Animal Death Doula
grief, death, and ceremonial support for you and your animal companion
Animal Death Doula
Assisting you and your beloved animal companion to meet death with as much grace and ease as possible.
When someone has a bond with an animal, it can be even deeper than a bond to a human—We open our hearts more widely to animals.
I offer animal death doula support so that people don’t have to go through loss alone.
Losing a beloved animal companion can be devastating, and bring up other places of undigested grief and loss. It can also be a profound opportunity to meet grief and death with openness, leading to more love, fulfillment, and aliveness.
Animal Death Doula Support can include:
Grief support
Help caretaking
Support in decision making
Facilitating deeper connection
Honoring your pet’s essence
Being with children in navigating pet loss
Being present during transition
Creating ceremony around death and burial
Grief Support
Get support in being with grief, upcoming or past, around a pet.
Animal grief is not always validated, even though the loss can be the same or even deeper than in a human relationship. When there is loss, there can be an immense chasm of grief.
I offer grief support so that people don’t have to go through this alone.
We can experience the same physiological loss in our nervous system when a beloved animal companion dies that we do losing a human. Our nervous systems go through a massive upheaval in the loss of physical connection, co-regulation, identity, and companionship.
It is almost impossible to be in this alone. Having grief support allows us to go through the grieving process—to make sense of the loss—and adjust to life without your beloved friend. This is a way for us to go through the personal death of grief and come out the other side with deeper love and more aliveness. Showing up more fully to the preciousness of your own life through surrendering to grief honors the spirit of your beloved animal companion and how their love changed you.
Your grief can be a medicine.
Children and Pet Loss
The death of a pet is often a child’s first experience of death and deep grief. They are curious. They are learning about how to relate to death and grief by how they see their caregivers and adults around them handling it, and by how the adults are present with them or not in the process.
By co-creating ceremony before, during, and/or after the death of a pet, a child can have a sense of empowerment, resource, and agency that will help them cope with the loss.
Grief ceremony will give them time and space to process. As well as allow them to directly experience the beauty of death as an integral part of life, rather than being afraid of it. It can also be supportive for you and your children to have another adult around to help answer questions and be present while you are in your own journey with the grief and loss, and all it brings up for you.
Pet Doula Services
Single Sessions - Each Session Can Include
Grief support
Pre- and post-death doula support
Ceremonial support
Monthly Support - 4 Sessions
Grief support
Pre- and post-death doula support
Ceremonial support
Intuitive Craniosacral style bodywork (if in person)
+ available by text in between sessions
3 Month Comprehensive Support - 12 sessions
Grief support
Pre- and post-death doula support
Ritual support
Intuitive Craniosacral style bodywork (if in person)
+ available by text in between sessions
About Xena Tiger Queen
Mikyö’s Journey to Animal Death Doula
Xena Tiger Queen, came into my life when I was opening to death. In our 17 years together we navigated many deaths and re-births. She was my best friend, the one I let into the deep places in my heart no one else was allowed.
She died 3 weeks after my adoptive mother died. She helped me to death doula my mom to a peaceful passing. I couldn’t have done it without her. She did it while she herself was approaching the other side.
When it came time for Xena’s death I created a ritual. I had her loved ones tell her goodbye. I beautified the space, prepared her for what was to come, and sang her soul to the other side. The vet said she wished everyone would show up for their beloved pet in such a way at the end of their life. That crystallized the desire that was already brewing in my heart to work with people around pet loss and grief. It expanded to include death.