Toronto Star, Life Section - Feature Interview | October 1st/2019

TORONTO DEATH DOULA HELPS TAKE FEAR OUT OF DYING

“Everyone dies and that is OK.”

Those six words are something of a mantra for Kayla Moryoussef, a Toronto “death worker” who has spent the last six years immersed in death and dying. As the program manager of the Toronto Home Hospice Association’s “Death Café” initiative, she holds sessions for people to talk about death (more about that later) and, in addition, works to help people experience a “good death.”

What might make a death good? That probably depends on the person, but one of the main things Moryoussef works to get people to let go of is fear.

And she’s not alone. While it’s still a relatively niche corner of the death care industry in Canada, there are an increasing number of people with “death doula” or “end-of-life-worker” practices and, like Moryoussef, most are participants in the “death-positivity” movement. “It’s not that we should celebrate the fact that people died,” says Moryoussef, who works with Toronto’s Home Hospice Association and has a practice called Good Death (www.gooddeath.ca) through which she runs “Death Café” sessions....          READ MORE HERE

Grief Dreams Podcast - Feature Interview | July 29/2019

Episode 127: KAYLA MORYOUSSEF - GOOD DEATH DOULA

A conversation about life, loss, and grief dreams with an expert in the field, Dr. Joshua Black, along with co-host Shawn Ram.

In this episode we talk about getting becoming a death doula, the coming death boom in our culture, the death of her grandmother and dogs, her memorial tattoos, Death Cafés, and grief dreams of grandmother.

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Kayla Moryoussef is a Community Worker/Registered Social Service Worker from Toronto who has been volunteering and working in end-of-life/palliative care for over seven years. She is a Death Educator, Death Doula candidate with Home Hospice Association, and project manager for all of their Death Cafés across southern Ontario. Kayla truly believes in the profound power of a ‘good death’ and its lasting effects on healthy individuals, families, and communities at-large. At the age of fifteen, Kayla’s life was profoundly changed by baring witness to the death of her grandmother, a primary parent and the one of the most formative figures in her life to this day.                                                                                        LISTEN HERE

She Does the City - Feature Interview | March 29/2019

WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT LIFE FROM WORKING WITH THE DYING

Kayla Moryoussef is a Toronto-based community worker & registered social service worker who has been volunteering and working in end-of-life care for over seven years. She is a death educator, death doula candidate with Home Hospice Association, and project manager for all of their Death Cafés across southern Ontario. 

We were curious about why she was drawn to death work, and what she’s learned about life from those who are on their deathbeds.

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SDTC: Tell us about how you got started in death work.

KM: I was working in the music industry, but I knew I wanted to be in the care-giving profession. I was looking for opportunities, and I found a hospice in Toronto who would give me forty hours of training and then put me in the field with dying people. I was like, “Sign me up!” I did the training with Hospice Toronto, then I became an in-home palliative care team volunteer member......                                              READ MORE HERE