27/06/2025
I never planned to walk with people through the hardest moments of their lives.
But everything changed when I turned 35, and the worst thing that can happen to a parent happened.
🕯 Our son died. Suddenly. Tragically.
Three months later, I had a profound spiritual experience that completely shifted the way I saw life and death.
I felt an invisible force pulling me toward people to share my experience.
That’s how I found myself at Lifeline Johannesburg.
At first, I joined a self-growth and counselling skills course just to tell my story.
But I stayed on as a volunteer to support people in crises for two years🤝
It was there that I began to see just how many people encounter grief and death, and how few have space to speak about it.
💬 Even within families, even among friends, death remains a taboo.
It's pushed out of view, and yet it happens. And when it does, pain often arrives in silence.
Later I took a course focused on su***de and grief.
It deepened my understanding of pain, boundaries, and the need to be seen and heard🪷
A few years later, I came across an article about death doulas.
Within seconds, I knew: this is what i want to do.
📚 That same day, I found a certification program through a IAP Career College and enrolled.
That was five years ago.
Since then, I’ve continued to study death and grief, to support others, to hold space, especially in those moments when life feels unbearable.
And I’ve seen it over and over again - we don’t know how to talk about death. It’s absent from public space and daily language.
But I believe, and I’ve witnessed, that death doesn’t have to be only an end.
Grief doesn’t have to destroy us.
It can be a threshold. A doorway. A transformation ✨
I feel deeply that my experience, knowledge, and this calling that chose me, can help others not only survive loss, but transform it into love, into meaning, into something larger than pain🌱
Right now, I feel a new wave rising. A call to expand.
To speak. To share. To be present.
To make space for death to be seen.
For grief not to remain unanswered.
And for no one to feel alone when their heart is breaking💔
I'm Olga. Founder of Grief Today. Death Doula and Grief Counselor.
Learn more: www.grieftoday.com
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