Sometimes, we’re blessed with unexpected guardian figures in life. Here you are, running away from some all-consuming truth, and then, life serves you up someone who narrows their eyes at you and names the very thing you’re avoiding so desperately. Usually, they are tough but compassionate. They come to you in the spirit of guidance, not shame. They are doula figures, patrolling self-denial’s wilderness to point you, gently but firmly, toward the path of truth of self.
For me, this person was Silvia Argueta.
I vividly remember when I first met Silvia. A senior attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a first-generation Guatemalan American, and the first person in her family to go to college, let alone become a lawyer, she was a force in her own right, and I was drawn to her immediately. Immigrant sees immigrant, even though at her height—four feet eleven inches, never rounding up to five feet because that would be a lie—I often only saw the top of her head. During my tortured tenure, she became a mentor and close friend.
When Silvia’s father died, I attended his funeral. When she spoke to a medium afterward, hoping to reach him, the woman asked to speak to the tall smiley Black woman in the office. Meaning me. The next day, Silvia knocked on my door and told me about the medium’s request as if she were relaying a sandwich order. I was spooked, but I talked to the medium anyway. (Apparently, my grandma I’d never met wanted to say hi.)
When I was repeatedly frustrated by the inequities of the benefits programs, Silvia listened to me bitch, my tears brimming about the injustice of it all. But in that first meeting, she got right to the point with me.
“Why are you a lawyer?”
The question unnerved me. It was so direct and, in this setting, so obvious, though I hadn’t thought about it since my law school application essays—and even then, I bullshitted. “Well, um. . . .” I sniffled, fiddling with the rings on my hands, trying to conjure up something to appease this firecracker. “I want to impact justice somehow and help people and be there when people most need someone there and . . .” I trailed off, hoping I was convincing her. But I’m a terrible liar. All of this was true, but it didn’t explain why I’d chosen the practice of law.
I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was a lawyer because I had been a “gifted” child expected to do big things with her life, and being a lawyer sounded good, and I wanted to make my family proud.
I couldn’t tell her that I had not been brave enough to stop and understand what I wanted, and that despite the tremendous amount of work that law school and the bar exam had been, I had just taken the path of least resistance. It sounded silly even to me—when “the path of least resistance” involves putting yourself through the torture of law school and the agony of passing the California Bar Exam, with its pass rate of around 34 percent, you know you’re running away from something.
I couldn’t dare tell Silvia that I longed for a different life, which I was afraid to even visualize, and that I felt this life receding further from me every day. I didn’t need to. Silvia saw my deep sensitivity, my difficulty with the nature of the work, and my quirky style. I was trying to fit a hexagon-shaped peg into a lawyer-sized hole, and Silvia saw right through me.
I think she was the only one. Everyone else in the office bought into my lawyer performance, which was a gift, because the good Lord knows I spent enough time and money trying to convince them. Throughout my nine years at Legal Aid, I shopped like I was stocking a store. In the months between travel adventures and boyfriends, when I felt the desperation mounting and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away, not even for a three-day weekend, one of my only remaining tricks was to buy new clothes.
However, this was a particularly bleak form of retail therapy, because I only bought drab “lawyer” clothes, trying to fit in. No orange Alexander McQueen ball gown skirts, no mudcloth capes from Accra. Instead, I bought heather-gray wool suits and pinstripe pantsuits, pencil skirts (not too tight as to show my ass), and periwinkle button-down dress shirts (not buttoned so high I’d look like a Pilgrim). Embellished belts, colored shoes, headbands, and accessories for the tiniest little drip.
Each day I’d put on an outfit and look at myself in the mirror, squinting to see from the perspective of my clients. As a young Black woman (who looked even younger given my high cheekbones and melanin), I had to try harder to be taken seriously by my clients, coworkers, opposing counsel, and judges. Would they respect me in this outfit? Did I look like a lawyer with gold jewelry hanging out of every visible orifice? What if I put on glasses? The practice of law is still an old white boys’ club, and I did not want to present myself in a way that would be a hindrance to my clients. Did I look the part I was trying to play?
Clearly not to Silvia.
The clothes fit my body, which was losing weight because of all the bike riding and waning appetite. But they didn’t fit me. My appearance is the message I am conveying about who I am. As the child of a model and designer, fashion sense is in my DNA. My mom touted her vanity and reinforced the idea that we can dress to help us cultivate joy. “Look good, feel good,” my mom would tell us. I flood my body with dopamine through bright colors, soft fabrics, flowy silhouettes. When I put on the dress, I twirl by instinct. Despite the admonitions not to, humans judge books by their cover all the time, and I want mine to be as accurate as possible.
Each day is a chance to put together a look that is a reflection of my inner being, and when the outer shell no longer feels reflective of the inner self, I start to feel itchy, constrained. You can dismiss the importance of fashion, if you want. But clothes, to me, are freedom. They are expression and art. Above all, I want freedom to change: my mind, my heart, my clothes, my profession, my choices. When a style becomes constraining, all you have to do is look in the mirror and change it.
Some mornings, I would eye my favorite yellow chiffon tutu skirt but would talk myself out of wearing it to work. It wasn’t “professional” enough. I’d take off my multicolored nail polish to present at board meetings and pull my locs back in a low ponytail for court. Each time I changed outfits because of fear that I didn't look the part, I traded a small piece of my authenticity to conform to a life I’d convinced myself I was supposed to want. I was trying to dress a zebra up as a horse.
I’ve always felt like a zebra, no matter where I was. Black in America, African with Black people, American in Ghana. The youngest student in community college math classes. The fat cheerleader, the vegetarian in my family, the girl with the short hair when everyone was wearing theirs long, who blurted out things that didn’t make sense to other people and laughed at the joke in my head at inappropriate times. No matter where I went in this world, I didn’t fit in. And the harder I tried to, the more I stuck out.
During a meeting at Legal Aid I referred to Twitter users as twats. I wasn’t trying to be crude; I thought that was the right name. It made melodic sense. People who tweet are twats. Right? Wrong. The meeting didn’t so much stop as crash land so the other attorneys could explain my error. I burned in my seat and they struck the conversation from the minutes. I didn’t know it was a “bad word.” English isn’t my first language!
For the next eight years, as I switched practice groups, stifled myself, and continued to grow more discontented, Silvia would persistently ask me the question again: “Why are you a lawyer?” Each time I’d bullshit a new version of the same answer. But I was unconvincing. I was good with clients, but shit at the nuts and bolts of the job. I was (and am) disorganized—my papers were sprawled all over my desk, with crucial forms buried inside the mountain. I was temperamentally unsuited to debating the finer legal points. I was more interested in what was right rather than what was legal, which makes an excellent philosopher but a terrible lawyer.
I wanted to hold my clients’ hands, tell their stories, cry with them, and love them into better situations for themselves. I wanted to talk about life, healing, and art. I’d work myself into a tizzy because of how ineffective the laws were and would drink a bottle of wine to numb myself after work. Silvia stuck with me, trying to help me find a position within Legal Aid that fit. She didn’t nag. She trusted me with my life.
I didn’t trust myself, though. I knew, deep down, something was wrong. I was wearing someone else’s clothes, feeling like I was wearing someone else’s skin. I had a wardrobe that didn’t look like me. A career I’d backed myself into. Lies I told myself. A life that didn’t even feel like mine.
One saving grace of this job was that it looked good on the outside. The other was that I only had to don the mask part-time. The rest of the time, I had the freedom to be me. For a while it was worth it to trade my authenticity for twenty-one hours a week. But year after year of smothering myself introduced an insidious ache I couldn’t shake. It permeated my being.
I could barely recognize myself in the mirror. Whenever I pulled my locs back or fixed my button-down shirt, I saw an emptiness lurking behind my eyes, the same one I felt spreading through my body whenever I modulated my voice or suppressed my style at work. It was starting to suck away at my bone marrow—at my very essence.
Before long, my wardrobe started changing naturally. I veered toward grays and blacks. The colors faded. So did the effort. So did the spark of life within me. I thought I was doing what it took to survive, but in truth I was slowly killing myself. Shrinking my joy, murdering my own light. And for what? For a life I didn’t buy into. It was like I was holding a pillow over my own face, waiting for myself to stop struggling.
I meet Ken shortly after hanging out my death doula shingle. His family found me to help get a power of attorney so they can manage his small business for him while he is dying in the hospital. I’m a little resistant to doing this, as I want to keep any legal work as far from my death work as possible, but I need clients. And I’ve got the skills. Death work requires that we bring our whole selves to the bedside, so I bring my legal skills this time too, even though I’d like to leave them far behind.
Ken owns a vintage clothing store in L.A. At fifty-seven, pancreatic cancer has worn his body down quickly. When I meet him in his hospital room, he is pallid, with downy baby hair from chemo, soft green eyes sunk deep in his skull, and naked bones visible in his wrist. When he was healthy, Ken—white, assigned male at birth, and using he/him pronouns—frequently wore skirts, blouses, stockings, heels, makeup, and tiaras. Today, he wears a standard-issue white-and-blue faded hospital gown—no eyeshadow, liner, blush, tiara, or lipstick. His family has never approved of his outfits, and in his illness, he’s stopped trying. In illness, even the most fabulous of us revert to sweatpants and pajamas.
As Ken signs the power of attorney in front of a notary in his hospital bed, he seems defeated. I notice the fading flicks of green glitter nail polish and ask him about it when his sister leaves the room.
“I prefer my nails painted but ‘they’ don’t like it.” He gestures widely but weakly at the empty room, as though it held a full audience. I look around. Sometimes clients talk to people who I cannot see at the end of life and it is unclear if the dead are meeting the dying or if these are hallucinations that bubble up from the subconscious as the mind prepares itself for death. “Who in particular are you referring to?” I ask cautiously.
“They. My sister. My aunt. My dad. My nephew.”
“Okay,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. I do not want to see dead people today. “When’s the last time you painted them?” I ask.
“It’s been a couple of months now. They asked me to stop, saying it would be confusing for other members of our biological family who have come to help out or visit. Nevermind that my chosen family has been here all along and they are just fine with it.”
“Is that okay with you?”
“I’ll do it for them when I am living. But if it were up to me, when they put me in the incinerator, I want blue nails with purple sparkle on them.”
Ken’s admission stirs something in me. I’ve spent years toning down my nail colors for others—for judges, opposing counsel, and summer law internships. If anyone ever needs a champion for the right to nail art in death or in life, they’ve got it in me.
“We can do that!” I say with a big smile.
Ken looks at me with such surprise I wonder if I misheard him. “You were serious about wanting glitter nails when you’re cremated, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t. But if you can do it, I am.” His flat demeanor while discussing the power of attorney is changing.
“If you want it, I’ll do my best to make that happen. What about your clothes?”
“I would rather wear a vintage gold pleated skirt with a pink leotard, but I’ll wear a suit as long as it’s not black. It pains me to think of that beautiful skirt being burned when I am cremated.”
“Are you sure?” I press on, noticing that he is coming to life again talking about clothing. “If you want to wear the skirt, we can make that happen too.”
Ken ponders this question from his hospital bed as he looks past the eggshell-colored walls with a stock ocean painting hanging near the window and out the eighth-floor window. From the length of his silence, it is clear he is considering it seriously.
He sighs. “I’m just trying to make it through these last days or weeks or months without pissing anyone off. I don’t have it in me to fight for that.”
“Well, I do!” I’ve got endless energy for battles for what I think is just, especially when it comes to the wishes of the dying. I quickly review the power of attorney Ken has just signed and I’m relieved we limited it to his business and financial decisions. Realistically, however, his family is still his next of kin, which means they will have the right to decide what he wears at his funeral and for the cremation, unless he makes clear plans himself or grants that right to someone else.
I see this all the time. Even when signing paperwork about what happens to their body after death, people often don’t state outright what they want, leaving confusion for the surviving grieving family. The excuse is that they will be dead anyway, but that leaves the decision-making to their devastated circle of support. Ken knows all this but, understandably, can’t be bothered. His funeral has been planned by his family, and he’s fine with the fact that it will be held in a church. “I’ll probably go up in flames as soon as they roll me in,” he says dryly, gesturing heavenward. “It will save money on the cremation.”
But I want to know more about what Ken wants, not just what he’ll accept.
Since Ken loves clothing and seems to have ease talking about his death, we chat about funeral attire. Like me, he is tickled that people with breasts are often buried with a bra and that “burial shoes” exist. We share a giggle about the modesty of the deceased. I tell Ken I can advocate for him with his family members if it’s important to him. I inquire about the most sympathetic person to talk to. Maybe if they are swayed, the rest of the family will follow suit.
“Maybe my niece. But listen, it’s not important to me that I wear my gold skirt in the coffin. I just want my nail polish.” He sounds defeated again. I pause for a moment. While I’m familiar with stifled style, I can’t fathom the pain of not being able to be fully expressed in my body. But that was me. Rather than continue to fight for what I would do, I back off and listen to my client. Just as I learned from my days working in legal services helping Tash that you can’t live a client’s life for them, I know now that neither can you die their death.
“Okay,” I say. “Then I’m going to do my best to make sure you have blue and purple glitter nail polish in your coffin. Would that make you happy?”
Ken cracks a tired smile. “That would make me jubilant. I thought you came for my bank account, not for my nails.”
By the time I leave, I am fired up for a battle with Ken’s biological family over his fingernails. It’s early days in my work as a death doula, but I know for sure that my role is to advocate for the dying person first.
Luckily, it only takes a couple of phone calls. Ken’s niece is moved by her uncle’s request and talks to her family members with my coaching. I suggest she tell them of the compromise he is willing to make to keep them happy. They capitulate under the stipulation that his hands are by his sides in the coffin rather than crossed over his chest, so they wouldn’t be seen during the open casket viewing. It is another small slight against being seen in his glory, but Ken is satisfied, and thus so am I. I call the funeral home to see if it would be possible and they agree.
Ken dies about two weeks after our conversation about his nails. His body doesn’t combust in the church and he goes triumphantly into the cremation flames wearing blue and purple glitter nail polish.
Knowing that Ken got what he wanted brings me a wave of peace. I learn that I can still serve as an advocate for someone who needs one, just like I did at Legal Aid. What I help Ken with might seem small to others, but to me, it is huge. I’m able to help him feel like an authentic version of himself. This is something I missed myself for so long, and now I can help other people do that when it matters most—when they have no more time to course correct or leave a mark on their own terms.
Death doulas get to honor the totality of the lived human experience for those of all identities, not just the ones we relate to or can understand. Individuals from communities that are marginalized especially deserve an advocate at the end of life. There are times where it is simply not possible to give the dying what they want, like the chance to assert their identity to an estranged family member. But focusing on the spirit of the request rather than the letter of it helps. When a particular type of flower is not available for a funeral, we adjust and pick something in the same family or color scheme. But when we are talking about bodies being misgendered or deadnamed at death, I will go to war for a client’s wishes, to the extent they want me to. It is their death.
Too often parts of a person get erased in death because the biological family does not condone or support them, or because they were kept secret. All parts of our identity die along with us. We bury the whole person. If in death we could honor everyone for exactly who they were in life, we could work at breaking down the barriers that keep us separate from one another and separate from our complex humanity. And if in life we could live out loud the identities we carry and the expressions that scream from us, we could also shine light and love on the parts that others choose to hate. Fuck them. Do you, boo.