FAREWELL EDUCATION'S DEATHWALKER APPRENTICESHIP

To begin the apprenticeship, we first explore what it means to answering your calling into deathwork and what exactly you're being called into.  This unit is divided into five modules and each module contains recorded teaching + slides created by Jade to answer these questions:

1. What is it like to die in N. America today?
2. How do we view death collectively?
3. Where is death well-supported? Where is it not?
4. How does the deathwalker bridge the gaps in this landscape?
5. Where is our own current relationship with death and how do we deepen that as a spiritual exercise?

Following each module is a self-study resource guide with recommended articles, TedTalks, podcasts, and documentaries.  You'll also find practical, hands-on exercises to bring this education out of theory and into application.

In the second unit of the apprenticeship, we dig into something essential to this work: the grief that has led you to answer this call.  Your own personal experiences with death and grief have created the container within you that knows how to sit with others as they experience their own death and grief.  In this way, your grief is a gift that you will use to support your community. 

The questions we address in this course are:

1. What grief are you carrying and how do you currently tend it?
2. What are your unexamined fears and beliefs around death and grief?
3. How are we impacted by our collective and ambiguous grief?
4. Do we have ancestral wounds/blessings?
5. How do our cultural traditions impact how we experience death and grief?
6. What rituals and ceremonies can we use to tend our grief?

When deathwalking, we must be aware of exactly what we carry to ensure we may stay safely embodied and untriggered by the death and grief we witness.  We also need to remember that our calling came from Death and in developing a trusting relationship with Death we must contemplate what we are already carrying for Death.

In the third unit of the apprenticeship curriculum, we explore the basics of energy work and how to maintain energetic and professional boundaries that keep our work sustainable.

The questions we answer together in this unit are:

1. How will your values & ethics create a container for death walking?

2. What are energy fields and the luminous body? (Spiritual Gifts)

3. How is physical touch powerful?

4. When is active listening and holding space an offering?

5. Why are self-care and appropriate boundaries necessary for deathwalkers?

6. How are ritual cleansing & ceremony gifts for deathwalkers?

Deathwork is energy work.  To understand our own energetic offerings and capacity, we need to learn about our energy fields, energy hygiene techniques, and how we use our own energy to support others at end-of-life, and then recharge ourselves from a grounded place of connection with Death.

In the fourth unit of the apprenticeship curriculum, we begin to build proficiency with the tools of death doula work.  To know how to support other's in their end-of-life planning, we must first support ourselves and practice on those we are close to.  From this place, we can confidently guide others through comprehensive end-of-life planning, including life review and legacy work.

In this unit, we unpack these questions:

1. What is the role of advance care planning and how does death walking facilitate?

2. What are the necessary components of planning for comprehensive end-of-life care?

3. What is vigil and how do we prepare for it?

4. When does life review serve well?

5. Who does a legacy project?

Deathwalkers must prepare for their own deaths and feel confident in guided others to do the same.  This unit builds familiarity with the death doula tools of preparing for death.

This unit of the apprenticeship is where most 3-5 day death doula trainings begin.  In this unit, we delve deep into the physical and spiritual process of dying and how we as deathwalkers walk alongside those who are preparing to die and going through the labor of the dying process.

This unit focuses on how the body and soul journey toward death by exploring these questions:

1. How do deathwalkers stand at the threshold of death?
2. Can deathwalkers create a supportive container at end-of-life?
3. How do deathwalkers understand pain and suffering?
4. What does the spiritual process of dying involve?
5. When can deathwalkers detect the physical process of dying (birth/death, little chick analogy, terminal agitation)?
6. When can meditations, rituals, and practices relieve death anxiety and/or offering healing?

Building your confidence in recognizing the signs of the dying process and cultivating the tools to support those who approaching death is key to the deathwalkers journey.

At this point in the apprenticeship curriculum, we turn our attention toward something ALL death doula training programs should be teaching but that few actually cover: how deathwalkers may assist when death doesn't come gently, naturally, or expectedly.

The idea of "good" death is rampant in deathwork today.  But many of those we serve do not have the privilege of access to "good" death.  Deathwalker's support all those in the end-of-life landscape, so we need to be resourced in supported those who are underserved by our system.

This unit digs into the following questions:

1. What does unexpected and traumatic death look like (medical, accident, catastrophe, homocide)?

2. How can deathwalkers support pregnancy loss,
   stillbirth, infant, & pediatric death?

3. When can deathwalkers support families facing
   suicide and drug-related death?

4. Why is Medical Aid in Dying & Death with Dignity important?

5. Who chooses to initiate a Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking & why?

6. Why do deathwalkers advocate for equitable access to death care?

Being knowledge and well-resourced on how to support your community when death is traumatic is a core component of community death care.

At this point in the apprenticeship curriculum, you are a fully trained death doula by the proficiency standards of the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance.  You'll take the test (and pass!) to prove it.

But this work is more than book knowledge, it's practice in serving your community too.  Together we explore these topics in this unit:

1. Review what we’ve covered so far.
2. Establish where we are right now as deathwalkers.
3. Follow curiosity about what we will offer next to our communities to support the holistic death care movement.
4. Connect with community by stepping fully into our calling as deathwalkers.
5. Prepare for and complete proficiency exam.
6. Begin to create your practice as deathwalker and offer your first community death care event with mentorship and cohort support.

The way we find our clients is by educating our community on what we offer and why.  Let's develop your unique offering together and support you as you step fully into your calling as deathwalker.

Whether we want to or not, deathwalking requires navigating the landscape of hospice support.  From educating our clients to advocating for them to their hospice team, we must be comfortable understanding the system that serves those that we walk alongside, the modern hospice system.

In this unit, we explore these questions to understand how deathwalkers fit within the larger hospice system:

1. What is the basic framework of the hospice care team
2. How hospice is funded, monitored and intended to function?
3. How can deathwalkers educate and empower families to receive the best care possible?
4. When do hospice’s blind spots impact the quality of care?
5. What can deathwalkers do when hospice can’t help enough?
6. Where does death midwifery support the hospice system and those enrolled within it?

Every Farewell Education Deathwalker Apprentice is also fully trained in advance care planning and home funeral guidance, both which are traditionally supplemental trainings to core death doula training programs.

When a deathwalker is walking alongside a family in vigil at end-of-life, it is extremely naturally to continue facilitating that vigil with guidance after death.  Home funeral guidance encourages family-led care of the body, using the traditional tools of death midwifery, after death and in home.

This unit explores these questions:

1. Who has been historically responsible for care of the dead and why do we now feel urgency at the time of death
2. What are the basics of the American Funeral industry?
3. Why are after-death rites and rituals important?
4. Are home funerals legal? How are home funerals supportive to communities?
5. How do deathwalkers assist in preparation of the body
6. Who can be served by ecological deathcare?

Even if you are not called to guide families in complete home funerals, being proficient in the basics of care and how to refer to those who are called to support is crucial in educating and advocating for families at end-of-life.

Though we've already covered grief in this curriculum, that was focused on the grief that deathwalkers bear to create the container to serve others who are dying and grieving.  This unit focuses on death doula tools of support for the bereaved.

In this unit we ask:

1. What is grief? Who are the bereaved?
2. How do we culturally support those experiencing bereavement & grief?
3. Who needs grief support from deathwalkers?
4. What should we expect from grieving clients?
5. How does ritual allow us to process and tend to our own grief as end-of-life professionals?
6. Why is it necessary to offer community grief-tending opportunities?

A key component of death doula work is supporting the bereaved and this unit builds confidence in where and when deathwalkers are called to do so.

The 11th unit of Farewell Education's Deathwalker Apprenticeship curriculum is optional.  Not all who are called to death walk are interested in developing a private practice of death midwifery.  But for those who are, having mentorship on getting your death doula business started can be key to efficiently and thoughtfully creating your vision.

This unit asks the following questions:

1. What business basics must be considered when
   establishing a private practice?
2. What professional tools support the private practice of death doulas and midwives?
3. Why is a sustainable death care practice essential?
4. How will your services be designed to align with your calling?
5. How can we find and care for our clients as embodied professionals?

These questions allow us to uncover precisely where Death is calling you next on your journey as deathwalker.