Haley Broadaway
Written by: Isabella Bagshaw
Edited by: Jonathon Sadowksi
Haley Broadaway, an exuberant woman with bright eyes and a persistent smile, decided to build her life around death after her sister-in-law was diagnosed with brain cancer.
At the time, Broadaway was a Lyft driver and one of her passengers happened to be a death doula, a physical and spiritual caretaker who helps dying people accept death. As Broadaway listened to stories of the passenger’s profession, she realized this was the vocational calling she had been searching for.
Broadaway brings her Southern charm to Chicago all the way from her hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas. Her Lincoln Square apartment is decorated with an assortment of colorful scarves, musical instruments and vibrantly painted walls. On a sunny yellow couch, Broadaway provides a demonstration of her work as she asks a role-playing "patient" how he would like to spend his final days.
Her work helps people learn to accept death and face it without fear so they can “explore what they want in the end of life process,” Broadaway says.
Broadaway is often called upon to fill an emotional—and sometimes physical—void in a dying person’s life, especially if family members and friends are unable or unwilling to. She may simply sit and talk with her clients, but sometimes she embraces them or even lies in bed with them. There are limits, though.
“We have the freedom to really connect,” Broadaway says, “but we still have boundaries.”
While there is physical contact, sexual conduct is out of the question, she says.
As a client is on their deathbed, Broadaway does her best to make them comfortable and ready for their transition into whatever afterlife they may or may not believe in. She demonstrates what the vigil is like, placing family photographs near the client’s bedside before covering him in a blanket and sitting with him and caressing his hand.
While she does receive compensation for her services, her payment can come in different forms. At times, she’s taken nothing but a meal in exchange for her services.
“I’ve really tried to only charge [for] what my experience is,” she says. “Once I get my
certification, my fee can increase.” She also plans to scale her fee to accommodate her clients' income, she added.
Broadaway is currently waiting to receive her doula certification through the International End of Life Doula Association, which requires her to get hands-on training and intern at a hospice.
Broadaway has more personal investment with her clients as a death doula than if she were a hospice worker, says Sara Ombrello, a social worker and Broadaway’s supervisor at the Hope Palliative and Hospice Care in Palatine, Illinois.
Doula and hospice work go hand in hand in their shared efforts to allow patients to “go as they want to,” Ombrello says.
“Haley has been just a great asset to our team,” she adds. “She is able to be there when a team member is maybe not able to, or if the family is looking for someone to sit and talk with [a client]—even for many, many hours.”
Broadaway also incorporates her own creative talents to heighten her work. She has a musical background that includes an undergraduate degree in musical theater and months of touring with a theater group. She often sings to patients, which she says is a more fulfilling use of her musical skills than simply performing.
"She wants to bring out the best of people and take their pain away."
“I love music and I love to sing, but I was looking for something more meaningful for my music,” Broadaway says.
To prepare for doula sessions, she often finds herself playing music on her banjulele—a banjo-ukulele hybrid—or guitar and by singing along. However, she says her favorite instrument is her voice.
Another common practice of hers is to help clients create legacy projects: memory boxes containing photos and personal items, family trees or anything that resonates with the individual.
Broadaway gets to know her clients for as long as several months or as short as a few days. Throughout the sessions, she asks the clients about themselves and how she can help create legacy work to be remembered by. One of her most recent clients grew up in Italy during World War II, so Broadaway helped create a traditional Italian cookbook.
“[Legacy work] is really all about preserving the life and sincerity of that individual,” Broadaway says.
Having a strong support system to fall back on is essential to maintaining emotional health, Broadaway says. Her longtime boyfriend, John Bourn, is often whom she turns to. Bourn says Broadaway, in turn, succeeded in soothing him after his father died. Incidentally, the two met during a production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” a morbid musical fraught with murder.
“She wants to bring out the best of people and take their pain away,” Bourn says. “I don’t think she could’ve picked a harder and more nobler thing."
Broadaway says she wants to continue her work as a doula into the next phase of her mission to help people heal. Next year she will receive her master’s degree in marriage and family counseling from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.
Broadaway’s ultimate goal is to work with children who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses and their families. In these situations, she says, the shock and trauma of the impending loss is often much more difficult to grapple with than the loss of an adult. She says her intention is to not only help children through those unfathomable times, but also to help preserve the family once the child has passed away.
Referencing the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” Broadaway says, “Unfortunately, death does not discriminate.”
Broadaway demonstrating her doula duties with friend.
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Photos by: Jonathon Sadowski