Wilka discusses the growth of the doula movement in Mexico and the end-of-life issues that are currently arising in Mexico and Central and South America.

Una conversación profundamente humana, transformadora y sorprendentemente esperanzadora sobre nuestra relación con el morir. Hablamos de cómo evitar el tema de la muerte impacta nuestra forma de vivir, de la magia y sabiduría que ocurre en el lecho de muerte, de lo que verdaderamente nos impide soltar, y de por qué la conciencia de la muerte puede ser una de las mayores revoluciones personales y colectivas que podemos tener. Wilka nos invita a cambiar el lente con el que vemos este proceso inevitable. Y a preguntarnos: ¿Lo que no te deja dormir… te va a dejar morir bien?

In this heartfelt conversation, Sofia University alumna Wilka Roig, recipient of the 2025 Dedication to Community Service Alumni Award, reflects on her journey, her connection to the Sofia community, and how transpersonal psychology continues to shape her work today. Wilka shares how her education at Sofia became a foundation for her work in grief and end-of-life care, offering a deeper, more compassionate approach to supporting individuals and communities. She also speaks about the power of community, the importance of the human element in education, and the lasting impact of the Sofia experience. Discover how transpersonal principles can guide meaningful work, personal growth, and service to others.

Nos sentamos en presencia con intención para descubrir lo que surge en el momento a través de esta exploración de cómo vivimos la muerte.

The Sacred Work of Death Doulas: We welcome multidisciplinary end-of-life care advocate and teacher Wilka Roig for a deep dive into ritual-making and the doula’s privilege to create space for it. Wilka Roig is an end-of-life doula, grief counselor, educator, facilitator, and consultant, also an ordained interfaith minister, Tai Chi & Qigong instructor, writer, musician, photographer, performance artist, graphic designer, silversmith, baker, and truthteller.

Wilka discusses death activism, how we can reconnect to the natural cycles of life and death, where our fear of death comes from, the necessity of community support in navigating grief, and simple practices to connect into death on the daily.

Tenemos una capacidad de dominar nuestra naturaleza hoy día con nuestros avances. Estamos identificados por conceptos de lo que somos y por qué estamos aquí. Como naturaleza y como consciencia no somos dueños de nada. Tenemos una fantasía condicionada de que soy esto porque tengo esto. ¿Qué más podemos considerar como consciencia encarnada?

Each one of us will come face-to-face with grief many times during our lifetime. Grief is the human condition that none of us can avoid. Wilka explains how grief guides us to grow and evolve. Loss is fundamental for evolution and each loss is an opportunity for healing through collaboration with grief. She helps us to better understand how grief leads us through an essential transformative process.

Francesca Lynn Arnoldy and Wilka Roig, creatives led by the Doula heart, explore the human creative impulse, the ways we feel called and invited to express creatively, and how we can engage that process in our daily life. We marvel at the parallels and connections between how we relate to creativity and how we hold space for the dying and the grieving.

At the end of life, no one should face death alone. Across cultures and continents, communities have developed unique ways to support the dying and their loved ones—offering care, companionship, and guidance through one of life’s most profound transitions. While each model is shaped by its local context, the need for communal support remains universal. Moderated by Christine Caldwell, four deathcare practitioners, Wilka Roig from Latin America, Sarah Carberry from New Zealand, and Aditi Sethi and Cathy “Brooksie” Edwards from North America shared their insights and experiences on building in-community deathcare programs for the dying, their loved ones, and the community-at-large.

Wilka discusses conscious grieving as the transformative process that invites us to acknowledge and collaborate with the loss, assuming the inevitable change, and allow for the new life that the loss initiates, and to be willing to enter into the formless, dark, unknown space that allows for the new to take form.

How do we live life and approach death with “merciful awareness?” What does it mean to become aware of life and death’s “zero point?” Is there a connection between our dreams and the life we are living? In this session, Wilka Roig, a death doula, therapist, and global educator, reflects on how her own life has informed and shaped answers to these profound questions and how from her vantage point, a revolution is unfolding in how we interpret and understand the end of life.

Como parte del programa educacional de Fundación Elisabeth Kübler-Ross México Centro, Muerte Consciente, fundadoras de la Red Latinoamericana de Acompañamiento nos comparten su intención, su visión, y su misión evolucionando nuestra cultura de muerte en comunidad. Escuchamos de co-fundadoras Wilka Roig, Sofía Plonski, Verónica Falconi y Michelle Puga acerca de lo que es el cuidado de la muerte en comunidad, y cómo trabajamos en comunidad para incorporar un acercamiento más humano que honra nuestra naturaleza.

Bringing together doulas who are navigating the complex and diverse needs of communities across the globe. Moderated by Christine Caldwell, the panel features three doulas: Daria Bondar from Ukraine, Wilka Roig from Mexico, and Frances Pope from the United States of America.

Deanna Flores Cochran interviews Sofía Plonski and Wilka Roig, who created the Red Latinoamericana de Acompañamiento en la Muerte y el Duelo, leading the death consciousness movement in Latin America. Their mission is to identify and connect with individuals, communities, institutions and organizations that work and serve in the field of loss, grief and end of life, to define the network that sustains us, and through which we can achieve our goals in community for the greatest collective benefit. Sopfía and Wilka translated and edited Deanna’s book in Spanish, published in 2022, Acompañando a los moribundos: Sabiduría práctica desde el corazón para doulas de fin de vida y mediadores en el sector de la salud.

Tune in to learn about all of the wonderful work Wilka Roig is doing in Mexico, including the first green cemetery for ecological restoration in Latin America.

Wilka Roig, Psicóloga Transpersonal, Doula de la muerte, consejera de duelo, platica con MEG, para fortalecernos en que hay que honrar los procesos, que en la vida, desde que nacemos, estamos en pérdida y ganancia—la ganancia es estar conscientes de que tenemos una vida y también la ganancia de que nos vamos a ir—este proceso de la comprensión de la muerte, de que todo cambia y nada es para siempre. Exploramos herramientas para colaborar con las transiciones de vida y procesarlas a través del duelo.

Wilka Roig, president of Fundación Elisabeth Kübler-Ross México Centro, talks with Aditi Sethi, co-protagonist of the documentary The Last Ecstatic Days, and founder and director of the Center for Conscious Living and Dying in Asheville, North Carolina, about the call and the mission to the work of compassionate accompaniment and the work of end-of-life Doula.

Hay que dejar morir para dejar nacer y la muerte solo duele si ponemos resistencia. Hay muertes físicas y muertes de identidad, personalidad, patrones, creencias, y más. En este episodio confrontamos la muerte desde todos los sentidos, no solo literal sino también metafórica. Ponemos en frente una realidad que a muchos nos da miedo pero que al final si no lo reconocemos y lo integramos nos la vamos a pasar toda la vida huyéndole a la muerte en lugar de vivir la vida.

Wilka Roig, president of Fundación Elisabeth Kübler-Ross México Centro, talks with Scott Kirschenbaum, cause-driven filmmaker and director of the documentary The Last Ecstatic Days, about the mission and impact of this experimental collaborative death awareness tour. “Can we take life’s last journey without fear?” is what the documentary asks us and invites us to contemplate in community through its pilot tour in Latin America, screening in México in Oaxaca City, San Miguel de Allende, and Ajijic, Mexico from October 30th to November 8th, 2023.

One thing is sure: we are all going to die. Wilka discusses how contemplating death—whether or not we have been diagnosed with a short life expectancy—can enhance our lives and our intimate relationships.

Synchronicities lead the way when we surrender to the process of grief.

Wilka discusses the rich history of indigenous end-of-life traditions in the Americas, wellness at this special phase of life, and her work as a death doula providing wellness at the end of life in Mexico, highlighting the training program she developed which has created a team of volunteer death doulas throughout North, Central and South America.

Transition = loss/gain + inevitable change; every transition is an initiation, an invitation to collaborate with necessary change

In our progression through grief and toward the end of life, dreams, visions, and the symbolic therein reveal what needs to be explored, considered, tended to, and healed. Understanding and identifying symbolic language can help guide us through the end-of-life process.