Ebon Bloom Death Doula

Thresholds reveal their outlines They don't do so fully or loudly,
but enough to feel the shift beneath the surface.

This is the work of the Interpreter: to listen for the messages inside the moment,
to read the symbols rising through mist and light,
to sense the pattern forming in the quiet.Every threshold has a language.

Today it speaks in water and mountain, in breath and reflection, in the soft unveiling of what’s becoming. Something is moving.
Something is asking to be understood.

And I’m here, reading the unseen with you.

😻WONDERING WEDNESDAY: 🦮

🐕‍🦺Do you think beloved pets should be allowed to visit their humans at the end of life?

For many people, pets aren't "just animals." They're family, confidants, daily companions, and steady sources of comfort through life's hardest moments. A familiar paw resting on a hand, the soft weight of a beloved dog curled nearby, or the gentle purr of a cat can offer a kind of peace that words often cannot.

Yet hospitals and care facilities must balance infection control, allergies, safety concerns, and the needs of other patients.

At Ebon Bloom, we often witness how meaningful connection can be at the end of life, and for some, that connection includes a cherished pet.

💭 What are your thoughts? Should hospitals make exceptions to allow pets to say goodbye? Have you experienced a meaningful moment involving an animal companion during a loved one's final days?
Share your perspective in the comments. We'd love to hear your story. 🐾💜

🌿 TIP TUESDAY: Create a Comfort Care Basket

When death is near, even the simplest tasks can feel surprisingly heavy. A comfort care basket in the room can be a gentle way to support yourself or someone you love through transitions.

Consider including:
✨ A favorite tea or comforting beverage
✨ Lip balm and hand lotion
✨ Soft tissues
✨ A cozy blanket or pair of socks
✨ Easy-to-eat snacks
✨ A journal and pen
✨ A candle or calming scent
✨ A meaningful photo, note, or small keepsake

The goal isn't to fix grief. It's to create a small pocket of relaxation when energy, focus, and comfort may be in short supply.

Sometimes healing begins with a warm cup of tea, a soft blanket, and the reminder that all involved deserve tenderness.

What would you place in your comfort care basket? 💚

MOURNING MONDAY:

Some days grief is a wave. Some days it’s fog. Some days it’s just… background static.

If mourning had a sound for you today, what would it be?

The Interpreter of Thresholds: This is the second pillar of my work as a death doula.

There are moments when the world softens, when the edges blur, when the next step is felt before it’s seen. My work is to listen in these in‑between places — to read the fog,
the silence, and the shift beneath the surface.

Every threshold speaks. Some speak in symbols, some in shadows, some in the language of becoming.

If you’re standing at an edge today, I’m here —
interpreting the moment with you.

SHARING SUNDAY:

Have the difficult conversations. Ask the tough questions. Normalize death talk.

Soooo, one night Hallie Bateman lay awake in the dark and thought: my mother is going to die.

Like actually die. Be gone. And Hallie - twenty-something, not ready, already frightened - began cataloguing everything she would lose alongside her.

The advice. The phone calls. The person who knew her before she knew herself.

The next morning she walked into her mother's kitchen and asked something thatmost of us think but never say out loud.

"Can you write me instructions? For after you're gone?"

Suzy Hopkins - writer, mother, apparently the most game woman alive - looked at her daughter. And sat down and began.

The first instruction in "What to Do When I'm Gone: A Mother's Wisdom to Her Daughter" by Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman is this:

"Pour yourself a stiff glass of whiskey and make some fajitas."

I need you to understand that this sentence is both completely funny and the most tender thing I have read this year. Because it is so entirely, specifically motherly. The way a mother who knows her daughter knows exactly what she needs on the worst day of her life. Not a platitude. Not a scripture. Whiskey. Fajitas. Start there.

And then Suzy kept going.

Day one without her. Week one. Month one. Year one. The life beyond that. How to choose a partner. How to bake the quiche. How to forgive yourself. How to survive the grief that arrives without warning in supermarket car parks on ordinary Tuesdays. How to live - fully, bravely, with your whole chest - in a world that no longer contains her.

Hallie illustrated every page. Quirky and colourful and warm in the way that her mother's words are warm. Both of them reaching towardeach other across the distance this project was really about - not the distance of death, not yet, but the distance between people who love each other more than they say, more than they show, more than the ordinary days ever quite allow.

1. The conversation you keep postponing is the one that matters most.
Hallie and Suzy created something extraordinary not because the idea was unusual but because they actually did it. Most of us think about having this conversation. About asking our mothers what they want us to know. About saying what we most need to say before there is no longer time to say it. We just never quite get around to it. This book is the most loving possible argument for getting around to it. Now. Today. Before the Tuesday mornings run out.

2. A mother's love is most itself in the specific, practical, completely ordinary details.
Not in the grand declarations. In the whiskey and the fajitas. In the quiche recipe written in her handwriting. In the instruction to call your brother even when it is hard. Suzy's advice is funny and wise and occasionally profound - but what makes it devastating is how completely it sounds like her. How every instruction carries the specific warmth of a person who has been paying attention to her daughter her whole life and has been saving it all up for this.

3. Grief is survivable - and someone who loves you is trying to prove it.
The instructions do not stop at the funeral. They continue. Into the months and years and ordinary moments that grief ambushes without warning. Suzy is honest about how hard those moments will be. She is also completely clear that Hallie will survive them. That there is life on the other side. That the mother who loved her enough to write this down loved her enough to believe in the person she would become after the loss.

4. Reading this will make you want to call your mother immediately.
One reader. Two minutes in. Already reaching for the phone. This is not a coincidence. This is what happens when a book tells the truth about love and time and the specific, irreversible tragedy of all the things we mean to say and keep not saying. You will finish "What to Do When I'm Gone" and look at your phone. And if she is still there - if there are still ordinary Tuesdays left - you will call.

And if she is already gone. If the Tuesdays have already run out. Sit with this book. She would have written you something very much like it.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4fsjVoN

👑 Field Notes of a Rising Queen👑

Before the crown, there is becoming.

There are seasons of uncertainty, learning, unlearning, tending, and growing. Seasons where the path forward isn't fully visible, but something within us knows we're changing.

This first field note is a reflection on the "pre-queen" stage. It is an often overlooked chapter where strength is still taking shape, wisdom is being gathered, and identity is quietly (or not) unfolding.

As a death doula, I've learned that transformation isn't reserved for endings. It lives in beginnings, transitions, and all the tender spaces in between.

📖 Read the full blog through the link in my bio.
I'd love to know: What lesson has your own becoming taught you lately?

🌿👑📖

☠️ SILLY SATURDAY:

Challenge ☠️
You've just died. The 4th picture in your camera roll is what took you out.

Was it: 📸 An aggressive sourdough starter? 🌮 A suspiciously loaded taco? 🐕 A zooming dog with no regard for physics? 🛒 A Target clearance aisle you swore you'd "just browse"?

Drop your 4th photo below and tell us the completely ridiculous story of how it became your downfall. Bonus points if it's absurd enough to earn a spot in the Hall of Unfortunate Legends. 😆

FACT FRIDAY: 🌎 🌍

Every culture on Earth has rituals that honor the land as a living witness.

Today, on World Environment Day, I’m remembering that grief, belonging, and transition are not just human experiences — they’re ecological ones.

The Earth holds our stories, our footprints, our thresholds. When we tend to the land, we tend to ourselves. When we heal, the Earth feels it too.

Ebon Bloom is rooted in that reciprocity — the quiet truth that the people and the Earth are one.

What's one thing you can do today to help the environment?

🌈 THOUGHT THURSDAY:

🌈 As we celebrate Pride Month, I am especially thinking about a group of people I know and I'm holding a question close:

Who gets remembered, honored, and mourned openly?

For many LGBTQ+ people, chosen family has always been family. Yet during serious illness, death, and grief, those relationships have not always been recognized, respected, or included in the ways they deserve.

Death care is about more than paperwork and plans. It's about witnessing a life fully, honoring the people who mattered, and making space for every story, every identity, and every love.

This Pride Month, I invite you to reflect:

💭 What does it mean to create end-of-life care where everyone feels seen, respected, and remembered exactly as they are?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

🌿