Who Holds the Healer?

I spend my days and nights sitting with grief.

I hold hands, I listen, I witness last breaths, last words, last goodbyes.

I comfort families. I remind them to breathe.

I help them make space for their pain.

But sometimes, in the quiet, I ask myself…

Who holds me?

I am a death doula.

I am a mother who has buried a child.

I am a wife watching her husband grieve.

I am a mother watching her children grieve too.

I am the strong one, the steady one, the one people lean on.

And yet my heart still aches for somewhere to lay its own weight.

There is a loneliness that comes with being the one who knows how to hold grief.

Because you learn how to be present for everyone else,

but when it’s your turn, there isn’t always someone who can sit with your pain the same way.

Not because they don’t love you.

But because your grief is deep, layered, and sacred.

Because your loss changed you.

Because the world doesn’t always know what to do with a mother who has lost a child,

or a healer who is tired of being strong.

Some days I feel unseen.

Some days I feel like I pour and pour and pour,

and there is no one to pour back into me in the same language I speak.

So I write.

I write because my soul needs somewhere to lay its head.

I write because my tears deserve a place to fall.

I write because love that has nowhere to go will find its way into words.

And maybe, somewhere out there,

another mother, another healer, another heart that is tired of carrying alone

will read this and feel less invisible.

Maybe this is how we hold each other.

Through truth.

Through vulnerability.

Through saying the quiet parts out loud.

If you are the one who holds everyone else,

I see you.

And you deserve to be held too.

With endless gratitude Luna D