Mayo ‘death doula’ Laura Coleman appears on RTÉ podcast

A Mayo Roscommon Hospice employee who helps families cope with death has appeared on a podcast with well-known RTÉ broadcaster Seán O’Rourke.

Laura Coleman, a death doula and play therapist, spoke to Mr O’Rourke on the latest episode of his podcast, ‘Insights with Seán O’Rourke’.

During the interview, the Donegal native insisted that death is not something to fear.

“To be fair, I think I’m lucky that I’m one of the people that I have no fear of death. Absolutely no fear of death. If my time is up in the morning, I’m ready.” 

Ms Coleman asked Mr O’Rourke about his own plans for his funeral, the psychology of dealing with death and why she feels children should attend funerals. 

“When we don’t bring kids to funerals, what we’re saying is, there is something here that might hurt you or there’s something there is isn’t good for you,” the Claremorris resident said.

“Instead of, this is the inevitable. I think if we talked to kids in national schools about death and dying people would live their life more fully.” 

As well as working with the Mayo Roscommon Hospice, Ms Coleman also works as a play therapist. 

“Part of my other work is that I do parenting classes for parents of adolescents, specifically adolescents,” she explained. “Because it’s very different... you had this lovely baby, the baby was replaced by this lovely little toddler, you had this lovely toddler who was replaced by a child and then this child was replaced by this entity that is an adolescent that can be really hard to figure out.” 

The conversation between Seán O’Rourke and Laura Coleman contains references to illness, suicide, trauma and death, and a link to a webpage with relevant helplines is available in the show notes.

You can also listen to the entire interview on this link.