I want you to know is…” Choose one to share, with permission, or keep the page private if contact would cross a boundary. Giving the words your attention is enough for today.

Deathdoularandi.ca

10/15/2026

🎭Halloween gives us permission to put on a different face. We can become someone unrecognizable for an evening, then take the mask off when we get home. In grief, that second face often looks completely ordinary. It answers emails, remembers appointments and says, “I’m doing okay, thanks,” because explaining the truth would take more energy than we have.

🎭Sometimes the mask goes on before we leave the house. We rehearse what to say if, or decide which parts of our day we can talk about without crying. We learn who can hear an honest answer and who becomes uncomfortable enough that we end up comforting them. Eventually, appearing fine becomes part of the work of getting through the day. Yet, Privacy still matters, and everyone we encounter does not need access to our most tender feelings. A grieving person may want to work or enjoy an evening with friends without discussing their loss. The difficulty comes when there is nowhere they feel able to stop performing, even among people who love them.

🎭Sometimes honesty arrives. Someone begins with the version they have been telling everyone, then pauses and says, “Actually, that’s not how it feels at all.” I respect that pause. Trust grows when a person discovers they can say something difficult and the listener remains present, without rushing to explain it away. Holding space means respecting when masks stay on. Nobody owes disclosure because they've entered a healing space. Sometimes the first honest thing a person says is, “I don’t want to talk about it today,” and that deserves to be heard too.

🎭Today choose one trusted person and ask, “Do you have five minutes to listen? I don’t need advice, and I don’t want to have to make this sound better than it is.” If they have the space, tell them one thing you usually leave out when you say you are okay. You get to decide how much of the mask comes off.

Deathdoularandi.ca

10/14/2026

🕯️Autumn candlelight changes the way a room feels. The corners soften and shadows move across the walls. Our attention settles closer to where we are sitting. At a bedside, that gentle light creates an atmosphere of sacred space, spirituality, and calm. During a vigil, the room becomes a place where the person’s remaining life is still unfolding, with their preferences at its centre.

🕯️A light at the bedside represents companionship. It holds the intention that someone is being attended to as they approach death. During this Season of the Veil, I connect that light with the warmth of a hearth carried into the room: a small point of welcome while so much feels unfamiliar. That meaning belongs in the vigil when the person welcomes it. Flameless candles offer that glow wherever an open flame is unsuitable, particularly around oxygen or where care-setting rules prohibit candles. They also allow us to bring in light without introducing smoke or fragrance.

🕯️The season of the veil draws us towards warmth and shelter, and those qualities have a place in vigil planning. We can create a bedside where someone feels welcomed as they are, with room for their humour, sacred spiritual practice, and changing needs. The setting can evolve with them, hour by hour.

Today try sitting quietly with candlelight. Stare at the flame and let yourself be held by its warmth.

OntarioCollegeofDeathDoulas.ca
Deathdoularandi.ca

10/13/2026

🌨️🌩️There comes a point in autumn when we start thinking beyond the beauty of the season. We check the furnace, put the garden to bed and work out what needs doing before the weather turns. Preparing for winter is an act of care for the days ahead. End-of-life planning carries that same intention: giving thought to what we will need and helping the people around us understand how to care for us.🌩️🌨️

🌨️It can be difficult to begin because saying our wishes aloud. Yet those wishes already exist in the way we live. We know whose presence settles us and how we feel about being touched. We know whether prayer comforts us, whether we prefer quiet or whether a room full of conversation feels like home. Planning begins by recognizing these parts of ourselves and considering how they should guide our care.

🌩️Like preparing a household for winter, this work involves sharing knowledge. One person cannot be expected to remember every conversation or guess what we intended. Writing wishes down and making sure trusted people know where to find them helps turn private thoughts into something useful. As our circumstances change, we can revisit those wishes and explain what has changed with them.

🌨️We do not have to settle every question in one afternoon. A conversation about who we want nearby can lead to another about how we want information shared. Each discussion helps loved ones know us more fully and gives them somewhere to begin when decisions feel difficult.

🌩️Today try making a small “circle of care” on paper. Write your name in the centre, then add the names of two or three people you would want supporting you near the end of life. Beside each name, write what you would welcome from them, such as companionship or help communicating your wishes. Choose one person and ask whether they would feel comfortable taking that role.

OntarioCollegeofDeathDoulas.ca

10/12/2026

🥧Happy Thanksgiving From Death Doula Randi!🦃

🍁Thanksgiving can make gratitude feel like something we are expected to do. The food is ready, everyone is gathered and someone asks what we are thankful for. When you are grieving, that question can be difficult to answer honestly. You may feel grateful to be there and wish, with your whole heart, that the day looked different.

There is a difference between gratitude that rises naturally and gratitude offered as a correction. Sometimes gratitude brings grief closer. You recognize how much someone did for you and suddenly want to thank them for something you never fully understood while they were alive.

At the Thanksgiving table, we can leave room for an answer that holds both feelings.

Today choose one person who has supported you and send them a specific thank-you: “When you did ___, it helped me because ___.”

Deathdoularandi.ca

10/11/2026

Sometimes the absence becomes clear while you are counting plates. You reach for one too many, or realize nobody has asked for the seat they always claimed. Thanksgiving brings us around a harvest table, and that gathering can make us especially aware of who belongs there but will not be arriving. you are counting plates. You reach for one too many, or tealize nobody has asked for the seat they always claimed. Thanksgiving brings us around a harvest table, and that makes us especially aware of who belongs there but will not be arriving.

There is so much of a person woven into a family meal. Someone knew exactly when to take the turkey out. Someone hovered in the kitchen stealing pieces before dinner, despite being told repeatedly to get out. Their absence changes the work of preparing the meal as much as the experience of sitting down to eat it. Even a crowded house can feel strangely quiet in the place they used to occupy.

Gratitude can be complicated at that table. You can appreciate everyone who has come and still ache for the person who is missing. You can enjoy the food and feel disappointed that another Thanksgiving has arrived without them. Nobody needs to turn their grief into a statement about being thankful for the time they had. Sometimes what they want to say is simply, “I wish they were here.”

This Thanksgiving choose one dish connected to someone who is missing and place a small handwritten card beside it: “Made in honour of ___, who always ___.” Finish with a detail that captures them. Let people read it, enjoy the food and share a memory if they wish. No round of speeches required.

OntarioCollegeofDeathDoulas.ca

10/10/2026

👻

For one month of the year, death gets invited to every front porch. Skeletons in lawn chairs, gravestones beside the driveway and ghosts hang from trees. We give them funny names and dress them. There is something interesting about how comfortably we welcome this while hesitating to talk about an actual death.

Halloween gives us distance from something deeply personal. We can laugh at a skeleton because it asks nothing of us. Speaking about someone we miss brings us to the reality of death and everything that it changed. The decorations are put away in November.

Still, this time creates an opening. A child asking why a ghost is wearing a sheet could be wondering what happens when someone dies. An adult laughing at a fake gravestone may find think about what they would want written on theirs.

I am interested in what happens when death becomes something we discuss before a crisis. Halloween displays can prompt convos about funerals or memories of someone who loved this holiday. We don't need to turn every bowl of candy into seriousness, but we can notice when curiosity appears and let the conversation unfold.

In mediumship, connection centres on recognizing someone through their personality and the relationship they shared with the living. The person who loved making everyone laugh does not become anonymous because their body has died. There is room to approach spirit with familiarity and affection. Halloween stirs this side of grief.

Today create a Halloween character based on someone who died. Give them a playful title that captures their personality. Share the title and the memory behind it with someone who knew them. Let their particular kind of mischief have a place in October.

OntarioCollegeofDeathDoulas.ca

10/10/2026

For one month of the year, death gets invited to every front porch. Skeletons in lawn chairs, gravestones beside the driveway and ghosts hang from trees. We give them funny names and dress them. There is something interesting about how comfortably we welcome this while hesitating to talk about an actual death.

Halloween gives us distance from something deeply personal. We can laugh at a skeleton because it asks nothing of us. Speaking about someone we miss brings us to the reality of death and everything that it changed. The decorations are put away in November.

Still, this time creates an opening. A child asking why a ghost is wearing a sheet could be wondering what happens when someone dies. An adult laughing at a fake gravestone may find think about what they would want written on theirs.

I am interested in what happens when death becomes something we discuss before a crisis. Halloween displays can prompt convos about funerals or memories of someone who loved this holiday. We don't need to turn every bowl of candy into seriousness, but we can notice when curiosity appears and let the conversation unfold.

In mediumship, connection centres on recognizing someone through their personality and the relationship they shared with the living. The person who loved making everyone laugh does not become anonymous because their body has died. There is room to approach spirit with familiarity and affection. Halloween stirs this side of grief.

Today create a Halloween character based on someone who died. Give them a playful title that captures their personality. Share the title and the memory behind it with someone who knew them. Let their particular kind of mischief have a place in October.

OntarioCollegeofDeathDoulas.ca

10/09/2026

🌳A family tree tells you who married who and when people were born and when they died. It rarely tells you who could charm their way out of trouble, who sang while peeling potatoes or who quietly made sure the neighbours had enough to eat. A name gives us a place to begin. A story lets us meet the person.

🌳Ancestral work invites us to look beyond the dates. Imagine the hands that gathered harvest generations before you, or the conversations that happened while food was cooked. What did those people worry about? Who made them laugh? What did they do when someone they loved became ill? Their lives held concerns alongside the moments of family history.

🌳Family stories give connection a place to grow. We inherit versions of people shaped by whoever tells the story, and asking another person can open a whole new chapter.

🌳Within Death Doula work, legacy creation gives those dying an opportunity to choose what they share and how they want it carried forward. You don't have to be dying to do this. Harvest helps us to save something now so it remains for later. A recorded story now, preserves the way a person speaks and what they say. You hear where they pause, the word they always use and the laugh that interrupts their own punchline. Years from now, someone who never met them can hear that voice and discover a person who feels closer than a name on a page.

🌳Ancestral remembrance also leaves room for those whose stories were poorly recorded or never written down. We can preserve what we know and be honest about the gaps. We can also honour the elders and mentors who helped raise us, whose influence belongs in our history even when their names sit outside the family tree.

🌳Today consider one story about an older relative that you don’t want our family to lose. With their permission, if they're still living, record a short voice note and save it with their person’s name. Ask them to include who first told them the story. In a few minutes, you have gathered something worth keeping from this season’s harvest.

OntarioCollegeofDeathDoulas.ca
Deathdoularandi.ca