I’ve been thinking lately about doulas, not because I’m planning to become one, but because the word itself keeps nudging at me.

A doula is someone who accompanies another person through a passage. We usually think about birth doulas, and more recently we’ve begun hearing about death doulas, but what interests me is not so much the role as the way of being.

A doula doesn’t make the birth happen. She doesn’t stop death from coming. She doesn’t take over the process or decide how someone else should move through it. She stays close. She listens. She pays attention. She offers what she can and, perhaps most importantly, she doesn’t confuse presence with fixing.

That last part catches me, because I have spent a good deal of my life believing that if something was difficult, painful, confusing, or broken, I ought to be doing something about it.

I know my Inner Fixer very well.

She efficiently makes lists and plans. She wants to know what the problem is and what we are going to do about it. She is especially fond of reminding me to get a grip and keep moving.

And, to be fair, she has been useful. There are plenty of things in life that actually do need fixing.

But I’m beginning to realize how often I call on her when there is nothing to fix.

The Doula Within Knows the Difference

Grief is not a problem to solve. Neither is uncertainty.

Neither is growing older, or discovering that my body doesn’t work quite the way it once did, or realizing that a role I have carried for years no longer fits, or waking one morning to find that life has changed while I wasn’t looking.

Those things may require decisions eventually, but first they may simply need to be lived.

That is where this idea of an inner doula has begun to intrigue me.

What if, instead of immediately asking, “What am I going to do about this?” I asked, “Can I stay with myself while this is happening?”

I don’t think I have asked myself that question very often.

Usually I’m already three steps ahead, looking for meaning, looking for the lesson, looking for something useful I can make out of whatever has happened.

Even grief can become a project if I’m not careful.

The Doula Within Doesn’t Rush Grief

In these weeks since saying goodbye to Dekker, I’ve noticed how quickly I want to do something with sorrow.

I can write about sadness or about what he taught me. I can look through photographs and decide what I want to keep and what I’m willing to trash.

I can begin figuring out what life looks like without the routines that shaped nearly nine years of my days.

And all of those things have their place.

But his absence is also teaching me that sorrow sometimes needs something much simpler.

It needs me to sit beside it. Not for me to study.  Not to turn it into wisdom before it is ready. Not to tell myself that I should be farther along by now.

Just sit beside it.

That sounds almost too easy, and yet I find it very difficult.

Maybe that is because sitting beside something means admitting that, for the moment, I am not in charge of what happens next.

The Doula Within Makes Room

I’ve written before about making room for feelings, and I’m discovering that I still have a lot to learn about that.

I have spent much of my life being very good at deciding which feelings were useful.

Gratitude? Certainly.

Hope? Bring it on.

Courage? Always welcome.

But sorrow, fear, anger, loneliness, helplessness? I have often treated those as visitors who ought not stay too long.

I’m wondering now whether the doula within behaves differently. Maybe she doesn’t stand at the door deciding who gets in.

Maybe she simply says, “All right. You’re here. Let’s see what you need.”

Some days sorrow may sit right beside gratitude. I can feel peaceful one hour and hollow the next.

None of those feelings cancel each other.

I think the inner doula understands that better than the inner fixer does.

The Doula Within Listens

I have also been thinking about how much advice we give ourselves. (The “Oughttas and the Shouldas” are singing their refrain (with a terrible sound track!)

“Do more…do less.

Let it go…be grateful.

Stop worrying…get back to work” 

Sometimes I wonder what might happen if I replaced one of those “shoulds” with a question.

What is actually here? Not what I think ought to be here. Not what would make me look strong or wise or spiritually mature.

What is really here?

Some mornings I find the answer when I write my morning pages. Sometimes I realize what is really here as I sit by the window.

Sometimes this awareness arrives in silence, or prayer, or during a walk when I have finally stopped trying to figure something out.

And sometimes I don’t get an answer at all.

 Growing Older May
Require This Kind of Doula

Perhaps this is part of what growing older asks of us.

By this stage of life, most of us have crossed plenty of thresholds already, but the crossings don’t stop: our bodies change, relationships change, people we love die, old assumptions no longer fit.

Things we thought we would always be able to do become harder, while other things that once seemed terribly important lose their hold on us.

Something is always ending.

Something else, although we may not recognize it yet, may also be beginning.

That is another reason I like the image of a doula.

Birth and death seem to belong at opposite ends of life, yet both are thresholds.

In both places, something known is being left behind and something unknown lies ahead.

Don’t we cross thresholds all through life?

The Doula Within Is Not
Another Self-Improvement Project

I can already hear my fixer asking, “Fine. So how do we develop an inner doula?”

There she goes again.

I don’t think this is something I can turn into another program for improving myself.

Maybe it begins much more simply—I can give myself a few minutes before reaching for the next distraction.

I can write without trying to produce something worth publishing.

I can notice when tears come and not immediately reach for a tissue because I’m embarrassed by them.

I can put my hand over my heart and say, “This is hard,” without adding, “but I’ll be fine.”

I can wait before deciding what a difficult experience means, and allow myself not to know the answers.

None of those things looks very impressive, but perhaps that is exactly the point.

The inner doula isn’t trying to impress anyone. She is simply helping me remain present to my own life.

And I think I need that.

Maybe you do too.

Listening for the Doula Within

There will always be things that require action. I’m not suggesting that we sit quietly while the roof leaks or the bills pile up.

But I’m beginning to see that some of the deepest parts of life cannot be repaired with action.

They have to be accompanied.

So I have been carrying one question with me, and I’d like to pass it along to you:

What in me is asking to be
accompanied rather than fixed?

You don’t have to answer it immediately.

In fact, maybe the first practice of becoming our own soul doula is simply learning to sit with the question for a while.

And if you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear what that question brings up for you. There may be more of us learning how to accompany ourselves than we realize.

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