Grieving Ukrainians turn to 'Death Doulas' for support

Kyiv: Oleksandra Nekipelova sat down at a desk in her apartment, lit a small candle and opened her computer to join a video call.

"Tell me, please, what would you like to talk about this time?" Nekipelova asked. Valeriia Korotchenko, her client, responded that she was feeling "fundamentally powerless against the war" launched by Russia on Ukraine. Near-daily Russian air attacks had made destruction and death a new normal in her life, she said.

"I lose faith that I will ever be able to live peacefully," Korotchenko told Nekipelova, who lives in Lviv, Ukraine.

Nekipelova is a "death doula," a professional whose job is to support and guide people who are coping with an acute sense of grief or facing death -- their own or those of their loved ones. Unlike psychotherapists, death doulas do not typically try to fix mental health issues. They do not offer medical care or therapy. Instead, their work is focused on offering support and compassion.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the work of death doulas has grown in Ukraine, a country where death has become a daily reality for many, whether through the distant news of a relative killed in battle or the not-so-distant thud of a missile smashing into an apartment building.

Courses have been introduced to train death doulas with the support of international and local organizations, although it remains an unregulated profession. There have been reports of a sharp increase in the number of clients, a trend that matches what health experts say is a growing need to provide psychological and emotional support to traumatized Ukrainians.

Working mainly by word of mouth, death doulas have helped the bereaved, but also people struggling with a more general sense of loss, such as those who have fled a home damaged by shelling or who long for the stable life they had before the war.

"There is a strong need for end-of-life conversations and supportive communities during times of war," said Douglas Simpson, the executive director of the International End-of-Life Doula Association, or INELDA, which is based in the United States and has trained several Ukrainian death doulas since the war began.

Death doulas have proved crucial in Ukraine, where grief has long been seen as a personal struggle, complicating efforts to help the bereaved.

Several death doulas and their clients said the culture of refraining from talking about death and emotional suffering was a legacy of the Soviet Union, which emphasized enduring hardship rather than asking for help, something that could be perceived as a sign of weakness.

"People don't know what to tell a person who has lost a loved one. They don't know much about death or sorrow. This topic is a taboo," Nekipelova said in a recent interview. "The role of a death doula is to provide a space for that person to talk about this."

There have been many reasons for grief in Ukraine over the past two years. Nearly two-thirds of Ukrainians have a relative or friend who have died in the conflict, a survey conducted last year by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed. And millions -- nearly one-third of the population -- have fled their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration.

"Because of the war, many people need support," said Alla Savchenko, a founder of the Death Foundation, a training program based in Ukraine that started shortly before Russia's invasion. A death doula herself, she said she had seen a 50 per cent increase in her clients over the past two years.

Requests, she noted, have come not only from people who have lost a loved one, but also from people "who had to move to another country, who lost jobs," what she described as "losing an important part of your life."

Some people have also turned to death doulas to help them understand how to behave with bereaved relatives.

Take Valeriia Tereschenko, 35, a soft-spoken court worker. She contacted Nekipelova after her husband's brother was killed in combat. His body was never recovered.

Tereschenko said her husband, a soldier, struggled to cope with the news and began drinking more alcohol and taking tranquilizers. Words of condolence did not help. The husband would calm himself by touching Valeriia Tereschenko's long black hair.

"I saw that I was losing my husband," Tereschenko said, so she asked Nekipelova what to do. "She gave me a push to really listen to him," she said, to accept his silences and wait for the moment when "he started talking."

Death doulas, Tereschenko added, help to "know more about death, about all these stages of acceptance: mourning, denial, anger, then acceptance."

Though many associate the term doula with someone who helps during birth, in recent years, more people have recognized the need for assistance at the end of life. That includes keeping them company, listening to their life stories or discussing their fears. The doulas and their clients can meet anywhere: in cafes, in a park, at home.

"We don't set any goals for our clients, and we don't push them," said Yevhen Rybka, 25, a death doula. "Both dying and grieving are natural processes, and we're just following up with this."

Zarina Zheliaskova, 34, who became a death doula shortly after the war began, said that her contribution was "to create a space where people can express everything." She described a typical session as a 50-minute discussion in which she does "only 5%" of the talking. "The rest is all about the client," she said.

Nekipelova says she asks her clients few questions. "A person in grief doesn't need to be told anything, but to be heard," she said.

Tatiana Romanova-Pavlova, one of Zheliaskova's clients, lives in Kharkiv, a northeastern Ukrainian city battered by Russian shelling. She said the taboo around death in Ukraine had not prepared Ukrainians to deal with the loss and grief associated with a war. "In our mentality, you're sort of programmed to forget as soon as possible," she said.

Romanova-Pavlova said people in mourning would often hear "phrases like, 'Don't cry,' 'It's nothing serious,' 'You'll forget everything soon,' 'You'll find a new husband soon,' 'Everything will be OK.' All of this is aimed at suppressing emotions," she said.

Talking to death doulas is a way "to release" repressed feelings, Zheliaskova said. But she and other death doulas also pointed out that hearing about death all day could be hard to cope with their own loss. Both women have developed techniques to ease their minds, including taking long walks in parks and near rivers, hanging out in cafes and, perhaps most important, joking with friends.

"This is also very important, because if I just keep talking about death all the time, then I'll lose the life that I want to give to others," Nekipelova said.

"We have a joke with the doulas," she added. "There's the concept of work-life balance. We call it death-life balance."