Feeling “frustrated” with the job market, Kimberley Reynolds “pivoted” to an entirely different career

NEED TO KNOW

• Kimberley Reynolds, 64, began studying end-of-life care after struggling to find editorial work following her 2025 layoff
• Her brother’s death helped inspire her interest in supporting people and families during life’s final stages
• Reynolds has started hospice volunteering and hopes to eventually build a full-time doula business

After spending over a year looking for a job in her field, Kimberley Reynolds knew it was time for a change. 

Before she was laid off, the Vermont native worked at a healthcare and wellness company where she managed six direct reports who wrote and edited content for blogs, newsletters and emails. Specifically, her team produced content for people 60 and over, highlighting the importance of maintaining muscle mass, mental health and proper diet. 

“I suppose that content, writing for that age group, made you feel that your death is near. I think it spoke to me in that way,” Reynolds, 64, tells PEOPLE. “I suppose that might be a bridge towards understanding that finite possibility of life that drove me towards potentially doing doula work.”

In August 2025, however, she was laid off and set out to find another editorial job. She joined a job-search council — which held meetings and completed exercises to help participants better understand who they are and what they do — and applied to 181 jobs.

She had a few interviews, and one even led to a job offer, but the salary ended up being $30,000 less than advertised — so she turned it down.

Getting more and more “frustrated” with the job market, she “pivoted” and took a two-month course to become an end-of-life doula. Reynolds says she had read a book about grief and had also read an article about death doulas in The New Yorker, pushing her to give the profession a shot.

“I decided to take this doula class. While I was doing the class, I didn’t really think I was cut out for the work,” she admits. “I’m not somebody who gives unconditional positive regard. I’m a little more judgmental than that, but I think if you’re working with people who are at the end of their life, you’re gonna be more empathetic than if you’re dealing with someone in your family and you’re annoyed with them.”

She started the course in August 2026, and after it ended, she decided to volunteer at a hospice center to get a better understanding of the career.

“I had volunteer orientation, and it was a really exuberant, positive meeting,” Reynolds says. “You would think talking about people dying, it wouldn’t be, but it’s the same atmosphere you have in a room where there are nurses in a birthing room. It’s kind of uplifting. It’s kind of otherworldly.”

She says that “hospice volunteers don’t really get much time with the clients.”

“That’s left to mainly the nurses and the medical staff, I believe, and the people’s families,” she explains. “Volunteers might get to go in there and deliver food trays, or if they have more time there and more training, they can become rovers and just fill in where needed.”

“So that might expose them to clients more. That would give you an idea of how you welcome people, the atmosphere of the place,” Reynolds shares. “And it’s gotta give off a certain vibe, and that would be akin to maybe going into a home and assisting someone who’s transitioning from life to death.”

For now, Reynolds plans to continue volunteering at the hospice center before taking on the role full time with help from her death doula professor. While she considered getting a possible pet death doula certification, she admits that she is “really attached to pets, so I don’t know if I could do it.”

“I’m part of a Facebook group for end-of-life doulas, so you look for info there, too,” she says.

While she has only done the job for a short while, she says the hardest part is “dealing with family members.”

“You might have a client who is really angry, so you have to figure out what’s behind the anger; are they fearful?” she says. “Dealing with family members might be difficult, might be tricky, how to balance that.”

She continues, “I don’t know how emotionally attached or upset you might be with what’s happening, but when my brother died, I was really calm. I was in the room when he died, and I offered support to my sister-in-law. I touched his hand. The funeral director was there within a half an hour, and so it was interesting to watch what went on around him.”

Reynolds says that her experience with the death, particularly her brother’s death a decade ago, inspired the push she felt toward the work. 

“Knowing how I dealt with my family members who couldn’t really accept that he was dying. They were having a really difficult time. I seemed to accept that he was dying and not question that or feel inhibited by the fact that he was dying. It was a fact,” she explains. “He wasn’t gonna live. He had pancreatic cancer and I must have accepted that on one level and could provide guidance for my family members who are all a lot older than I am, and who probably were closer to him than I was,”

Reynolds says one thing she learned from the death doula class that she carries with her is the abbreviation “UPR,” which stands for “unconditional positive regard.”

“You just go in to listen with an open mind. You don’t have any judgment or preconceived ideas. That’s one of the terms that stayed with me that I try to use in my daily life,” Reynolds shares.

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