by Rinah Rachel Galper, M.Ed.
My Story
My journey as an end of life doula really began when my father and my first spiritual teacher both committed suicide in 2000. It was then that I began wondering about death, about how and when we choose to die, about my ancestral lineage, what it meant to choose life, and how we can create and sustain deep engagement in the world.
Their deaths forced me to reflect and make changes in the ways I was living and showing up for myself and others. Around 2010, I trained and volunteered as both a birth doula and a Duke hospice volunteer. Although I chose not to pursue birth doula work, I did spend close to a year providing companionship, healing, and creative support to an amazing woman (QM) and her family.
QM taught me about living intentionally, bringing closure, and gifting loved ones with her art and wisdom before her passing (which I also call a rebirthing). Sitting by her bedside as she breathed her last, I felt the gates open and all her beloveds come in to welcome her. This marked the beginning of my journey with being a sacred space holder and doula for people transitioning.
I have and continue to learn that end of life work is really the labor of awakened, engaged living into the known and the unknown. It is not just for those who are dying. Since my time with QM I have had the honor of being an end of life doula for many friends, family members, and clients. I weave together spirit gifting rituals, legacy writing and art, energy work, meditation, and story healing in ways that are tailored to each person, and I have held space for grieving and co-created funerals and celebrations of life.
This work has and continues to transform me, with each person becoming my teacher in how to live and die with courage, integrity, joy and beauty. If you are interested in connecting and learning more, please visit joyoushout.com and email me at joyoushout@gmail.com. You can also visit me on various platforms through https://linktr.ee/rinahgalper.
About the Author
Rinah Rachel Galper is a seasoned coach, consultant, connector, educator, ordained spiritual support and healer, content designer, and facilitator. She has a Masters in Education, an Associate degree in Expressive Arts, two ordinations as a Kohenet and a Maggid, training as a Reiki master, end of life doula, ritualist, nature guide, and liberation ally, and over three decades experience working with diverse youth and adults across educational, community, and organizational settings.
In her eldering, Rinah writes, speaks out, connects with and creates community spaces, mentors, spreads joy and inspiration, and engages in persistent and perpetual learning and teaching. Joyoushout represents the culmination and evolution of Rinah’s extensive and intersectional commitment to social justice, teaching, healing, creative, and spiritual practice since 1985. Grounded in a lifetime of liberatory education and change work, Rinah continues to learn from the wisdom of the collective and her ongoing journey as a queer, white identified, anti-Zionist Jew, neurodivergent learner and unlearner, truth-teller, storyteller, healer, writer, and a woman in recovery.
Rinah owes a debt of deep gratitude to her mother, Miriam Thompson (of blessed memory), a trailblazer in educational reform, labor organizing, civil rights, and worker education for over 50 years and countless other healers and mentors, past and present.
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