In 2019, I was diagnosed with stage 1b breast cancer and began treatment that continues to this day. (I'm grateful to now have no evidence of disease.) This experience, coupled with the pandemic, brought my mortality into sharp relief and revealed fear I still carried around death. I've always moved in the direction of what I notice I'm afraid of, so I took a deep dive into all things death.

 

Looking back, though, I see I've been on this path since I was young. I remember getting the book The Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide by Derek Humphry as soon as it came out in 1991. I've always been drawn to edges—the places many don't talk about—curious about where fear points, in love with the tender things we hide.

 

I'm grateful for a conversation during this period with my sister, Dr. Helen Kao (an incredible geriatrician and the American Geriatric Society's 2022 Clinician of the Year), that led me to the University of Vermont's End-of-Life Doula Professional Certificate program and End of Life Choices California (EOLCCA). In 2022, I completed both organizations' trainings and began volunteering with EOLCCA, focusing primarily on supporting people choosing Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) on the day they choose to die.

 

I'm ongoingly deepening my understanding in this field, including completing Final Passages' Death Doula, Home Funeral, and Green Burial training in 2024.

 

I've spent decades developing my capacity to be with all that arises through practices like Authentic Movement and yoga. People often tell me they feel safe with me—that they have space to be exactly who they are.

 

After three years of volunteering with many different people and situations, there was a pivotal death. I felt I'd trained my whole life to sit on that bed with that person in that moment. Everything I'd ever done—experienced—served that moment and it was a gift to feel so perfectly utilized by God, the Universe. This experience made me realize I was ready to hang out my shingle as an end-of-life doula.

 

It has been my deepest desire to realize my potential, to do what I'm uniquely here to do. My given Chinese first name means Wise Orchid, and a Vedic astrologer in India once gave me the name Divine Eye. Both names resonate and speak to the winding path that's led me here.

 

If our paths are meant to cross, you'll be contributing to my life as much as I hope to contribute to yours.

 

Antonia