At the Threshold: Compassion, Choice, and the Space Reflection Opens
- Jody Valkyrie | Healing Artist
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
I recently came across news that Illinois has expanded access to medical aid in dying for terminally ill adults. As expected, the responses were immediate and divided—strong support on one side, deep concern on the other.
My own initial response was clear and supportive.
And then, instead of moving on, I noticed myself staying with it.
Not because my values shifted, but because reflection has a way of deepening what first feels straightforward. As I sat with the question longer, memories, lived experiences, and quieter spiritual considerations began to surface. This piece grew out of that pause.
Where I’m Standing as I Write This
I am not yet a practicing death doula, though I have completed some formal education and training in this field.
But I am someone who has spent much of my life close to the edges of life and death.
I sat with my grandmother as she took her final breaths, after months of witnessing her wither into a fraction of who she had been as her body slowly shut down.
Long before that, as a child, I watched my grandfather live for years in a nursing home after a traumatic head injury caused by a drunk driver—unable to speak, unable to walk, with only limited use of his hands. The ending for my other grandfather was not much different, even without a single defining injury. In both cases, I learned early what it looks like when the body remains, but the life as we recognize it slowly recedes.
I have been present with beloved pets as they were gently put to rest.
I have sat beside my daughter through the aftermath of multiple attempts to end her own life.
I survived my own attempt during a period when my nervous system and mind were profoundly altered by a medication prescribed for extreme stress and physical anxiety—an experience that felt foreign, disembodying, and deeply unlike myself.
And I have lived through losses that did not involve physical death, but felt like one—estrangements and endings that permanently reshaped my inner world.
I don’t share this to establish authority or evoke alarm. I share it because these experiences have quietly shaped how I understand suffering, agency, and the longing for relief.
Suffering Is Not a Single Story
One of the clearest lessons I’ve learned is that suffering is not a single thing.
Some suffering invites reflection, growth, or deepening.
Some suffering stretches us in ways that later reveal meaning.
And some suffering overwhelms the body and mind so completely that there is no lesson to extract—only a desire for the intensity to stop.
I’ve grown cautious of narratives that treat all suffering as inherently noble or spiritually required. From the inside of lived experience, initiation is rarely gentle or poetic—it often arrives first as panic, disorientation, or profound exhaustion, long before any meaning has a chance to form. To honor life, for me, is to hold both truths at once: that transformation can arise from these thresholds, and that the human nervous system and body have real limits that deserve care and respect.
The Spiritual Question That Emerged Through Reflection
As I reflected more deeply—beyond my initial support—I noticed a familiar spiritual tension arise.
I do believe suffering can be meaningful.
I do believe some experiences shape us through staying, through bearing, through continuing on.
And I also believe meaning cannot be forced.
Spiritual frameworks lose their compassion when they imply that relief is a failure, or that choosing rest is a rejection of growth. I don’t believe consciousness is refined through punishment.
The question I keep returning to is not How much suffering should someone endure?
But rather:
How consciously can someone meet what is already here?
Sometimes that looks like staying.
Sometimes it looks like asking for help.
Sometimes it looks like letting go.
Choice as a Form of Reverence
When I look at aid-in-dying laws through this lens, I don’t see them as promoting death. I see them as creating space for agency at a time when so much control has already been lost.
These laws do not compel action. They offer an option—one that some will never choose, and others may never use, but that can still bring comfort simply by existing.
For some, knowing there is a choice softens fear.
For others, the choice itself feels like dignity.
What matters most to me is that any decision remains personal, conscious, and free from pressure—held with care rather than ideology.
Why Absolutes Feel Insufficient Here
I’m wary of any system—medical, spiritual, or cultural—that claims to know what should be endured by someone else.
I’m wary of voices that shame people for wanting relief.
And I’m equally wary of approaches that bypass grief, complexity, or the natural closing of life.
This isn’t about finding the “right” answer.
It’s about resisting the urge to flatten human experience into certainty.
Life deserves reverence all the way to its edges—including how those edges are approached.
Where I Find Myself Now
What began for me as clear support has become a deeper, more layered understanding—one shaped by reflection rather than doubt. I still believe compassion includes choice, and dignity includes agency. I also hold space for the truth that not all paths at the end of life look the same. If there is any wisdom I trust now, it’s this: the work is not to rush toward certainty, but to meet complexity with care, humility, and reverence for what it means to be human.
Author’s Note
I am currently in training to become a death doula, drawn to this work not from certainty, but from a long history of witnessing—loss, survival, and the many forms of dying that happen both at the end of life and throughout it. This path feels less like a profession I am stepping into and more like a continuation of listening: learning how to sit with what is tender, unresolved, and deeply human, without rushing it toward answers.
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