When Francesca Arnoldy arrived at her grandparents’ home in Massachusetts and approached her dying grandfather’s bedside a decade ago, she was unsure about what to expect.
Feeling nervous and realizing the gravity of her grandfather’s condition, she offered comforting words to her grandmother, who had been helping her ill husband around the clock for weeks and needed to rest. As her grandmother left the room, Arnoldy turned back to her grandfather and immediately shifted into caregiver mode.
“I was so curious. I just thought, ‘What is this?’” says Arnoldy, a birth and postpartum doula at the time. “There was so much to behold. There was so much to learn. There was so much that I knew I couldn’t figure out. And I was completely in awe of it.”
The experience changed Arnoldy’s life. She shifted her doula focus to primarily end-of-life care and established , a program she directed from 2017 to 2022.
Arnoldy recently published The Death Doula's Guide to Living Fully and Dying Prepared: An Essential Workbook to Help You Reflect Back, Plan Ahead, and Find Peace on Your Journey (New Harbinger Publications, 2023). The inspiration for the book was Arnoldy’s death journal, which she started for her loved ones about eight years ago after completing hospice volunteer training.
The 192-page workbook is an opportunity to explore mortality and end-of-life care planning and bring more meaning to the present moment, Arnoldy says. The book is not just for individuals facing a terminal diagnosis but for anyone feeling a sense of readiness to contemplate their own or their loved one’s eventual end of life.
‘An Invitation to Reflect’
Questions in Arnoldy’s book invite readers to not only write about their wishes for before and after they die, but also more reflective inquiries, such as the times they felt lonely or how they perceived death as a child. Or when they connected with someone or what words they would use to describe a special place.
“It’s an invitation to reflect, turn inward, plan, promote the idea of healthy preparedness, and gently take people through discovering what it means to them to be mortal,” she says. “What does death mean, and how do we grapple with that? How do we come to terms with impermanence in ways that align with our life goals, beliefs, who we feel we are, and how we want to be known by others?”
Arnoldy studied Human Development and Family Science at ̽̽, where she met Associate Professor Jacqueline Weinstock more than 20 years ago. When Weinstock enrolled in the doula program at ̽̽ a few years ago, the two reconnected, and Arnoldy asked Weinstock to write the foreword in her new book.
“The irony of this book, focused as it is on death, is that it really offers a means to living more fully, through to its end,” Weinstock wrote.
From Social Services to Birth Work to Death Care
Upon graduating from ̽̽ in 2003, Arnoldy worked in social services, assisting with a research project on substance use. She also worked at a short-term respite home for kids and later managed an after-school program offering transitional services for children and families.
Following the birth of her first child, Arnoldy studied to become a birth and postpartum doula. After a number of personal losses, including her grandfather’s death, she dove into hospice volunteer work and began keeping a death journal.
Her personal death journal details her final wishes and expresses her thoughts and feelings.
“The journal is a gift to my family for their time of bereavement so that they can still access me, find me, hear my voice, feel my love, and read messages that I have crafted for just that moment for them,” Arnoldy says. “We yearn for that continued connection when we lose somebody very special and dear to us. And we want to hear final messages, those final words, and what they would want to tell us if they could.”
Even for people who may not have families or are facing death alone, journaling in Arnoldy’s workbook can be a meaningful, cathartic exercise.
“It’s your reflections, your processing, your own coming to terms, finding clarity, and making some meaning,” she says. “It’s a way to explore without any attachment to the outcome.”
Facing the Inevitable
Arnoldy, who lives in Hinesburg with her husband and two children, runs a private doula practice, works part-time at the Vermont Conversation Lab, and is working on launching a death literacy educator program. Even with years of experience as an end-of-life doula under her belt, she naturally wrestles with the inevitability of death. She admits that she doesn’t go more than a few hours without thinking about her mortality.
“I still have all sorts of feelings about death, and I still haven’t settled on any one conclusion about it, and I don’t think I ever will,” Arnoldy says. “I just let myself be where I am. Sometimes I’m really curious about it, and other times I’m really frustrated by it.”
The most rewarding part of her work?
“It’s an incredible privilege to be welcomed into these most significant experiences, like birth, death, and grief. It wakes me up to living and helps me remember what’s truly important,” she says.
About ̽̽'s Human Development and Family Science Program
Students interested in developing a deep interdisciplinary understanding of human development and how it informs skilled, critically conscious and ethical professional practice in human services can find their calling in the Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) Program.
With opportunities to pursue either a Bachelor of Science (BS) or an 18-credit minor, HDFS emphasizes critical reflection, information literacy, and community-engaged learning experiences rooted in social justice and equitable, strengths-based practices. Graduates are ready to pursue a variety of professions and advanced degrees promoting positive development and healthy relationships that empower individuals, families, and communities to thrive while interrupting systems of privilege and oppression.
