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Becoming an End-of-Life Doula
I'm taking a class to become an end-of-life Doula, otherwise known as a Death Doula. I have the good fortune of studying with a pretty proficient teacher from Hawaii. His name is Bodhi Be, and he was a student of Ram Dass, (Richard Alpert) and his school The Doorway To Light was founded and endorsed by Ram Dass who did a lot of work with people who are dying. They founded The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead research with Timothy Leary (who I once met!) and Ralph Metzner, back in the 60s with the psychedelic movement. They were the first westerners to formally practice plant medicine with the Harvard Psilocybin Project to open the inner “doors of perception” and researched ways to help people successfully overcome the fear of dying.
I've been working about 10 hours a week as a caregiver with aging and dying people. I must say it's pretty heart-wrenchingly poignant. I have one second generation Swedish client who is 91 years old and he took me out to his laser fabrication studio and his woodwork was so elaborate and so creative. He made these beautiful crosses, cars and snowflakes out of wood but he said “my eyes aren't good enough to do this kind of work anymore” and he just lost his wife two weeks ago. I was with her during her last few days. It’s hard to be in the home where there was so much life and so much love that he built himself and now being at the end of it and everything falling apart.
Reflections on Impermanence
I am a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and ever since I was 19 we would contemplate impermanence and something called the four reminders where everything that we built will eventually fall. However, I will say there's a big difference between reading this stuff and being young and drinking chai tea, contemplating the Dharma, and actually seeing the end of life and the dissolution of things, the loss of people we love with our own eyes. It dawns upon me that this is a cruel joke~ how much effort we put into this life and building our homes and families and careers to end up with everything gone eventually~ indeed from dust to dust. It's tragic and I kind of feel sometimes what the Buddha must have felt that inspired him to practice and go deeper to connect with something that's beyond the transitory.The Letter of Regret
So one of the End of Life Doula tasks that Bodhi Be had us do~ was to pick someone in our life that we were estranged from, and write them a letter of regret and accountability. He said pick someone in your life~ a friend or family member or an ex and reach out to them by writing them a letter; some chose to call after the letter was written. One of my Dharma teachers wanted us to do this a few years ago as well. He said he works with so many people that are dying and we hold resentment and pain and block people out of our lives. Sometimes it is the ones that we care about most and it's often on the deathbed that you get these phone calls of people expressing that they really cared about each other and nothing~ none of this ego-based crap, and petty conflicts matters in the face of everything going silent. Only the care remains, and regret. I thought about if there's anybody in my life that I actually had any regret for anything that I wanted to say, and indeed, there was one person from a few years back that still circles around the mind and heart from time to time. It stays an open wound because it was left unresolved. The closing of the door and all communication and leaving it unresolved was not my choice and I was asked to stay completely out of this person's life~ so I am not able to call or email or write to this person in respect of their wishes.Living in Fear and Avoidance Myself
I've done everything to stay out of their physical purview for many years, avoiding encountering them at all costs~ and it's been quite a feat because our community is very small. If I saw this person's car at a coffee shop or in a public place, I would make sure to not go there. I would actually buy gasoline and groceries in a different town to avoid running into them. I would even call to different Dharma centers of retreats that I was signed up for and check to see if they were going to be there and I would cancel my registration. I was living in fear for over five years. This person and this interaction was one of the most hurtful people in my life that inspired some of the content in this blog after I was discarded, and I felt it was quite brutal. I started to write about the infamous narcissistic discard, disingenuous spirituality, some serious ethical problems with our Tibetan Buddhist tradition, psychopathy and just how much I was hurt, translated into countless words and poems and blog posts, that seemed never ending. This bleeding out, however thankfully has come to a close. Everything finally exhausts itself.Turning Points and Self-Reflection
I think one of the turning points after I'd gone into a huge amount of therapy and done a lot of practice and journaled, and cried for a long time, was reading this one quote from a fellow female survivor- she said:“Don’t fetishize victim consciousness and call that women’s empowerment.”
It was like a light went on in my mind~ the aftermath of the #metoo movement~ thinking that it was actually powerful to write about how I was betrayed by my family origin and my spiritual community, some friends and lovers~culminating in this particular person. In retrospect, victim consciousness is one of the lowest tiers of human consciousness. It's actually considered the lowest astral plane~ people who in the Buddhist hell realms hold onto being a victim always being hurt, tortured by someone, something or other. All are mind-made fantasies from our internal proclivities.
In the Lojong tradition which is a Buddhist series of powerful mind trainings they have a quote that says “drive all blames into one.” The beauty of that is that the mind turns away from projecting this blame outward, and you have the opportunity to see your own shortcomings and places that could be healed. We are never able to see our own imperfections and learn and grow, and do any genuine, transformational shadow work as long as the mind is posited outward, blaming everyone, other than ourselves. The more work that I had done the more I started to see that in fact, I was not ever just a powerless victim, I could see the other side and feel understanding and even compassion for those who hurt, betrayed, or even abused me. I started to feel regret, for not leaving toxic situations sooner, and having karmic seeds still within me to magnetize recurring patterns of conflict and harm. I am not saying that all women who are abused karmically “deserved it” and it's our partial responsibility, or some past life retribution nonsense, but I will say that staying in victim consciousness is not really a healed state at all. I have found what one of my teachers calls the “pain body” to be tedious and tiresome and lacking self-love, true compassion and only creates continuous energetic blocks.
Misinterpretation and Misjudgment
I realize that most of the content on this blog was to try to understand what had happened to me after my dharma community fell and I was discarded by someone, who I first trusted then later presumed was a full spectrum narcissist. I read every book and blog I could and took classes on narcissism and psychopathy and family of origin patterns and so on and so on. I became extremely psycho-educated and I wrote profusely about what I was learning. I knew if this person was reading any of my writing that it was a backhanded attack to blame them. This served two purposes, the first one was that if I was fixated on all of *their* perceived shortcomings, I wouldn't have to look at my own. Secondly, if I kept writing insulting and hurtful stuff about this person, being a narcissist, predator or a psychopath, I knew that I would keep them out of my life~ to not hurt my heart any further or endanger my family.Narcissism vs. Love Avoidance
I must admit, I'm pretty much vulnerable to a lot of YouTube pop psychology, and the new trend that everyone's talking about after we all were talking about narcissism for five years is… Love Avoidants. This is it particular attachment style (Bowlby) of someone who is simply afraid to fall in love, probably because they've been hurt previously in the past very deeply. One thing that keeps coming up on my Instagram feed, and all these YouTube influencers is that there's a difference between a narcissist and a love avoidant. Where they are similar is that they're both afraid of true intimacy and they can run away and when there's some type of perceived injury, they can often callously discard you.However, I see now that there is a huge difference between a narcissist, and a love avoidant, even though their conduct is similar. The narcissist actually doesn't really care about anyone other than themselves. They can cry but it's always based on self-pity. It's never really feeling genuine empathy for another person. Narcissists often have an inflated sense of self-importance, grandiosity and entitlement, a need for excessive attention, and a fragile ego that cannot tolerate even the slightest criticism. A narcissist, with little care, empathy or conscience, will discard you to punish you, just when you expose them or are no longer a source of ego supply. Narcissists use avoidance to manipulate and control, while avoidants withdraw to protect themselves from perceived threats of vulnerability and emotional closeness. An avoidant, I believe feels deeply, and will block you as a defense mechanism such that they can emotionally regulate. Narcissists:
- Intent: To gain power and control over others, often through manipulation, gaslighting, and devaluation.
- Motivation: Driven by a fragile ego and a need for constant validation and admiration.
- Behaviors: Grandiosity, lack of empathy, and exploitative patterns. They may use avoidance as a weapon to create unresolved conflict and maintain control.
- Attachment Style: Often a mix of insecure attachment styles, but their actions are primarily driven by narcissistic traits rather than genuine fear of intimacy.
- Intent: To protect themselves from vulnerability and emotional pain.
- Motivation: Fear of intimacy, rejection, or being hurt in relationships.
- Behaviors: Withdrawal, emotional distance, fear of commitment, and difficulty expressing feelings. They often fear being controlled or losing independence.
- Attachment Style: Typically dismissive or fearful-avoidant, shaped by past experiences that made closeness feel unsafe.
- Intent: Narcissists use avoidance to manipulate, while avoidants use it for self-protection.
- Empathy: Narcissists often lack empathy; avoidants may struggle with closeness but still care deeply.
- Motivation for Conflict: Narcissists provoke conflict to maintain control; avoidants avoid it to preserve emotional distance.
- Need for Validation: Narcissists crave admiration; avoidants are more self-sufficient and avoid external validation.
So, love avoidants, especially fearful avoidants in contrast, can feel exceedingly deeply. I think it's possible that the person that I was engaged with for a few months, a few years ago, may not have been a narcissist, as I had been quite callously accusing him of. It’s possible that he was just afraid and had more avoidant tendencies, and that concurs with what he said to me repeatedly. I regret not being able to listen to his repeated pleas or understand what that felt like. I just didn't know, and it's taken me five years to self reflect, and to see what must have happened and the fact that I was not capable of communicating safety to this person. I hurt someone that was already hurting and it was done inadvertently and I'm sorry. I think some things said and done, and some type of deep pain and betrayal, go beyond what is resolvable or forgivable. I would not ask to re-enter a friendship or contact with this person with whom I am estranged from. However, just like Bodhi Be suggested if this were my deathbed confession, my truth would be to offer regret for having hurt the heart of another, one that I only wished to befriend, understand, travel with, share our exceedingly similar stories and life experiences and, indeed forge a genuine meaningful connection.
To any love avoidant who has not yet sought professional help
A letter not of blame but of adult accountability. The wounds from a destructive family of origin like I had, must be treated professionally, like any illness, over a long period of arduous and brave shadow work. We don't heal through ignorance or attrition. You cannot leverage the pain of your past betrayals as an excuse to constantly hurt people in the future and make a choice to avoid intimacy, vulnerability and commitment. This leaves many damaged lives in the wake of games, lies and pain because you refuse to seek the proper professional help to heal from early childhood wounding. You cannot open to people and then instantly begin to mistrust them, make continuous false accusations, project your shame onto them, which is actually called guilt projection and then become afraid, run away and turn that person who simply tried to love you, into your mortal enemy. This process of opening authentically and sharing intimacy, then getting triggered and shutting down creates a trauma bond that can destroy lives because of the mixed messages and cognitive dissonance created in the victim/recipient. This is the deepest form of core level abuse, and the most difficult to heal from."We must be adult and responsible for clearing and healing pain and firmly, stopping the generational trauma of passing that into our relationships in the future, especially our children. I have committed my life to healing, and it has taken everything in me to be able to sustain healthy, long-term relationships, and not pass my family of origin issues onto my child. I understand this process with sober compassion now, but hurting others without being responsible for it, especially when we have so much privilege and access to therapeutic healing is irresponsible, and I have little sympathy for those who choose to hurt others continuously." Dawn Boiani, ChildSurvivors.com
I also strongly disapprove of people using our spiritual tradition as a vehicle to forge trust to unsuspecting victims and spiritual seekers, and then hurting people, especially women and children. This type of cloaked con is unforgivable and cannot continue. You cannot run a spiritual grift, collecting people’s attention, hearts, internet likes, and require people to cajole you and consider yourself an exalted light worker when all you’re doing is covertly siphoning souls and energy as sustenance.
Great Expectations
I know that Love Avoidants can actually recover, whereas full spectrum narcissism/ antisocial disorders are considered untreatable. Somewhere behind this maladaptive need for adulation, you could break this destructive pattern and heal or will forever live until the end- broken, and leaving others in your wake who come close to you and see who you really are. Five years of my life were spent longing to heal something I didn’t break and I no longer hold out hope. Today is the last day~ the dark chapter is closed. You had a chance- someone that would have loved you completely for who you are and seen light even through all of the darkness and forgiven everything. You just had to have the strength to stay and not run, again and again. I always held out a candle of hope like the Leonard Cohen song- "there’s a crack in everything that’s where the light gets in" and I waited for that light, love and authenticity to prevail over fear. It never did.From Victim to Victorious
I will not run screaming through the desert in the dark and witness my own demise. Rather through this profound and inconsolable heartbreak, I rise from victim to victor, regain and finally retake the life-heart-blood energy that was offered, indeed hallelujah! I am not bitter, I simply grieved and dissolved the fantasy of what I imagined was a potential for deep love and friendship, one that could never be. I forgive myself for not understanding and my conduct, and I forgive them for any hurt to me, which was also quite profound, even at times brutal, and took me these years and thousands of dollars in help to recover from. I wish this person wellness and peace and final, complete closure. All my love to all, and thank you for following this blog and my journey~ DawnSources: https://www.verywellmind.com/john-bowlby-biography-1907-1990-2795514
Photo by Natalie Bond: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-red-rose-19777005/
