Why famous people want to be death doulas

Nicole Kidman is getting a new job.

The actress already dominates TV and film, pulling in tens of millions of dollars a year for roles in hits like Nine Perfect Strangers and Babygirl. Her new gig is less glamorous, way less lucrative, and maybe more necessary: She’s training to be a death doula.

Death doulas, also called death companions, provide nonmedical care to dying people and their families, helping with everything from funeral arrangements to sitting with people at the end of their lives. It’s an increasingly necessary role, many who work in the industry say, in a time when a fragmented healthcare system and an increasingly individualistic culture leave people without support at the end of their lives. 

“As my mother was passing, she was lonely, and there was only so much the family could provide,” Kidman said in an appearance earlier this month. “Between my sister and I, we have so many children and our careers and our work, and wanting to take care of her because my father wasn’t in the world anymore, and that’s when I went, ‘I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care.'”

Death doulas are those people, and Kidman isn’t alone in her interest in becoming one of them. Chloé Zhao, the acclaimed director of Hamnet and other films, told the New York Times earlier this year that she had trained as a death doula to cope with her fear of mortality. A character serving as a death doula also appeared in a recent storyline on The Pitt.

People who work with the dying say it’s no surprise that celebrities want to learn more about guiding others through their final days. It’s part of a larger push by people of all walks of life to get more comfortable with death, an inevitable fact of human existence that contemporary American culture too often pushes us to ignore.

“It’s something that we all grapple with,” said Alua Arthur, founder of Going With Grace, a death doula training organization. “We’ve been quiet about it a little too long.”

What a death doula does

Humans have always needed help dealing with grief and loss, as well as with the practical challenges of caring for a dying loved one. Historically, those challenges have often been handled by extended family members or by designated people within a religious or cultural tradition. “There may be a bereavement community in your church, and that bereavement community is what comes in to provide care leading up to, during, and after a death,” thanatologist Cole Imperi told me. 

But today, many Americans live far away from their families, and more than a quarter aren’t affiliated with any religion. Dying people and their loved ones also face logistical hurdles: The healthcare system is set up to care for sick patients, and funeral homes are designed to receive dead bodies, but there’s very little in between, Imperi, who also founded the School of American Thanatology, said.

Enter the death doula. These professionals can help dying people in myriad ways, Imperi said. They can help get the person’s affairs in order by labeling items set aside for loved ones. They aren’t doctors, but they can provide basic physical care, like swabbing a dying person’s mouth with water to make them feel more comfortable. In states that allow medical aid in dying, some doulas specialize in guiding people through the process of obtaining and taking life-ending medication.

Death doulas can also advocate for a dying person with doctors and other medical staff. “A lot of times, people just will believe doctors as the expert in a situation when there’s actually a lot of room for negotiation, questions, space, time,” said Madison Barras, who trained as a death doula and now helps people think about their own mortality. 

After someone dies, a doula can help prepare the body for transport to a morgue or funeral home, assist with religious rituals, and support grieving family members. While some death doulas operate on a volunteer basis, the service can cost families anywhere between $25 and $100 per hour, and is typically not covered by insurance.

Why more people want to be death doulas

Death doulas occupy a unique space in a culture that still shies away from the reality of bodily decay. The United States has a “cultural resistance to aging and falling apart or weakness,” Arthur said. “We shove it away.”

Some of the country’s wealthiest and most prominent people have bought into that resistance — Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Bryan Johnson have gone to extreme lengths in a quest to reverse aging. 

But in recent years, more people are moving in the opposite direction: toward a greater embrace of mortality. The pandemic, in particular, forced the whole country into a new intimacy with death and dying, Barras said. “It sort of bubbled to the surface that, Oh, this is happening to everybody, all of the time.”

That’s been coupled with a rise in emotional openness, fueled by social media confessionals, Barras said. “It’s more acceptable and encouraged to share the human aspect of being alive,” Barras said.

“This is not a trend or fad. It’s ancient and will continue long in the future, long after I and Nicole Kidman are dead.”

Alua Arthur, founder of Going With Grace, a death doula training group

As more people grow comfortable with the idea of death — and search for ways to make the process more meaningful and less isolating — interest in death doula training has risen.

When Arthur founded Going With Grace in 2015, “nobody knew what I was talking about,” she said. “Now I hear people that say, Oh, my neighbor is a death doula.” 

Many people become interested in death doula work after a personal loss — Barras, for example, started training after caring for her dying grandmother. 

After being with a dying person, “you are often left with a really beautiful feeling of curiosity,” Imperi said. “Once you experience that, it ends up being something that you want to find more space for in your life.”

Others turn to death doula training to get their heads around the idea of their own mortality. “I have been terrified of death my whole life,” Zhao told the New York Times. “Because I’m so scared of it, I have no choice but to start to develop a healthier relationship with it, or the second half of life would be too hard.”

She’s not alone. About a quarter of students who pursue certification at the School of American Thanatology do so at least in part because of a fear of death, Imperi said.

Learning about death is just “another way that we learn about our bodies,” Imperi said. “We’re built to be born, we’re built to die, and it’s a part of us.”

That’s as true for ordinary working people as it is for multimillionaire actors. “You can’t buy your way out of people dying or of yourself dying,” Arthur said. “For all time, nobody’s been able to get out of it.”

People who support the dying say they’re glad that celebrities are bringing attention to their work. “I’m grateful that somebody of status is bringing awareness to this very, very human work that affects everybody, regardless of how much money or power you have,” Arthur said.

But, she emphasized, that work has always existed, just under different names. “This is not a trend or fad,” she said. “It’s ancient and will continue long in the future, long after I and Nicole Kidman are dead.”