What is a Threshold Doula?

I would like to introduce you to the concept of a Threshold Doula. Maybe you know what a doula is, or even a death doula, but what is a Threshold Doula?!

Let’s do the internet thing where we start with Merriam-Webster

First off, what is a doula?

Pretty clear and simple, right? They cut to the core with the 3 pillars of doula-hood: education, emotional support, physical comfort. And they touch on the concept of the timeframe: before during and after birth.

Secondly, what is a threshold? This one is fun…

I love all of this. When I am thinking about supporting individuals through thresholds, I really do see the plank that lies under a door. I see my clients stepping over that piece of timber from one version of their life to another. I feel the change of density in the ether, the shift in the electricity of the air from one room, or reality, to the next.

A gate or a door. Of course. The end of a runway. Wow. The end of a runway. You don’t get to keep traveling as you had been, you have to take off. You have to fly.

The place or point of entering or beginning. Outset. On the threshold of a new age. This one probably speaks most to the work that a threshold doula does with people. Provides education, emotional support and physical comfort to someone who is beginning a new life, who is entering a new age.

During my final handful of years in my hometown before heading off to acupuncture school, I was working as a massage therapist, spinning babies provider and birth/postpartum doula. I spent a lot of time supporting pregnant people, birthing people and new parents. 

That is when I started thinking about how everyone needs a doula. It first came to me while attending a hospital birth and feeling struck with the realization that it's downright crazy at this juncture in history for anyone to walk through the doors of a hospital or doctor's office without a very specific type of support. 

From there, I started more deeply meditating on the three pillars of doula-hood: education, physical comfort and emotional support. As humans, we need that. 

I began awakening to a deeper understanding of the human journey as I mused on our tender short lives through the lens of the doula archetype. I'm obsessed with Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book Women Who Run With the Wolves. Reading it originally in 2016 was my initiation to the ongoing, cyclical life-death-rebirth process within the container of our physically incarnated human lives. We are constantly dying and being reborn. Every day. Multiple times a day. 

Perhaps you've heard this one slung around: you have a whole new body every 7 years! Wow! But, what?! This is due to concepts around apoptosis and cellular generation. Apoptosis is programmed cell death - this means that millions of our cells are dying every second and millions of new ones are being born in that time. 330 BILLION cells are replaced in our bodies EVERY DAY.

If you struggle with the life-death-rebirth concept or feel like it resides a little too uncomfortably in the spiritual realm for you, I invite you to turn to the science and lean into the idea that you are quite literally, not the same physical being you were yesterday. Even Classical Chinese Medicine provides a path to understanding and utilizing the 7 (for women) and 8 (for men) year cycles of lives via the 8 Extraordinary Vessels. We will be discussing this a lot in my upcoming newsletters, including ways for everyone to access a sense of understanding and agency when it comes to these cycles.

That all said, we are constantly walking through thresholds. Laboring through physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological portals. Breathing ourselves through the birth canals of relationship, friendship, family and career challenges.

Throughout the years, I’ve had a couple massage clients who would refer to me as their Divorce Doula, one who called me her Cancer Doula. Within my very first year of massaging, I had a client ask me to come to her house and help her husband cross over - he had had a stroke many weeks previous and was in a near-vegetative state in a hospital bed in their living room.

In more recent years, I started doing online consultations with people who were guiding themselves through mushroom microdose protocols as well as folks who were preparing for or doing post-integration after larger psychedelic journeys or ceremonies - and guess what, many of them started calling me their Microdose Doula and Pscychedoula. 

These experiences really forced me to look at myself in the role of the archetypal doula. Really forced me to accept myself in that role, to stand firmly and proudly in that role. It is an honor and privilege to witness people fighting their way from one life to the next. There are few roles more intimate and intense outside of the realm of life’s personal relationships. It’s serious stuff. It is a heavy responsibility that requires sober clarity and sobering acceptance of the work’s gravity.

I have always said that you can't choose birthwork, it chooses you. It's a calling, and it's going to keep calling until you answer. That's how it worked for me in terms of starting to attend births - my massage clients would just shamelessly dog me to attend their birth, their sister's birth, their friend's birth. This even included people who maybe randomly got a gift certificate for a prenatal massage at the spa I worked at and happened to end up on my table. After a couple years, I finally started saying yes. But like I said above, the seriousness of the work can make it feel scary to say yes. There is no lightly saying of yes in the face of seeing someone at the most raw, most human, most ugly, most gloriously radiantly beautiful.

I think it works the same for the role of Threshold Doula. I don't get to choose this path, but I do get to answer the call by saying - yes, this is who I am. Yes, I am here to witness you at your best and worst. Yes, I am here to hold you and walk with you from one reality to the next. Yes, I am here to ask you what threshold are you struggling to cross right now? What version of yourself are you laboring to birth right now? What physical or emotional pain is pushing you to breathe new life into your own lungs right now?

I will leave you with those questions and the invitation to continue exploring these concepts with me.

Please join me as I will be sharing a lot of free educational content in the form of writing and audio/video recordings as well as presenting a number of offerings that range from online to in-person, self-guided to completely supported. 

Please contact me directly for more information on working individually with me:

• My main in-person Threshold Doula offering is a 1-day ceremonial bodywork retreat utilizing Shiatsu massage in conjunction with the 8 Extraordinary Vessels of Classical Chinese Medicine.

• I also currently have rolling openings and a waitlist for my Threshold Doula Mentorship Program.

Upcoming things in the works:

• My main online Threshold Doula offering will be a self-guided 100-day healing journey through the 8 Extraordinary Vessels using essential oils.

• Within the next couple months, I will be launching an ADHDoula podcast! This project is inspired by my own ADHD diagnosis at the age of 40, what I have learned about nervous system co-regulation and the idea that we have to build a solid foundation with the small pieces of our lives in order to believe in ourselves enough to birth our most genuine selves and walk through these more significant life thresholds.

All of these offerings allow us to to access, witness and influence your deepest essence to powerfully move you through the ongoing cycles of life-death-rebirth inherent to the human journey.

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