Oleksandra Nekipelova sat down at her desk in her apartment, lit a small candle and opened her computer to join a video call.
“Tell me, what do you want to talk about this time?” Ms. Nekipelova asked. Valeriia Korotchenko, her client, replied that she felt “basically powerless in the face of war.” by Russia in Ukraine. The almost daily Russian air strikes have been destruction and death a new normal in her life, she said.
“I lost faith that I would be able to live peacefully,” Ms. Korotchenko told Ms. Nekipelova, who lives in Lviv, Ukraine.
Ms. Nekipelova is a “midwife,” a professional whose job is to support and guide people who are dealing with intense grief or facing death—their own or that of a loved one. Unlike psychotherapists, death doulas typically do not attempt to address mental health issues. They do not provide medical care or therapy. Instead, their work focuses on providing 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 distant news of a loved one killed in action or the not-so-distant boom of a missile crashing into the ground. an apartment building.
Courses have been introduced to train death doulas with the support of international and local organisations, although it remains an unregulated profession. There have been reports of a sharp increase in the number of clients, a trend that fits with what health professionals say is a growing need to provide psychological and emotional support to traumatised Ukrainians.
Working largely through word of mouth, the midwives helped those who were grieving, but also helped those struggling with a general sense of loss, such as those who had fled homes damaged by shelling or those who yearned for the stability of their pre-war lives.
“There is a huge need for end-of-life conversations and support communities in wartime,” said Douglas Simpson, executive director of the International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA), which is based in the United States and has trained several Ukrainian death doulas since the war began.
Bereavement helpers play a crucial role in Ukraine, where grief has long been seen as a personal struggle, complicating efforts to help the grieving.
Some euthanasia workers and their clients say the culture of avoiding talking about death and emotional distress is a legacy of the Soviet Union, where the emphasis was on enduring hardship rather than begging for help, which could be seen as a sign of weakness.
“People don’t know what to say to someone who has lost a loved one. They don’t know much about death or grief. It’s a taboo subject,” Nekipelova said in a recent interview. “The role of a death doula is to create a space for the person to talk about it.”
There have been many reasons for the grief in Ukraine over the past two years. Nearly two-thirds of Ukrainians have relatives or friends who died in the conflicta survey conducted last year by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found. And millions of people — nearly a third of the population — have been forced to flee their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“Because of the war, many people need support,” said Alla Savchenko, founder of the Death Foundation, a Ukraine-based training program that began shortly before the Russian invasion. A death doula herself, she said she has seen her clientele increase by 50 percent in the past two years.
She noted that requests were coming not just from people who had lost loved ones but also from people who “had to move to another country, lost their jobs”, what she described as “losing a significant part of their lives”.
Some people also seek the help of a euthanasia specialist to understand how to deal with a grieving loved one.
Take Valeria Tereschenko, 35, a soft-spoken court clerk. She contacted Ms. Nekipelova after her husband’s brother was killed in combat. His body was never found.
Mrs. Tereschenko said her husband, a soldier, struggled to cope with the news and began drinking more and taking tranquilizers. Condolences did not help. He would calm himself by touching Mrs. Tereschenko’s long black hair.
“I felt like I was losing my husband,” Ms. Tereschenko said, so she asked Ms. Nekipelova what to do. “She pushed me to really listen to him,” she said, to accept his silence and wait for the moment “when he starts talking.”
Tereschenko adds that assisted dying helps “understand more about death, about all the stages of acceptance: grief, denial, anger, then acceptance.”
While many people associate the term doula with a birth attendant, in recent years more and more people have come to recognize the need for support at the end of life. This includes companionship, listening to their life story, or discussing their fears. Doulas and their clients can meet anywhere: in a coffee shop, in a park, at home.
“We don’t set any goals for our clients and we don’t push them,” says Yevhen Rybka, 25, a death doula. “Both death and grief are natural processes and we just follow them.”
Zarina Zheliaskova, 34, who became a death doula shortly after the war began, said her contribution was to “create a space where people can express everything.” She described a typical session as a 50-minute discussion, of which she “only does 5 percent of the talking.” “The rest is about the client,” she said.
Ms Nekipelova said she only asks clients a few questions. “A grieving person doesn’t need to be told anything, but needs to be listened to,” she said.
Tatiana Romanova-Pavlova, one of Ms. Zheliaskova’s clients, lives in Kharkiv, A northeastern Ukrainian city was shelled by Russia.. She said the taboo surrounding death in Ukraine has not prepared Ukrainians to deal with war-related loss and grief. “In our culture, you are programmed to forget as soon as possible,” she said.
People in mourning often hear “phrases like ‘Don’t cry,’ ‘It’s not that serious,’ ‘You’ll forget everything soon,’ ‘You’ll find a new husband soon,’ ‘Everything will be fine.’ All of these are designed to suppress emotions,” she said.
Talking to a death doula is a way to “release” pent-up emotions, Zheliaskova said. But she and other death doulas also point out that hearing about death all day can make it difficult to cope with their own losses. Both women have developed techniques to calm their minds, including hiking in parks and near rivers, hanging out at cafes and, perhaps most importantly, joking with friends.
“This is also very important, because if I keep talking about death all day, I will lose the life that I want to give to others,” said Nekipelova.
“We have a joke with doulas,” she adds. “There’s this concept of work-life balance. We call it the death-life balance.”
