Birth. Death. Trauma.
Patricia Lubeck
Wherever you’re at in your journey. You are not alone.
I’m a nurturer, healer, and protector with more than a decade of experience in the social justice and somatic healing space. As a full spectrum doula I tend the big thresholds in life – Birth, death, and trauma.
Whether you are loo king for a birth doula and pregnancy massage, baby loss support and funeral care, somatic bodywork and trauma healing, or whether you’re in search of a mentor and supervisior. I’ve got you
May this website provide you with the information you’re looking for. May it reassure you that you’re neither the first nor last person in your situation, and may it open your mind to possibilities you didn’t even know existed.
For more than 10 years, I have been integrating the teachings from my maternal lineage, have sat with indigenous elders of many cultures, and am continuing to qualify and train in holistic modalities with teachers at the top of their field. I’m fascinated with understanding and helping the human experience. And I can’t wait to share my hard-earned wisdom with you.
From my heart to you,
ó mo chroà amach.
Patricia.
QUOTE
”Most of life is not quite as wild as it appears to be in the moment. And the biggest lie amidst the chaos of our times is perhaps that we’ve been told that being strong means doing it alone. What utter rubbish. We need each other. Desperately. And more often than not, whatever it may be, we can figure it out together.”
About Me
I’m a creature of contrast. I love the mystical world of intuition and spiritual growth, but I also love playing video games and riding rollercoaster.
Everyone knows I’m unhealthily attached to my cat, then again, who wouldn’t be – she’s the best.
It’s taken so much healing to step into myself but here I am, holding profound space for transformation while also swearing like a sailor.
You won’t find a holier-than-though attitude in my spaces, but do get ready for big belly laughter that weaves through deep catharsis and meaningful information.
Thresholds
Pregnancy & Birth
Parenting & Slings
Baby Loss
End of Life Care
Grief, Memorials, and Funerals
Offerings
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Offerings
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Blog
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Most of my time is spent between the extremes of birth and death.
It’s teaching me that this life is way too important to take it all too seriously. If you’re looking for the type of down-to-earth connection that make healing fun and approachable, look no further!
What clients are saying…
Lou
It was just amazing how you were able to map my abdomen and how easily you picked up on areas that had been causing me troubles in the past!
Thank you so much for your deep and unconditional presence.
Sinead
It took a lot of work for me and my partner to feel confident about the birth we knew was right for our family – there were new obstacles with each journey – and we’re so grateful that we persevered.
Patricia’s knowledge and skills are second to none, but we appreciate her most for the patience and presence she reliably offered us through all these months.
After three children and a rainbow baby, we consider her part of the family.
Siobhan Murphy
“Thanks for fitting me in last minute. The session helped immensely; I had a smooth homebirth that night. We’re now in pure baby bliss and grateful for your amazing care. Postpartum visit soon!
Mel Roberts
Developer
Kelly Walke
Just over a year ago we lost a little soul and I was a vessel for my sweet baby’s tiny body after their heart had stopped beating.
It was long and drawn out.
On New Year’s Eve when the actual miscarriage began, I sent my husband off to a party with my older children so they could enjoy their night and I could have peace. I didn’t want to ruin any of my friends’ New Year’s Eve so I was completely alone but Patricia’s offer to come over and guide me through it and the love and warmth of her messages made me feel like I was being held through it all anyway.
The advice was helpful, the kindness was strong and the support was beautiful. I hope I can repay this heavy kindness to others someday. She is a true angel within the community!
FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions
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What training and qualifications do you hold?
I’ve been working with clients for more than 10 years now, that’s hundreds of stories safely collected and learned from.
Over time I have accumulated more certificates and trainings than I can count, but most importantly, I have integrated those experiences into a way of life.
My training certifications include:
BSc Hons Psychology (Open)
Reiki Master/Teacher Level
All Love Sekhem including Inner Child Work, Emotional Release and Catharsis, Breathwork, Body Shaking, Smadhi Practices, and Future-Grief Processes
EFT Tapping Master Practitioner
Somatic Intimacy Educator and Wheel of Consent
300hr Yin Yoga Teacher and 60 hr Family Yoga
ITEC Level 3 in Holistic Massage as well as training on Pregnancy & Postpartum Massage, Somatic Bodywork, Indian Head Massage, Thai Foot Massage, Aroma Touch, and Chair Massage.
Womb and Fertility Massage, Cycle Awareness, as well as Rebozo work and Closing the Bones Ceremonies
Birth Doula Preparation and Placenta Care
End of Life Doula Preparation, Keening and Lament Facilitation and Ceremonialist Training
3-Step Rewind, Somatic Trauma Processing, and Ancestral Healing
Additional diplomas such as Creative Mindfulness, Tarot and Card Readings, Herbalism , Infant Loss Support, Yoni Steaming, Sling Consultant, Plant Medicine and more.
What does a Birth Doula or Birth Keeper do?
Doulas nowadays attempt to uphold the humanity of birth in the face of policies and coersion. They are often well-versed in scientific research so that they can provide accurate information to their clients and hold a host of skills to navigate emotional and physical support during labour.
Doulas do not replace Fathers or Birth Partners, they work alongside the family unit to empower the couple in finding closeness and understanding for each other. Their care also holds birth partners so they can fully be present with the mother or birthing person. Doulas are primarily space holders, though some offer additional tools like rebozo work. Some doulas also bring food, help with cleaning or childminding and provide practical support around the family home.
Birth Keepers work similarly to doulas in that they support familys through pregnancy and birth. And while they still hold safe spaces for mums to trust in birth, they also often guard many ancestral skills like herbalism, labour preparing bodywork, and spiritual practices. Birth Keepers often attend free births and wild pregnancies but they never replace medical staff. This term is often used to make it clear that the offering includes active tools and works outside the system with a more spiritual focus.
Neither Birth Doulas nor Birth Keepers are regulated by a governing body. They have job descriptions but no scopes of practice. Most have undergone certified training, but many have learned their skills through decades of community care.
It matters to me at this stage to be very clear: neither Birth Doulas nor Birth Keepers are Indigenous Midwives. The roles, tools, ancestral struggle, and learning process are not the same. Doulas and Birth Keepers are also not lesser midwives for that matter either. These roles are separate and in an ideal world, they would beautifully complement each other in an eco system of support for our communities.
I am available to you as doula or birth keeper, in whichever capacity you need me in.
What does an End of Life Doula do?
They show up as a calm, loving presence with knowledge and understanding of the dying and grief process, while also holding space for the depth of emotions at this point in time. Whether their clients need information on end of life planning, support in processing grief or family dynamics, active presence during washing and shrouding of the body, assistance in funeral planning, or ceremony and ritual to process sudden and violent death – End of Life Doulas show up in all the spaces that usual remain taboo.
While doulas never provide medical support, they also work in an unregulated field which means that each doula will provide slightly different services. Most commonly these include empathetic listening, cooking and cleaning, company, and sign posting. Some End of Life doulas might also offer spiritual services like psychopomping or keening and lament, others again might also be trained as cerlebrants and facilitate funerals or community memorials.
A doula could be doing all those things themselves but in an ideal scenario, they would instead map out what is needed and then help you rally your friends and family so that the dying process can return to where it belongs: into the hands and hearths of our communities.
I am currently offering active EOL doula work for individuals and familys, am available for grief support and memorials, and I offer workshops and talks on all sorts of topics related to death and dying. For the past number of years I have also trained End of Life doulas and I remain available to other death workers as mentor.
How do you work with Trauma?
Trauma is usually an experience that is shocking and charged with emotion, isolating, leaving the individual without strategies to cope, and lacking in personal control. This can be an individual incident or a series of experiences. Most commonly we think of neglect and abuse, natural disasters, terrorism, community shocking events like shootings, serious accidents or life- threatening illness, as well as sexual expoitation and trafficing.
Trauma can happen to an individual directly, or they can witness it in others and absorb the experience for themselves. This is called vicarious trauma.
Trauma symptoms can look like ongoing exaustion, intrusive thoughts, catastrophising, sadness, anxiety, numbness or dissociation, agitation, mind fog, and people-pleasing to name but a few.
In my experience, if something matters to you, it’s worth mattering to me.
The way we work with trauma varies depending on each client’s needs.
While I do not offer psychotherapy and cannot diagnose, medicate, or cure a condition, I do offer a mix of somatic practices that can aid trauma recovery.
Combining aspects of polyvagal theory, breathwork, bodywork, creativity, ceremony and ritual, as well as sounding and release, I help clients to understand what is happening in their nervous system, process stored emotions and recalibrate the somatic experience. Maybe your body needs to shake or cry, maybe you need rocking or being supported by weight. Maybe catharsis is ready to burst through, or maybe you need gentle, curious exploration of what your body has been holding onto.
In my experience, we need to meet trauma at the developmental stage that it first impacted us. This actually makes the work quite playful and though we tread very carefully, there is a lot of space to create deeper levels of self-trust and introspection along the way.
Not only have I been apprenticing trauma work through countless trainings and modalities, I have also built a flexible and resilient enough nervous system to not just survive difficult experiences but to weave them beautifully into a life worth living.
Bring your story, and I will hold it with reverence. We’ll take it from there.
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What can I expect from Somatic work?
We work with the nervous system by practicing regulation, mobilisation, social engagement, healthy aggression and more. This can include internal awareness of the body, spatial orientation, and movement.
Tools that are close to my heart are body poems, rocking practices and rebounding, breathwork, body scans, icing, resourcing and earthing, heel drops, creative mindfulness, pillow punching or wall pushing, sounding and keening, using yoga props to create weightlessness or heaviness, and body wrapping. The list goes on.
You can work with me somatically in the form of massage or All Love Sekhem healing practices. On occasion I also teach group breathwork and emotional release classes.
Do you support pregnancy release?
I have seen so many women and families struggle in the curelty of our systems at a time when they deserved to be held in love that my birthwork has expanded into the spaces that most commonly are deemed taboo.
I would like to share some insights into my work, to hopefully humanise the experience of release or abortion beyond the headlines of social arguments.
Having spent the majority of my life helping others to bring life into this world, and taking care of the little ones for over a decade, I completely understand difficulty raising children in today’s world. And then there’s the effect of pregancy (and complication thereof!) on a body to consider, too.
It is imperative to know when bringing children forth is a commitment too complex to uphold. Whether that is due to climate chaos, economy, family structures, lack of support, or systemic failures.
Our social systems are continuing to cause severe harm to so many adoptees, and I have spent 10 years helping adults pick up the pieces of their deeply traumatising childhoods.
As someone who yearns for her own children to arrive, I can hold my own grief separate from the understanding that not everyone shares it.
I celebrate those who know their limitations and are doing their best to deal heart forward with such a complex decision.
Throughout my practices I have cultivated a rich tool kit of ceremony, ritual, herbalism and information which I now offer with reverence to anyone who is contemplating releasing a pregnancy or is coming to terms with having done so in the past.
This includes voluntary releases, miscarriages, and medically necessary releases.
I also work with mothers, fathers and families who feel they didn’t have a say in their release.
Wherever there is choice, there is a possibility for regret. That doesn’t mean we should eliminate the choice itself, it just means we have to be more genuine in providing truthful information and support people in making choices with holistic consideration as well as integrating the consequences of those choices with great care.
It is my hopeful vision that one day the world is kinder to parents, that children grow up loved, and that the future is one of safety and abundance.
Until then, I will be a refuge for those who need it, the ancestral stories of the land, and all those stories that will never be voiced but need mourned nonetheless.
Do you offer Keening and Lament Sessions ?
In the Irish traditions, keeners were the wheeping women who tended to communal grief. They were well kept and appreciated because they connected those who were in mourning to their own catharsis and were believed to help the souls oft the deceased move on. The Irish word Caoineadh describes the wailing sounds of grief that would pierce through the shock of fresh death and help the community start their healing process. These keeners were guardians of lineages and traditions, they upkept skills and maintained age old stories and laments.
There are very few keeners left in Ireland, but there are many who keen and have made it their purpose to keep these traditions alive.
That being said, the process of keening and lamenting is not unique to the Irish. If you have ever been in a situation where a person was hit with imminent grief that shook their bones into an involuntary wail, you know that sound is so visceral and universal, it lives in all cultures. Traditions and specificties of lament might vary, but the principles remain.
I am not a keener, but I keen often and I have apprenticed many spaces of keening and lament across different cultures. I also firmly hold the death practices of my own lineage which I was initiated into through my maternal ancestry. I have come to deeply appreciate that I descend from excellent community-holding death keepers.
Currently I offer this work in 1 to 1 spaces where I help people acces their voicea nd grief. I also run a workshop called Landscapes of Grief, where we hold story and sound in a communal space.
In rare cases, I work with and for clients who are still in the shock and trauma of sudden or violent death and when necessary, I keen for them and with them so that grief can find its flow.
What massage or bodywork do you offer?
1.Womb Massage
Relate to your womb in new ways! Whether you are struggeling with PCOS, Endometriosis, PMS or PMDD, womb massage can help increase blood flow, lower inflammation, and process some of the emotional components of these struggles. Womb massage also works with the digestive system and internal organs as well as pelvic floor muscles.
2.Pregnancy Care
I lovingly support clients to balance their bodies and clear the way for baby to arrive. Oftentimes, when muscles get sore, breathing becomes shallow, or the body moves in wonky ways, tension can gather and impact baby’s position in the womb. Our sessions take care of pregnancy niggles and carefully listen to the story the body tells.
3. Somatic Bodywork
Have you ever heard that the body keeps the score? In somatic bodywork, we see the physical, emotional, and mental bodies as interlinked. Sometimes reoccuring ailments can relate to traumatic or highly emotinal experiences from the past. Equally, working on one area of the body might invite a tremmor or shake into another. When we work somatically we weave together the layers of nervous system activation, physical body, breath, stories or thought, and emotion. It is perfectly fine for clients to cry or to get angry, to shake or to find deep stillness. These sessions are softly held and lovingly supported so that you can show up to meet yourself in your truest form.
And of course, if you just want to come and relax, I’ve got you covered with gentle but firm touch, long massage stokes and soft music!