About
A psychologist becoming a doula.
My name is Zac Reichert. I came to this work the way many people do, through loss. My father died when I was a child, and grief has walked with me ever since. I am a psychologist and a coach, and I help people move through the hardest transitions life asks of us.
Zac Reichert, M.A.
End-of-Life Doula · Seattle
Training: M.A. Psychology, Seattle Pacific University
Foundation: B.A. Psychology, Western Washington University
In progress: Foundational EOLD training
Serves: Seattle + Puget Sound
The thread
How I came to this work.
I met death early. My father died when I was a child, and that first loss was not the last. Over the years I have grieved and buried family members, sat close to the dying, and carried the long quiet that comes after. When my grandfather died, I served as the executor of his will, and I learned firsthand how much falls to the people left behind, and how much steadier that passage is when someone walks it beside you.
Death has never been an abstraction to me. It has been personal, again and again, across a lifetime. That is the ground this practice grows from.
Alongside that, I built a life around understanding people. I studied psychology, undergraduate at Western Washington University and then a Master's at Seattle Pacific, and for years I have worked closely with people as a coach, helping them through the transitions that reshape a life: change, loss, the moments where the old map stops working. What I kept seeing is that the end of life is the transition we are least prepared for, and the one where people most often feel alone.
Becoming an end-of-life doula is where those two threads meet: the lived experience of loss, and the work of walking with people through change. I lead with compassion because I have needed it myself, and because I have learned, more than once, what its presence and its absence both feel like in a room.
The approach
What I bring to the bedside.
The honest answer is two things braided together: psychology, and a coach's practiced way of being with people in hard moments. Applied gently and without pretense. Noticing what's actually happening between people. Holding space for grief without trying to fix it. Helping families find their own words for things that often go unsaid. Tracking the difference between what someone says they want and what their body is telling them.
I don't believe everyone needs to make peace with dying. Some people refuse, and that refusal is sacred too. Other people need to look it in the eye and find it generative. Part of my work is to know which one you are, on which day, and to meet you there.
What I bring is the quieter discipline: careful attention, lack of fear about the heavy moments, and a deep respect for the fact that this is your death, not mine to perform expertise at.
Where I am in the journey
The honest version.
I'm in the early years of building this practice. I haven't sat twenty years of vigils. I'm not going to pretend I have.
Here is what I can honestly say:
- · I hold a Master's degree in psychology from Seattle Pacific University, and have spent years studying the literature on death, dying, grief, and end-of-life care.
- · I'm currently completing my foundational end-of-life doula training through a nationally recognized program.
- · I'm building hospice volunteer experience and vigil hours as part of my path into the work.
- · I take Washington-specific scope and law seriously, including the boundaries of what doulas can and cannot do under RCW 18.39 (funeral practice), RCW 70.245 (Death with Dignity), and adjacent statutes.
And because I'm in the early years, I am offering my work at sliding-scale and pro-bono rates to my first families, in exchange for the privilege of walking alongside them at this time. If you're considering working with me, I'll tell you exactly where I am in that path on the first call.
This work isn't about expertise performed at the dying. It's about presence offered to them. That, I can offer now.
A death doula is
- · A non-medical, holistic companion through the dying process.
- · A steady presence at the bedside for vigil and the final hours.
- · A guide for advance care planning, legacy work, and after-death care.
- · An advocate for the dying person's wishes within the medical system and the family.
- · Support for the people who will continue living afterward.
A death doula isn't
- · A medical provider. I don't administer medication or replace hospice.
- · A clinician or therapist, though I will refer you to one if needed.
- · A funeral director (RCW 18.39 reserves that role).
- · A participant in administering medical aid in dying. Under Washington's Death with Dignity Act, that's between the patient and their physician.
- · Something you have to figure out alone.
The Seattle context
A region quietly leading.
Washington was among the first states in the country to legalize Death with Dignity (2008), human composting (2019), and to formally welcome end-of-life doulas into hospice partnerships. Seattle is home to A Sacred Passing, a nonprofit doing community death-care education since 2013, and People's Memorial Association, a funeral-education nonprofit democratizing death care since 1939.
That makes the Puget Sound a remarkable place to die, and a remarkable place to begin thinking, while there is time, about how you want to.
A first step
Let's have a conversation.
No commitment. Just a thirty-minute call to talk through where you are, what you're facing, and whether this kind of support might fit.