End-of-Life Doula
Holding you through one of life's most profound passages
An End-of-Life Doula offers non-medical support at the end of life, not just to the person who is dying, but to everyone around them. Where doctors and nurses care for the body, a doula cares for the experience itself: the emotional weight, the practical decisions, the things that are hard to say out loud.
Meet Ellen, Your Doula
I am Ellen Kydd — End of Life Doula, Celebrant, and Artist. I walk with you from that first frightening conversation through to ceremony and memorial, offering compassionate, whole-person care.
I came to this work through nursing. I joined the NHS at sixteen and worked for over a decade; as auxiliary nurse, student, and then staff nurse. It was in those years that I became curious about death and dying. Something always seemed missing at that threshold: a human presence alongside it.
I trained with Living Well Dying Well from 2011, and have worked as a Doula ever since — with the elderly and the not so elderly, in home settings and more recently in a hospice. I have also co-hosted our local Death Cafe, and find those conversations, open and unguarded, some of the most meaningful I have.
My work brings me close to life's liminal spaces: transitions, fragility, and loss. Alongside them I've learned to recognise the patterns and rhythms that hold us, reflected in our bodies, our families, the seasons, and the tenderness and connection woven through even our hardest passages.
I live rurally in Sussex with my family. We tend a vegetable patch, keep chickens, and stay close to the turning of the seasons, a life that reflects the same cycles of connection and care that run through my work.
My wider training includes yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, naturopathy, and birth Doula-ing. I hold a full driving licence and am happy to travel across Sussex to be where you need me.
How I can support you
Preparing, Planning and Being Alongside
This is where it often begins — with uncertainty, with questions no one knows how to ask, with the need for someone who is not afraid of any of it.
An initial conversation to understand your situation and what support might look like now and for the known and unexpected changes ahead
Help thinking through medical, legal and personal wishes, at a pace that feels right for all members of the family
Conversations about death and dying, honest, unhurried, never pushed
Navigating the medical and social care systems alongside you
Practical day-to-day support: shopping, meals, walking the dog, garden care
Respite for family carers
Accompanying to GP or hospital appointments
Planning for the funeral, including natural burial options
Shroud making: a heartfelt creative practice that can begin well before death, weaving memory, story and community into cloth with natural plant dyes and fibres
The Active Dying Phase and Sacred Threshold
When the time comes I can be present, steady, calm and experienced. The family does not have to hold everything alone.
Vigiling through the active dying phase
Creating a atmosphere of calm and beauty: herbs, oils, candles, flowers, personal objects
Washing and dressing of the deceased with reverence and care
Supporting family members present in the room
Remaining present in the hours and first days after the death
Ceremony, Memorial & Continued Care
As grief continues, I remain for ceremony, for the formalities, and for the weeks that follow.
Where I've walked alongside a family as their Doula, I can also hold the ceremony that follows, co-creating something with those who loved them, weaving their story heart to voice, honouring a life through words, feelings and memory. Working with the elements of earth, air, fire and water, I help shape a ceremony that reflects the truth of who they were.
Celebrant services: co-creating a ceremony that genuinely tells the story of this life, its warp and weft: the patterns, the joys, the endings and beginnings, woven into one telling
Organising and facilitating a wake
Guidance through the practical formalities after death, including registration
Emotional support and signposting in the weeks following
Memorial mosaics: hand-crafted pieces reflecting the interconnectedness of heart, earth and cosmos, using sacred geometry unique to each person's life
Creative Practices for Presence
Shroud Making
Shroud making can begin well before death, as a way of bringing peaceful, purposeful action to the time of vigil and care. What makes it sacred is the quality of attention brought to the process. Reverence. Presence. Hand guided by heart.
Working with natural fibres and plant dyes, we weave memory and meaning into cloth, honouring the transition of dying and our deep interconnectedness with the earth we come from and return to.
Creating with our hands draws us gently out of the thinking mind. In that creative focus, grief finds somewhere to go. Something integrates that words alone cannot reach.
Shroud making can include family, friends, and wider community, and act as a tender starting point for conversation, connection, and care. The outcome is a beautiful, deeply personal shroud.
Memorial Mosiac
I create memorial mosaics that mirror the interconnectedness of heart, earth and cosmos, the same rhythms found in planetary orbit repeated in a seed head, a sunflower, a nautilus shell. This is sacred geometry: a harmony that isn't shaped by opinion or emotion, but simply is. In grief, when so much feels uncertain, there's a particular comfort in something absolute, a truth held in the stars and in the ground beneath us, unchanged and unchanging.
Each mosaic is commissioned individually, worked from the patterns and colour most meaningful to your loved one's life - a birth chart, a favourite flower, the phase of the moon on a significant date.
Resources & Support
Grief and financial worry can arrive together. Here are some places to turn, alongside the support I offer.
Grief & Bereavement Support
Cruse Bereavement Support — East Sussex & Brighton and Hove branch. Free, confidential bereavement support by phone, Zoom, or in person. 0300 011 3300
St Michael's Hospice— Bereavement support open to the whole community, whether or not your loved one was in their care.
Martlets Bereavement Service— Support for family and friends connected to Martlets Hospice.
Sussex Bereavement Services— Specialist one-to-one and family bereavement support across Sussex.
Samaritans — For anyone who needs to talk, any time. 116 123, free, 24/7
Akra Funerals Brighton - Environmental and sustainably sourced coffins and original funeral directors.
Louise V Durham Glassworks - Wood and Glass memorial sculptures based in Shoreham-by-sea made for clients worldwide
Financial Support
Funeral Expenses Payment (GOV.UK)— Government support toward funeral costs if you receive certain benefits. Apply within 6 months of the funeral.
Down to Earth (Quaker Social Action) — Free, practical help planning an affordable funeral and navigating funeral costs, before or after the event.
Turn2us — A grant search tool to check eligibility for charitable and benevolent funds that may help with funeral costs.
Public health funerals— If there's truly no other way, local councils have a legal duty to arrange a respectful funeral. Ask your funeral director or council for guidance.
Funding for Doula support is available with End of Life Doula UK as they believe that financial circumstances should never be a barrier to compassionate, meaningful end of life care. Doulas advocate for everyone to have the opportunity to access the support, regardless of their ability to pay. To help make this possible EOLDUK offers access funding for individuals and families who may otherwise be unable to afford Doula support, helping to ensure that financial hardship does not prevent someone from receiving the care, companionship and support they need at end of life - I'm happy to talk it through.
This list is offered as a starting point. If you're unsure where to turn, I'm glad to help you find your way.