Hear Jenny-Ann Gunnarsson in the clip why she started a training for death doulas.
It has now been a few years since Jenny-Ann Gunnarsson from Gothenburg became Sweden's first certified death doula.
It was after her mother had died, only six weeks after being told her cancer was incurable, that she felt she wanted to help others in the same situation.
It started with volunteer work at a hospice in Gothenburg, something she still often does, and then a funeral home.
- I wanted to be in the service of death and when I also became a death doula, the last piece of the puzzle was in place, she says.
Educated in England
She was educated in England because there was no education in Sweden.
Now three years later, she has started her own training and in the autumn the first batch of 40 death doulas will be examined.
The idea is that they should become a link between the dying person, any relatives and care.
Through her volunteer work at the hospice and the specialist nurse who lectures at the training, she knows that palliative care often goes to its knees.
- As recently as yesterday, I helped the staff at the hospice serve dinner, clean out old food and broken crockery in the kitchen while they have to run to the alarm.
Dead, dead, dead
According to her, there is too little talk about death today and there is a great fear of it.
It is something that she, the would-be death doulas, wants to change.
- What is inevitable must become natural and normal, only then can we let go of fears, misconceptions and misinformation and instead live here and now.
Jenny-Ann also thinks that the media and public figures must start using the words die, died and died instead of, for example, pass away, pass away and fall asleep.
- Why rewrite what are facts and have the correct names?
There are children who grow up believing that everyone who falls asleep also dies.
What a horror to then go to bed at night!