Haven Doula Spotlight: Whitney Whitmore
- Dr. Abby Jorgensen
- Oct 14
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 15
In this spotlight, we feature Whitney Whitmore, a Haven Doula and the Director of Lily of the Valley Catholic Ministry.
How did you begin your bereavement work?
Professionally, I work as an occupational therapist for a level 1 trauma center and work to rehabilitate persons from age 2 to 100+. Navigating grief and loss after trauma has been an integral part of my involvement with families in this way for the past decade.
Additionally, I am a mother to four boys, three of whom walk alongside us in this life and one who received a prenatal, life-limiting diagnosis. My son had a rare chromosome 17 deletion that led to many deficits including a 3 chambered heart, a cystic hygroma, omphalocele, and more. We chose a palliative pregnancy and chose life until natural death based on our spiritual values and beliefs. We valued the time we had with our son in utero and his heart stopped beating at 34 weeks. We welcomed the opportunity to meet him after delivery and it was a beautiful experience that changed my life and my faith journey.
Because we were very open about our story in the circles we walked in, many people felt comfortable coming to me and sharing similar experiences related to miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. I would listen to them and grieve alongside them and then go home telling my husband that I had met yet another person who had experienced loss. He was the one that suggested maybe it was a calling to support our community in this way with the gifts I had to share.
I began researching and was initially shocked at the statistics when I realized that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage and 1 in 100 pregnancies end in a stillbirth. I was shocked that as a culture the prevalence was high, but that it seemed like a silent trauma that no one discussed publicly or knew how to support comfortably. I felt that surely the Church would have organized support for families walking through these difficult early life circumstances and was disappointed at the lack of precedence or knowledge from our parish and clergy.
A year after my own loss, I started a local Catholic prayer ministry that grew to a statewide non-profit organization. Due to the level of need and word of mouth, our ability to provide prayer and support to families quickly spread across the nation. Lily of the Valley Catholic Ministry has now provided prayer support packages to over 750 families, most of whom have experienced pregnancy or infant loss. We pray for each family individually, acknowledge their loss, personalize keepsakes, write a handwritten note, and send them tools that support prayer during their grief. Additionally, we seek to help change the social script that once held silent the trauma of this type of loss; our hope is to increase the availability and awareness of resources that encourage prayer and support for these families during a time they need it the most. We do this through the prayer care packages themselves, monthly prayer nights on Zoom, content production on our socials, quarterly events online and in person, and a yearly retreat. We also aim to follow each family with a late term or infant loss for up to a year by providing quarterly support.
What initially started as simply prayer support, has turned into a community of women and their families praying with and for each other and opportunities to spread love and awareness through resources, education, and community engagement that is so meaningful to families as they walk along their grief journeys. I believe they appreciate feeling seen and validated in their grief by those closest to them through the packages and they have a community to turn to for faith support.
Why did you decide to take the Haven Bereavement Doula training?
Taking the training to become a bereavement doula gave me the education and evidence based knowledge I needed outside of my personal experience to sit with, listen to, and support families better with a culturally sensitive lens. I seem to naturally gravitate towards this work as if it is one of the gifts God has given me to share and it is fulfilling to me to help others in this way. The course increased my confidence in supporting families through all stages of loss and to consider how support can look different to each family and the needs that are meaningful to them during their time of loss.
What does serving as a bereavement doula look like for you right now?
I am the Director of Lily of the Valley Catholic Ministry. Lily of the Valley’s mission is to serve families experiencing infertility, difficult prenatal diagnosis, postnatal medical challenges, and those who have had a pregnancy or infant loss. Through the communion of saints and a devotion to St. Gianna Molla, our hope is to provide prayer and support to those who carry this cross and to bring comfort to those who are weary, that they will come to find peace and joy amidst a time of sorrow and suffering.
I feel LOTV serves two main functions:
1.) Sends prayer care packages
2.) Creates and sustains a community of prayer support (avenues include: in person events and retreats; physical mail with tangible items that promote prayer; or digitally through social media education and community engagement, virtual prayer nights, fundraisers, etc.)
What I personally believe:
I think our culture has lost a sense of personalized engagement that is key to fostering real relationships and supporting each other in personal and meaningful ways. With this in mind, I aim to strike a balance between providing real life, tangible prayer support, and also providing modern ways to stay engaged to provide continual growth in prayer and community.
I love that our Catholic faith is one that upholds both scripture and tradition. I believe the Church as a whole functions as one body of Christ. I believe that the love that is generated from this foundation is one of beauty and that it reflects both our eyes and hearts upwards towards heaven. I feel the appreciation of beauty and tradition and its impact on relationship with one another has been lost over time, but that tapping into it reveals and extends this love back outward to those in their sorrow, and reminds them to unite their suffering to Christ’s on the cross. It is my hope that we can be conduits of grace through prayer, and that we can reflect Christ’s light to kindle and/or strengthen their relationship with Christ through prayer. I strive to reflect this beauty and love in every ministry effort.
I wanted this ministry to fulfill a gap I felt in the lack of response and support the Church was prepared to provide when I was walking through a difficult pregnancy, prenatal diagnosis, and stillbirth.
I aim to uphold our faith and tradition by prayerfully supporting families through infertility, prenatal diagnosis, pregnancy/infant loss, and infants with complex medical needs. I believe the lack of support stems from an outdated social script that historically has lent the response towards shame and isolation surrounding grief and loss. It is compounded by a lack of education of clergy and a lack of available resources (and even theological doctrine) that are approved by the Church.
Key things related to how my beliefs impact how LOTV is set up to serve families through the LOTV mission and brand:
I like the personalized antiquity of snail mail and I think it serves a purpose within our mission to provide families with tangible prayer tools / sacramentals and demonstrates love through the physical presence of Christ showing up for them through the hands that create and write their mail.
I also like limited use of email and try to stick with one monthly e-newsletter and one “reminder to pray” email because I think folks get numb to their inbox and junk mail.
I have found that community events, whether virtually or in person, are something that builds the prayer community and this has been successfully accomplished through the use of socials to create and sustain engagement that surrounds our mission, growth in prayer, and our Catholic values.
How else do you serve your community?
My favorite way to apply my bereavement doula knowledge is to share with the community how to support others. I am often asked to speak to parishes and church groups on how to support families prayerfully during their time of loss. I also plan an annual retreat through Lily of the Valley, in support of our mission, that invites families of loss and other prayer supporters to learn more about the prevalence of pregnancy and infant loss, and to grow in their own spiritual lives. I believe that a firm foundation in one’s faith lends to a healthy prayer life and when rooted in prayer you can be Christ’s light to others by praying for and supporting women and their families during their grief journeys.
Additionally, in my role as an occupational therapist, I have helped to start a Perinatal Rehab Program for all moms at my local hospital following a C-section delivery or other traumatic birth. I have been consulted to give presentations on trauma-informed and grief-informed practice in the post-partum phase to the rehabilitation team to include after intra-uterine fetal demise/stillbirth. Having the training as a bereavement doula has allowed me the knowledge to disseminate this information in a culturally sensitive way that can be incorporated into our healthcare best practices. It has helped me gain the respect of my peers in handling these scenarios outside of my own personal experience. I am also set up to treat women virtually (in NC and VA) if they have rehab needs during their postpartum recovery in weeks 0-6 through a private practice model. Although this is most often after live births, I have found that it is best practice to be grief-informed and trauma-informed in every scenario to be sensitive to each individual’s story or parenting journey.
What is one thing that you like to do to take care of yourself?
I absolutely love hot and melty break and bake chocolate chip cookies, big hugs and cuddles from my family, and a good historical fiction novel. I also enjoy spending time gardening around our home from vegetables to cut flowers and it brings me pops of joy throughout my day. I have incorporated florals into the ministry and try to utilize them in the work we do. Flowers can be so meaningful and symbolic and hold root in tradition and sacred religious art.
Do you have any advice for anyone who is considering starting a bereavement ministry or taking a bereavement doula training?
My advice would be to discern where you feel there is a gap in your community and pour into bridging that gap with your time and talents. Being passionate about what you do will give you the fortitude you need to make it happen. Passion is what will drive your motivation, creativity, and energy to keep doing it. I feel the bereavement doula training was well organized, insightful, and increased my knowledge at a foundational level with applied scenarios that gave me the confidence to apply what I was learning into both my work as an occupational therapist and as a bereavement doula.
You can contact Whitney at: