‘I see myself as a soul midwife’

Her contact with the terminally ill has led Felicity Warner to develop a Gentle Dying guide to help people prepare for death just as they might for a birth – and achieve a peaceful end to their lives By Catherine O'brien

Like all of us, Felicity Warner often finds herself – at drinks parties or meeting friends of friends – confronted with the ‘What do you do?’ question. And always, imperceptibly, she studies her interrogator to gauge her answer.   The easiest thing is to reply that she is a journalist, which she once was, or simply that she is a solicitor’s wife and mother of two grown-up daughters. But if her acquaintance is sufficiently inquisitive, and his or her demeanour is not overtly delicate, she will tell the truth.Felicity is a midwife – although not in the conventional sense. She doesn’t help new life enter the world: as a ‘soul midwife’ she smoothes the path for those who are about to leave it. ‘We all die. But there are good deaths and not such good deaths,’ Felicity explains. ‘I help create good deaths.’At 49, Felicity is vibrant and warm and not at all the sort of woman who you would envisage spends her working day talking about what, for many, is the greatest taboo. We meet at her home in Dorset, where the rooms are cheerfully cluttered and the garden is a riot of late-summer colour. The Georgian town house doubles as the venue for her Gentle Dying courses – seminars and workshops that teach psychological and spiritual skills to those living or working with the terminally ill.Unlike many of her students, who include doctors, therapists and Macmillan and Marie Curie nurses, Felicity does not possess formal qualifications. But in her new book she reveals the extraordinary wealth of life experience, tracing back to her childhood, that underpins her work.