Death Doula Mikayla Ricks
I’ve been flirting with death my whole life. My mom was in great danger of miscarrying me. I had a heart condition when I was 5 that could have killed me. I was suicidal as a teen. I got COVID-19 and was left disabled by it. At some point, any fear I had of death waned, and I almost view it as a distant friend now.
My mother actually named me after a friend of hers that passed away when she was a teenager. I find myself thinking about that more often than not – especially after entering the death industry. There's a saying that goes, "What's in a name?" that I think about often now. Well, death is in my name. Death work is something I was born into before I knew it was possible for me to do something like this. I can only do my best to honor that.
I know this might seem silly, but I got into death doula work because of TikTok. Last summer, there was a video of this community of indigenous people that came across my timeline that I have never forgotten. This was around the time all of those kids were being uncovered from the residential schools. Like, hundreds of kids at that time. The local indigenous community traveled to that school and took a month long trip on foot to walk their spirits back home.
That moved me, and I still get emotional every time I talk about it.
A few weeks after seeing that video I saw something else on TikTok about death doulas and I thought, 'What is a death doula?'
I don't have a medical background. I don’t even have a background in volunteering for hospices, but the more I looked into it, the more I thought, 'I can do this.'
After spending weeks doing constant insomnia-inducing research, I decided to look up a training program. I know you don't have to be officially certified to work as a death doula, but I felt like I was going in blind and I knew I had a lot to learn so I decided to look for a school. I eventually found the International Doula Life Movement. I graduated in December and I just got my first client last month. It’s been a very natural process for me.
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If you think about it, we've been conditioned to not think about death. Be afraid of it, actually. I mean, how many stories in the media include people trying to find immortality because they're SO afraid of death?
I'm there to help with that.
I have to make sure I don't sensationalize death – especially for marginalized communities like mine that see so much hate crime and murder on a daily basis. Society doesn’t care about our well being unless we can provide trauma porn.
That trauma manifests in ugly ways. Part of the reason that I wanted to be a death doula in the first place was because I wanted to help my community.
Death is our only common birthright. Some people refuse to talk about death, or don’t even know how to get that conversation going. But when they book with me, I take it as a good sign. It means they're probably ready to talk. They’re ready to be empowered by their mortality rather than petrified.
You can find Mikayla Ricks on Twitter @fieldbones | Instagram @feralblacksheep.
To contact Mikayla for end of life services you can email her at feralblacksheep@gmail.com or visit her site HERE.
