Where Birth and Death Meet: The Threshold That Shaped Our Collective

What I’ve Learned at the Threshold

There is a kind of knowing that doesn’t come from training, textbooks, or certifications.

It comes from standing at the edge of life—again and again—and realizing that birth and death speak the same language.

I didn’t arrive at this understanding easily. I arrived through loss. Through love. Through witnessing. Through breaking open and learning how to keep going anyway.

Loss Is Not Abstract to Me

I lost my mom to suicide.

That sentence never gets easier to write. It doesn’t soften with time. It simply becomes something I carry—quietly, loudly, tenderly, depending on the day.

Losing her shaped how I understand grief, not as something linear or “resolved,” but as something that resurfaces in waves, in moments you don’t expect, in joy just as much as in sorrow. It taught me that love doesn’t end when someone dies—and that the absence of someone can be as loud as their presence once was.

This year, while I was in Costa Rica, I lost my grandmother.

Grief found me far from home, surrounded by beauty, ocean air, and stillness. And yet my body knew exactly what had happened before my mind could catch up. There is something about grief that bypasses logic—it lives in the chest, the throat, the gut.

Being away when she died taught me something important: that distance does not protect us from loss. It also reminded me that ritual, presence, and intention matter deeply, especially when we cannot physically be where we wish we were.

Just before Christmas, I lost my cat Riley—the day before my youngest daughter’s birthday.

That loss cracked me open in a different way. The timing felt cruel. The grief felt inconvenient and deeply personal all at once. And it reminded me that we don’t get to schedule our sorrow around holidays or milestones. Life continues, even when our hearts are breaking.

Each of these losses—different in form, different in weight—has shaped how I show up in the world. How I hold space. How I slow down. How I extend compassion to others and, sometimes with effort, to myself.

Birth Has Taught Me Just as Much

I have witnessed many births.

No two have ever been the same.

I’ve seen births filled with joy so electric it felt like the room might burst open. I’ve seen quiet, reverent births where the air itself felt sacred. I’ve witnessed births layered with fear, grief, disappointment, relief, exhaustion, and deep, unspoken love.

I’ve held hands through tears of elation and tears of mourning—sometimes in the same birth.

Because birth is not always what we imagine it will be. It can hold trauma alongside beauty. It can bring grief for the birth someone didn’t get, even as they welcome a baby they deeply love.

Birth has taught me that joy does not cancel grief. And grief does not negate joy.

They coexist.

This truth mirrors death in ways we rarely talk about. At the end of life, there can be relief alongside sorrow. Gratitude alongside heartbreak. Peace alongside longing. These moments resist simplification.

Both birth and death demand that we stay present without trying to tidy them up.

The Thread That Connects It All

Over the years, I have made countless connections—deep, meaningful ones—with families, doulas, colleagues, and community members.

I’ve sat with people during the most vulnerable moments of their lives. I’ve watched doulas grow into themselves, doubt themselves, burn out, recommit, and rise again. I’ve held space for grief that had nowhere else to go. I’ve witnessed resilience I will never forget.

And through all of it, one truth kept returning: we are not meant to do this alone.

Not birth.
Not death.
Not grief.
Not caregiving.
Not leadership.
Not community-building.

The Collective was created because I knew—personally and professionally—what happens when people are left to carry too much by themselves. It was created to be a container not just for families, but for doulas. For the ones who hold everyone else.

The Conference grew from the same place. A desire to bring people together across disciplines, experiences, and life stages. To create a space where we can talk honestly about hope and legacy, beginnings and endings, without fragmenting ourselves.

Learning How to Hold—Others and Myself

Holding space is not passive.

It requires boundaries. Self-awareness. Community. Repair. Rest.

I’ve learned that holding others means also learning when to be held. That leadership does not mean being untouched by grief. That building something meaningful means allowing it to be shaped by loss, love, and lived experience.

I’ve learned that I can create rooms where people feel safe enough to exhale—and that sometimes I need those rooms just as much as anyone else.

Birth and death have taught me how to listen. How to wait. How to trust the process even when it’s uncomfortable. How to honor what is, rather than what I wish it were.

Standing at the Threshold, Together

Everything I’ve built—the Collective, the Conference, the community—has been shaped at the threshold between life and loss.

Not because it’s easy to stand there.
But because it’s honest.

Hope does not disappear when someone dies.
Legacy does not begin at the end.
And grief is not a failure of love—it is evidence of it.

If there is one thing I know for certain, it’s this: when we acknowledge the parallels between birth and death, we become better caregivers, better leaders, better humans.

We soften.
We slow down.
We build communities that can actually hold people—through joy, through grief, through everything in between.

This is the work I believe in.
This is the work I will keep doing.

Not alone—but together.

Amy,

Founder, Mentor, Advocate, Doula.