Jessica Brittany Gilder is a death doula and grief guide based in Los Osos. Photo submitted.
For those grieving the loss of a loved one, Valentine’s Day can intensify feelings of loneliness and sorrow. A death doula can help navigate the bereavement process.
Jessica Brittany Gilder is a death doula and grief guide in Los Osos who owns Metamorphosis Death Care & Memorials to help people process the varied and individual world of grief.
When someone loses a loved one, “grief is now a part of them, just as it will be, eventually, for every one of us,” Gilder told Estero Bay News. “It won’t get better, or go away, but it will change. It grows, and adapts, alongside us, for the rest of our lives. Death and loss are so very big, and they shape us, just as all the other major and minor life events do.”
Gilder’s services include end of life paperwork/planning (advance directives, pre-planning for death/funerals/memorials); facilitation of difficult conversations with families (choosing or declining treatment for certain terminal illness, internment choices like cremation, burial, green burial); guidance on the process and choices available in the moments after death; education about home funerals; legacy projects; memorial service planning and facilitation; support for family and caregivers (referral to hospice services, household support like small errands, and referrals to grief and caregiver support groups); and vigil sitting, which is a continual presence in the days and hours leading up to death.
“I am no stranger to death and have walked hand in hand with grief most of my life,” Gilder said. “Death/loss and grief have shaped who I am and how I view and understand life and the world. After the anguish and struggle of it all, it actually has very much helped me to grow and learn to accept and prepare for the reality of impermanence.”
Gilder experienced significant loss starting in her teen years. Her father passed unexpectedly in his sleep when she was 15. Then when she was 24, her mother passed tragically in a substance related accident, leaving her to care for her 12-year-old sister, along with her own 1-year-old-son with special needs. Within two years, she divorced and became a single parent. When she was 30, her best friend from kindergarten was killed in a motorcycle accident.
She recently completed a four-month online, with live interaction, end of life training via Death Doula LA as well as participated in an in-person volunteer training with Hospice of SLO, a volunteer non-medical hospice serving SLO County. She plans to further her education and coursework with the International Network of End-of-Life Doulas Association, as well as the National End of Life Doula Association. She is considering schooling to become a funeral director as well.
“I feel that I am able to help folks in their grief because I am not afraid of it,” Gilder said. “It is my hope that people will quickly feel safe with me, just by my presence and energy, and have the inner knowing that I understand, that they are safe with me, and that I am available to listen, even if what I’m listening to is silence. Much of the time in grief, words are unnecessary, if not actually harmful. I always tell friends who are in grief that I am just a phone call, text, or message away, but also very aware that it’s up to me to reach out with a kind word, gesture, or helping hand, because in grief, just putting into words what you need or what you are feeling is often too much to ask.”
Gilder will hold “Love Letters to the Dead” at a Galentine’s Day fundraiser at Goddess Temple Central Coast, 550 Morro Bay Blvd. in Morro Bay on Valentine’s Day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. She will offer a grief processing activity designed to honor your own grief while supporting the ongoing nationwide collective grief project called Postal Service for Dead.
Postal Service for the Dead is project that began in Los Angeles in December 2022 where people send handwritten letters to people in their lives that have died. Participants will create a card/collage/letter to send to the deceased person(s) they are missing this season. Supplies are provided to mail your creation to Postal Service for the Dead where volunteers will receive it, keep it sealed and unread, read privately, or shared to the project’s social media to help others, per the writer’s instructions. Cards can be kept as well, but stamps will be provided if mailing feels right.
“I feel that when one writes a letter, expressing what they are feeling, it gives a physical form to those feelings,” Gilder said. “Something that can be held, and witnessed, and moved. Mailing your letter might help feel as if you’ve released some of those heavy feelings, and free up some space inside your body, allowing you to feel a little lighter. Grief and those big heavy feelings can really weigh you down, like dragging around a bag of bricks everywhere you go. Letter writing can help lighten that load by letting some of the baggage go.”
The Galentine’s Day fundraiser at Goddess Temple Central Coast is open to the public. There will be a clothing swap, potluck, and opportunities to participate in healing sessions such as card readings, as well as receive a community blessing from the temple Priestess. Find out more about the temple at goddesstemplecentralcoast.com.
For information about Gilders services, readers can follow her on Instagram at @metamorphosis_death_doula or email her at jessicabrittany@myyahoo.com. A website is under construction but coming soon. She can also be reached at (805)904-5414.
