I am a death doula and bereavement companion, first and foremost. Death involves the body, stirs the imagination, and connects the present with the past and the future in immeasurable ways. I support individuals and families as they navigate the unpredictable terrain of great transition.

My aim is to enable people to cultivate a relationship to change that is suited to their whole world…beyond the parts in the light.

Death is a natural part of life on Earth, and is often associated with unimaginable loss. The capacity to move with it naturally exists within us, if the environment is supportive. Death reveals the connectedness of being on Earth. It unites us. To me, those close to it deserve reverence, respect, support, and care.

Ordinary means normal, customary, usual, or “belonging to the regular or usual course of things.”

Non-ordinary means “not typical, usual, or everyday.” I’m not convinced that anyone is normal. But waking to sleeping to waking, for example, is an ordering principle in human life. On some level, we are usually aware of a day being “normal,” however individual the experience may be.

In modern terms, non-ordinary experience exceeds the bounds of that awareness. It’s outside the realm of the everyday. Perceptions are strange, deeply felt, sometimes mind-altering, hard to describe, and utterly convincing. There is a kind of “knowing” that pervades the experience, which William James calls noetic. The bodily experience of such states might be overwhelmingly positive or negative, depending on perceptions.

Non-ordinary experience is liminal: we are at the edge of things, on the cusp, between realms. One of the definitions of the word includes the notion of sidelong or askew, which is what the eyes do when they cannot or do not wish to look at something directly (but still want to perceive it). The body experiences this edge before the mind can process it; the joy of discovering the meaning in such experience is perfectly empty, limitless—number 8 of the 10 bulls.

The mapping of liminal experience has been the terrain of embodied forms of contemplation, of alchemy, of theology, and, later, of mere psychology, although Gendlin’s notion of a felt sense does resonate.

"A felt sense is an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time–encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail." –Eugene Gendlin

The setting for non-ordinary experience is physical; it is embodied. Feats of endurance, for example, enable the non-ordinary, as does a grave illness or a piece of music. Dreams, in this way, are non-ordinary. Meditating is non-ordinary. Dying is the ultimate setting for non-ordinary experience.

Dancing, receiving a massage, falling asleep, tripping, being in war or at war, making or experiencing art, doing mathematics, reading and writing poetry, doing sport, and [insert endless examples here] are all vectors of practice at finding and navigating the non-ordinary, especially if we find the boundaries of our physical limitations, or our cognitive ones, or our spiritual ones, in some way. Transcendence is implied, although not necessarily “overcoming.” I am no expert, but Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory comes to mind.

Many cultural practices enable humans to embrace, navigate, and integrate non-ordinary states of being. I work to this end myself. I’m so excited to share my learning in this field with you, and also learn from you and your world.

lim’ • i-nal (a.) Pertaining to the threshold or entrance; hence, relating to the beginning or first stage; inceptive; inchoative. Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1827-1913)

lim’ • i • nal (a.) Of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold; barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response; of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional. Merriam Webster (1828-2025)

From the Latin līmen, or “doorstep, threshold; doorway, entrance; beginning, commencement;” possibly derived from līmus, “askew, sidelong.”

And, “pertaining to or in a state such as to be neither definitively in a particular other state or category nor definitively outside it.” Wiktionary (last updated 2026)

I am available to consult by phone, email, and video calling app (take your pick). If you fill out the contact form, I will be in touch as soon as I can.