VSED Resources Northwest co-founder Nancy Simmers is a Registered Nurse and End-of-Life Doula.

Her 40-year nursing career included work as a labor and delivery nurse, a public health nurse for high-risk mothers and babies, a lactation consultant, a birth doula, and a women’s health care practitioner.

While engaged in the caretaking of her dying parents, Nancy first saw the similarities between birth and death, and recognized that both are thresholds involving courage, uncertainty, fear, release, transformation, and love. Her passionate wish now is for society to accept, prepare for, practice, and anticipate death as much as we do pregnancy and birth.

To learn more about Nancy’s experiences with VSED, read her “Who We Are” blog post.