Are you a caring person looking to support others without depleting yourself?
Deepen your understanding of the essentials of compassionate care. Learn useful, practical techniques that will enable you to more confidently support others through major life transitions.
- Do you feel drawn to offer support during life’s most challenging transitions, like the end of life, death, and grief?
- Do you aspire to work or volunteer within deathcare?
- Are you working or volunteering within deathcare already and want to sustain your own wellness while offering compassion?
Cultivating the Doula Heart – Full Day Workshop
Those with a doula heart step into the most intense, vulnerable thresholds of life to hold a hand, wipe a tear, and honor all that is meaningful. Come deepen your understanding of the essentials of compassionate care. Learn useful, practical approaches and techniques that will enable you to more confidently support people through major life transitions.
Welcoming professionals, volunteers as well as those interested in caring for friends, neighbors, and loved ones, because doula work is human work. Strengthening related skills and sensitivities will help you enter into the unknown, find calm, and offer what’s truly beneficial.
- Already completed a doula training? Lovely! This offering will deepen your skillset and confidence.
- Haven’t taken a doula training? Great! This is a wonderful learning opportunity for anyone planning to offer emotional support within their community.
During this comprehensive workshop you can expect engaging teaching and discussions, thought-provoking prompts, creative writing, processing time, and visualizations. Our main topics will include:
- Tenets of Doula Support
- Components of Compassion
- Thresholds & Liminal Space
- Working with “Enoughness”
- Personalizing with Plans
- Tools of the Trade
- The “Ins” of Making & Holding Space
This workshop is held on Zoom (event dates below). You’ll receive pre-work to get you prepared as well as bonus work for continued exploration. Incorporated into the workshop will be slide presentations, examples from the field, breakout rooms, and time for Q&A. Groups size is limited to ensure interactivity.
The workshop content is inspired by the popular guidebook, Cultivating the Doula Heart, and the author’s direct experiences supporting others.
Kind Words from Past Participants:
Additional Testimonials:
“I LOVED this day and everything about Francesca. She was warm, intelligent, compassionate, engaging and had SOO much to offer. I found her so inspiring…A fantastic day I feel so grateful for!”
“Really good balance of experience, stories, reflections and concepts being integrated. Covered so much in such a short period of time.”
“Will refer friends, family, and coworkers to attend.”
“Excellent – well thought out and presented.”
“This was impressive, inspirational, and rewarding.”
“Thank you for lighting the spark and showing us how to open our hearts.”
Contact me with any questions or to discuss a private workshop event!
*This workshop will not focus on how to launch and run your own doula practice, as that isn’t everyone’s goal, but we can address any specific questions you may have.
Your Instructor
Francesca Lynn Arnoldy has been a community doula since 2009, supporting people through birth, death, and grief. She is the author of Cultivating the Doula Heart (guidebook), Map of Memory Lane (picture book), and The Death Doula’s Guide to Living Fully and Dying Prepared (interactive workbook). Francesca is a published researcher with the Vermont Conversation Lab and she runs the Death Literacy Educator Course & Community. A trusted thought leader, Francesca has been featured in articles by The New York Times, Fast Company, Newsweek, The Verge, and AARP. She regularly presents on life-and-death topics with hopes of encouraging people to support one another through times of intensity.
REFLECTIONS:
To me, being a doula is not only my life’s work, it’s a calling.
Being a doula has meant fifteen years of supporting people through some of their most trying moments–when strength and trust are doubted and tested. When all else fades to let what’s pressing and vital crystallize.
I’ve rubbed the backs of birthing women as they’ve welcomed new life into the world. I’ve helped bathe and soothe newborns who seem too fragile to handle for first-time parents. I’ve held the hands of those wrecked by loss. I’ve sat close to people as they’ve found their voices and told their stories.
I’ve witnessed hope and heartbreak, bliss and bleakness, gratitude and grief–sometimes all in the same hour.
This work brings me back home to myself and a sense of shared humanity, again and again. What a gift. –FLA
Francesca Lynn Arnoldy 