About 15 years ago, I witnessed my first death — and had my first real experience with hospice. What struck me wasn't the medical part. It was the other part. The way the hospice team explained what was happening. The way they answered the questions nobody had thought to ask. The way they made something terrifying feel, somehow, just a little more manageable.

I turned to my husband and said: "I want that to be my job."

The problem was, death doula wasn't a profession yet. And since I had zero nursing experience and zero desire for any, I figured that door was closed.

But I didn't forget. My sister was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disorder as a teenager. Over the next two decades, I watched her lose everything — her abilities, her independence, eventually her life at 39 — while my mother navigated one of the most complex healthcare systems imaginable, largely alone. No advocates. No roadmap. No one translating what was happening into something a family could actually understand and act on.

It was harder than it needed to be. Much harder.

I kept thinking about everyone out there doing this without what we had — without the grit, the time, the combined determination of two tenacious women who still barely managed to keep up. I kept thinking about all the families who were losing precious hours with their loved ones because they didn't know what they didn't know.

That stayed with me.

Years later, I heard Anderson Cooper talk about working with a death doula — about how much the experience had affected him, how he'd considered leaving television to do the work himself. I googled it. There it was — exactly what I'd wanted to do 15 years earlier, now a recognized profession.

I got certified. And then I got to work.