Meet Mikayla Ricks | Death Doula, Healer, Poet, Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mikayla Ricks and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mikayla, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
I know this might seem silly, but I got into death doula work, specifically, because of a TikTok. In the summer of 2021, there was a video of this community of First Nations people that came across my timeline that I have never forgotten. This was around the time hundreds of kids’ bodies were being recovered from the Marieval Indian Residential School. The number had gotten up to 600 by the time I came across a video of the Cowessess First Nations community — along with other indigenous people and allies — traveling to that school and taking a month-long trip on foot to walk their spirits back home.

That moved me, and I still get emotional every time I talk about it.

Shortly after seeing that video I saw something else on TikTok about death doulas and was absolutely bewildered. Ever since entering the work force, I wished there was a way for me to earn money by healing and dealing with death, but I don’t have the stomach for cutting into bodies, so becoming a mortician was out of the question. Death and dying has always been something that has surrounded me in childhood and adolescence, and it fascinated me. At that point, I felt like I had no choice but to become a death doula because the pull to it was so strong.

I spent an obscene amount of time researching. Like nine to twelve hours a day for three weeks straight, I found out everything I could about it before deciding to enter a training program. I know you don’t have to be officially certified to work as a death doula, but because I was going in blind and I knew I had a lot to learn, I decided to look for a school. I eventually landed on International Doula Life Movement and graduated that December. The rest is history.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Death doulas are non-medical professionals specifically trained to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual support for those at the end-of-life stage and advocate for the wishes of the client to reduce burnout or emotional fatigue. There isn’t one specific way to be a death doula. Some of us help with end-of-life planning, some are caregivers and nurses, and others – like myself – are spiritual practitioners that provide emotional and spiritual guidance to those that need it.

I have a range of skills that I use in my practice, but for now I focus mainly on intuitive guidance to navigate death anxiety, COVID-19 trauma support, and bedside vigil planning.

My practice gives a safe space for anyone wanting to transform their views on death, dying, and grief in an effort to lessen the fear surrounding it. Being able to have a non-judgmental space where people are able to talk about their grief, their fears, and their curiosity surrounding death is important because we live in a world that actively ignores all of that.

In a society that only cares about working, productivity, and money, where does that leave us to process our humanness? Our grief? Our mortality? Even though we’ve seen so much of it over the past two years, it’s still frowned upon to be in touch with ourselves. Part of the reason that I wanted to be a death doula in the first place was because I wanted to help my community deal with the constant grief and trauma around us in a way that wasn’t clinical or impersonal.

Death is already such a taboo topic and while I can’t change the west’s anti-death nature by myself, I can help people on an individual level come to terms with what they’re going through. There’s no need to make it scary or sensational; death just is. That’s what I guide people into understanding and accepting.

Booking with me means they’re ready to get that conversation going. They’re ready to heal.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Oh, Midtown is an absolute must! I worked down there a couple of years ago and could never get enough of how vibrant it was. There’s no shortage of places to hang out, but Ponce City Market and the surrounding area is my favorite spot to roam around at.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My friends, family, and my International Doula Life Movement mentors

Website: https://feralblacksheep.carrd.co/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/feralblacksheep

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fieldbones

Image Credits
Mikayla Ricks