Hi, I'm Kenzie

Hey, my name is McKenzie Mott and I am the forget me not doula of Creative Ways to Grieve.

What is a doula? Doula: a helping hand for you and your family; friend; coach; emotional support; a woman who serves.

My journey as a doula began when I was in the premed program at the University of Utah studying Biology. I needed a good volunteer opportunity and one showed up right in front of me on a flyer one day. It was volunteering as a birth doula at the University Hospital. I decided to take the training and afterward I was hooked!

Long story short, I knew this is where I was supposed to be, a birth doula helping women through the labor process, showing them the wonderful things that pregnancy and birth have to teach us and that medical school wasn’t actually the right path. I switched everything around and got my degree in Health Promotion and Education and received my doula certification. I have been practicing as a birth doula for 12 years and I absolutely love it!

5 years ago a year before the covid pandemic, my son Theo was born with Congenital Heart Defects. The road of a medically complex child mom is brutal. Luckily I knew most of the medical terms and could understand doctor talk pretty well from my background in premeds, but I still wish I had someone to talk to, to go over my ideas and my wants and needs for my child and just have a friend to watch out for me and help me feel seen and heard, so I became a medically complex child doula to help other parents with just that.

Theo did so well during his surgery and life afterward. Then one August day he got really sick and randomly threw up all day, we took him to the ER and through a myriad of medical policies and procedures he ultimately couldn’t live with the state of his heart, brain, and body after a cardiac arrest while in the ER. His death began my journey of becoming a bereavement doula.

Life is weird isn’t it? There are so many things that happen to us, so many trials that lead us to where we are. I have had a good share of trials in my life that have lead up to this point and I have learned so much from them. There is one trial that I want to learn deeply from; and it is this; my son lived and then he died…. my beautiful baby boy. So what will my life look like now? Who will I become, and how can I find space to help others? It took me a while to find and create the support I so desperately wanted. I decided to create this space to grieve and share with others and here I am! I hope you find joy in this journey with me.

There is nothing wrong with you.

You are just human trying to process unimaginably painful events.

You are not broken.

You are grieving.

-Marie Goudreau