Once or twice a week, you can spot death doula Virginia Chang shopping the stalls at the Union Square Farmer’s Market — she loves the mushrooms, eggs, and vegetables, and, in the summer, peaches fresh from the farm. We talked to Virginia about grief as an expression of love, quitting her career as a scientist and having children, and learning to play the harp.
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on her morning routine
For a long time, I didn’t do anything special. I’d just get up and go. But now I’ve developed a routine that nourishes me, and I really like to take time for myself in the morning. I don't set an alarm anymore unless I'm going to the airport. I just wake up naturally when light starts coming into the room. And I usually wake up feeling rested, so I think that's a good sign. Then I usually lie in bed for a while, maybe a good 10-15 minutes. It’s a luxury to do that. After that, I get up, come down the hallway, turn on the speaker, and start playing the same song that I play every morning — it’s like morning nature sounds, with birds chirping, and it feels almost more like I’m in nature than in New York City. I make a cup of green tea and drink it while I stand and look out the window. I really savor that cup. I sip the warmth, I hold the cup in my hand. It’s probably 25 minutes, heating the water, drinking the tea, and listening to that song. To me, that is a moment of ritual for entering the day. I think ritual is really important. I work to bring more intention into the way I live. And I would call it a small joy. It is a small joy that I can give myself, that I do because I deserve it and I want to feel good in this moment. That’s actually something I work on with clients as an end-of-life doula as well.
After I have my tea, I get dressed and then have breakfast. I’ll have a piece of fruit with something like yogurt and muesli. I have a glass of milk — I still drink milk — and a glass of orange juice. And I’ll read The New York Times as I’m having my breakfast. I get the print edition. It's a very different experience when you can spread it out and you can scan the whole paper, you can see what you want to read, and you can flip back and forth.
on how her parents met
My mother came here from Korea as a young woman. Her father was a medical doctor in Korea, so he was wealthy and had good social standing. But my grandmother did not give him a son and so, after four daughters, he took a second wife. And when he took the second wife, my grandmother and all her daughters lost status. That was the main reason why my mother eventually came to America. It took a lot of courage for her to come here. She had gone to medical school in Korea and when she came here, she had to redo her license, and then she got a job. She made a good salary and she ended up bringing over all her sisters and her mother. My father also came here when he was a young man to go to graduate school. He came from mainland China, but ended up staying in America when the Communists took over China. And then they met here in New York City.
on studying chemistry
My parents are both immigrants and they both felt the sting of discrimination in America very strongly. So, they raised us very Americanized, and they were very strict. They wanted to set us up to succeed. If you came home and you got 98 on an exam they would say, why didn't you get a 100? The only option they laid out was for me to become a medical doctor. But I didn't become a medical doctor and they were disappointed — I only have a PhD and I only went to MIT and Stanford. For them that still wasn't quite good enough.
I studied chemistry because that was the only subject that I got a 100 on in the New York State Regents exam. In physics, I probably only got a 98, in biology, maybe I got a 95. But in chemistry, I got a 100 and so I studied chemistry because I thought that's what I was best at. And I was good at it. I studied chemistry at MIT, and then I went to Stanford, and I did my master's and PhD there. I specialized in new drug design. It's incredibly intellectually stimulating. It's challenging. It stretches your mind. I mean, it's incredible to imagine the world at an atomic level. And it's exciting. I was actually designing new drugs and new molecules and trying to discover new medicines.
on working in environmental science
I worked in the laboratory for many years, but then I got really tired of working on problems that I couldn’t talk about with anybody else. As a laboratory scientist, you can't have a social dinner and talk about your work because nobody else understands what you're doing. And it just started to feel too narrow and niche. So, I actually switched careers at the beginning of the 1990s. That’s when the environmental field started becoming a big thing, and I jumped on the environmental bandwagon. I became an environmental research scientist and I studied chemical contamination in the environment, trying to understand the level of risk different chemicals posed, how contamination was moving in the environment, and how to clean it up. So, it was really looking at problems at a more macro scale, whereas everything in the laboratory was at such a micro scale. And it was really multidisciplinary. I was working with epidemiologists, immunologists, and ecologists, and I was also working with engineers, hydrogeologists, and geologists.
I was really involved in the cleanup of the Pelham Bay landfill in the Bronx. That was probably my biggest project as an environmental scientist and the one I'm most proud of. I worked on that from the initial studies through the remediation plan and the implementation. I did that work all through the ‘90s, and then we decided to have kids.
“I value ritual and I’m also very much a scientist. I really like a trial-and-error approach. I try things and then I tune into myself, and I ask, how did that make me feel? Did that work? Did you feel any different? Was it good? And if it doesn’t work for me, I’ll try something else. Once I find something that works, I stick with it.”
on becoming a stay-at-home mom
I had my first child at 35. We had talked about it for years prior and we’d reached the point where, if we wanted to have kids, we had to start having kids now. I think we could have had a happy life either way. But we’d spent years not making up our minds and we wanted to make an intentional choice. We didn’t want to end up not having children just because we couldn't decide. Not making a decision is a decision too. We chose to have children, in part because my husband came from a really happy family that was close and he thought that we could do that too.
I was really successful as a scientist. I did incredible work, and it was exciting. But I didn't think I could have it all. I was already working so, so hard, that I even gave myself stress-related illness. I didn’t see how I could work and have a family. So, when we had children, I decided to give up my career to stay at home. It was really difficult in the beginning; it was hard to give that up. I didn’t interpret it as grief at the time, but it was a real sense of grief and loss. Becoming a mother is a huge transition and there really is so much grief associated with that. You're no longer a single person. You’re going through all these physical changes. Your whole identity has changed; now you’re a mother and you don't even know what that is yet.
I have two children and they’re three years apart. And I kept thinking that when the younger one went to school, I’d go back to work. For the first eight years, I constantly thought, I'm going back to work, I'm going to at least go back to work part-time. I mean, I was a real workaholic. But then they're in school and a whole new set of problems arise. Suddenly, they’re thrust into all these social situations, and they have to figure out how to cope with the classroom, other children, sharing, the playground, teachers, schoolwork, homework, and all this stuff. There were always things they were learning and questions they were asking, the situations and the issues and the problems just changed. And at every point, I decided that I wanted to be the one to shape them. I wanted to be the one to show them how to view the world, to teach them how to think, to show them right and wrong, to pick themselves up and get on with life.
I remember the day that I realized I was never going to go back and be a scientist again. I was still subscribing to research journals in the field and trying to keep up to date. And I realized that the field was moving too fast, and where I was and how much I had been out of the field, that I really couldn't go back. So, I took all my journals and I put them in the trash.
It was a difficult decision, but these are questions and struggles that every mom goes through. There’s no way to know whether the choice you make is the best decision, but you have to make a decision and try your best. In the end, I really loved being a mom. I loved raising my children and I found it so impactful to raise them directly, to be the main caretaker, their caregiver, to be their main influence in their lives. And I have an incredibly close relationship with my children now that I would not trade for the world. They're such great human beings and whatever I gave up was worth it for the relationship that I have with them now and for the chance to see them grow and flourish.
on the first time she had to confront grief
Like most people, I never thought about death and dying for the majority of my life. My parents were alive, but I wasn't close to my grandparents, so their deaths didn’t have a big impact on me, I didn't have any peers or friends die, and I didn't have any pets. I really had no intimate experience of death. I used to think that meant I was lucky. But it meant that I was wholly unprepared.
And then in late 2016 to early 2017, when I was 54, I had three people close to me die within seven months. My father died in September, my mother-in-law died in January, and then my own mother died in April. When you have one parent or one close loved one die, it can be so devastating. And I had three die back-to-back-to-back. It was devastating. I was so ill-equipped to deal with grief. I'd never experienced the intensity of emotions, of loss, that comes with death. I was left with all these questions that remain unanswered and can never be answered. Could things have been different? Could I have done more? Did I say everything that I needed to say?
And some of those deaths did not go well, in terms of how the medical establishment handled things. Wishes weren’t always honored. And that left me with pretty bad memories about the way these people died and the way they were treated at the end — people I loved. How are you supposed to live with those memories? And I just thought this is not what death should be like. I couldn't understand it. It was one of the first moments in my life when I felt helpless and hopeless. I didn't know what to do. It was one of the most despondent times in my life. This happened eight years ago, and for the first three years, I couldn't even talk about it. Just the fact that I can sit here and talk about it and not get choked up and cry means I've come a long way in my healing. Now there is so much more that I understand about what happened. I can accept that my questions are unanswered. I have more perspective about it, and I know that there was nothing I could have done differently or better for my loved ones at the time.
“My husband and I separated the day after my father died. It was really precipitated by all this grief. To put it simply, we did not turn to each other in grief. We had already drifted apart but these losses, these deaths — because we didn’t have any skills or coping mechanisms for dealing with grief, we had no understanding of how to deal with these intense feelings. And so, we didn’t lean on or support each other. And I just thought, well, if I’m going to be feeling and handling this alone, then I would prefer to be alone.”
on how she became an end-of-life doula
After my mother died in April 2017, I was a zombie. People tell you that you're supposed to get over it — maybe you take a week's vacation and then you’re supposed to go back to work. It's ridiculous. I didn't know how to be in this world. So, I was meditating at the Bhakti Center in the Lower East Side, and there happened to be a flyer on the wall one day for a talk given by a monk from the Center and one of the founders of the end-of-life doula movement. The title of the talk was “Why Death Matters.” And I saw that, and I thought, that's exactly what I want to know. I hardly remember anything about the talk except for the fact that Henry Fersko-Weiss talked about end-of-life doulas. An end-of-life doula is a non-medical professional who guides, supports, and educates dying people and their families and loved ones through the transition from the now to whatever is after. And I remember thinking to myself, gosh, if an end-of-life doula had been there for me, maybe my whole experience would have been different.
I decided that I wanted to learn more about death. I wanted to understand why I was feeling the way I was and why the system was set up for us to experience death in this way. I decided that I would take some training courses, not because I thought I'd be an end-of-life doula, but because that's where the knowledge is. I did one through the International End-of-Life Doula Association. Later, I got certified as an end-of-life doula through INELDA. I also took the end-of-life doula training course at the University of Vermont. Now I am also an instructor there.
Once I took those courses, I felt like I had the book knowledge. But I needed something more. I had my own experience of dying, but I wanted to see whether, if I put everything I’d learned into place, it could actually create the conditions to help guide people towards dying better — more humanely, more sacredly, with more reverence. So, I started volunteering at a hospice, which is the common next step for end-of-life doulas. You have to go out there, be with people who are ill and dying, and see what happens.
on how she supports people who are dying
Death should be positive. It should be meaningful, and it should be affirming of who the person who is dying is as an individual. That’s the goal. Most of the calls I get are from people who are fairly close to death. They’re within weeks of dying and they call because the situation is bad. They know they’re on the path towards death, but they don’t want to die this way.
If you’re dying, you want it to be all about you — what’s important to you and who’s important to you. And you want to approach death with the sense that you’ve led a good life, you’ve taken care of all your business, and you’re with the people you love. You want a sense of peace and resolution, not fear. End-of-life doulas believe that you know yourself best. I'm not coming in and telling someone how to get to a peaceful death because I don't know them. I might get to know them, and we might develop this incredible relationship and come to trust each other, but I don't know their history, their spirituality, or their values. So, we don't come in to tell someone what to do. I don't have a protocol, I don't have a procedure, I don't have a 10-step plan. I try to help people discover their own autonomy, and I try to empower them to take control of the end of their lives and not give it over to the professionals.
Part of my job as an end-of-life doula is about informing and educating people so they can make the decisions that are best for them. For example, many people think that hospice is just for when you're about to die. But by that time, it's almost too late to take advantage of all that hospice can do for you. Hospice is a philosophy of care that focuses on quality of life — if you bring that focus into your life earlier in your illness journey, you can live a much richer life than if you try to bring it in at the very end. But so much of the process of dying is driven by money, time, availability, space, and hierarchy. That applies to the doctor, the hospital, the nurse, the social worker, the hospice. They might not tell you all your options; they’ll just tell you the option they want you to choose. If you don't know what all your options are, you don't know how to advocate for yourself.
“For most of human history, until recently, death was an open, accepted part of life. It wasn’t that people wanted to die, but they accepted it as a consequence of living and they understood that they could die at any moment. When people got sick or were dying everybody knew how to handle it. It wasn’t something that people were afraid of.
We need to live with an understanding of the full spectrum of what life has to offer and all the emotions that go along with that. We need to learn how to handle that and cope within ourselves. There’s joy and sorrow, and there’s life and death, and there’s kindness and cruelty. We have to accept that there’s all these opposites in life and accepting and coping with those opposites offers us more balance in our life and a richer perspective on how to live.”
on grief as an expression of love
What is grief, really? It is the expression of a loss. You feel this loss intensely because of your attachment and love for what you lost. So, grief is directly related to how much you loved that thing or that person. It’s important to understand that grief is an expression of that love and give yourself permission to grieve because when you grieve it shows you how much you loved.
Death is just one kind of loss. Grief begins the moment you walk into the doctor's office and you're given the diagnosis, and grief can follow a divorce, or losing a job, or moving to a new place. We don't call it grief when it's not death, but that’s what it is. It's not that you're depressed or you're having difficulty adjusting or you're maladaptive. You're just experiencing grief. You're feeling a huge sense of loss because of this change in your life. That grief is you adapting to a new reality. It’s the same with death. What you're doing is adapting to a new reality without that person in your life.
on how her science background influences her end-of-life doula work
I'm really good at seeing the details, but I also can also see the big picture. That comes from my training as a scientist and from the two different kinds of work I did as a scientist. I would say that most end-of-life doulas tend to come from the more right-brain type of people, the more emotional side. I was creative as a child — I used to love to draw, and I was totally into arts and crafts. But I wasn’t encouraged in that. So, I ended up tending more toward logic, data, and math. When I decided that I was going to give it a try as an end-of-life doula, I wasn't sure if I had the right personality. I actually Googled it and did these compassion tests to try to see if I could really do this work. And it turned out I wasn't way on the left-brain side or the right-brain side. I was balanced. And so, I thought, okay, I'm not totally on the right-brain side, but maybe I could still do this. And I think it's actually turned out to be an advantage because if you are a very emotional person, it can be hard to take care of yourself in this work.
on learning to play the harp
As a child, I was forced to play the piano and the violin. My sisters and I each got to choose an instrument when we entered third grade. Vivian, my eldest sister, chose the violin, and Vicky, my middle sister, chose the cello. When I was eight years old, it was my turn and I said I wanted to play the harp, but my mother said no. She said it wasn’t practical. And I said, well, Vivian, can carry my harp, Vicky can carry her cello, and I'll carry Vivian's violin. I said it'll all work out. But my mother still thought it wasn’t practical, so I had to play the violin. And then when I was 10, I started playing the piano too, and I played both all through until I was 18. And then when I left home for college, I gave up my music. I said, forget it, I'm not playing anymore. But I did love music, and I was good. And so when I got to age 30, I decided I wanted to play music again. But I had these horrific memories of playing the piano and violin. So, I decided to start something new. And then, strangely enough, I met somebody who was a harpist. She was a much older woman and she told me that playing a harp requires a lot of finger strength so as you get older, it gets harder. She said if I was interested in learning to play the harp, I should start soon. So, I was like, oh, okay, I’ll learn to play the harp. And I just went out and started. I studied with teachers, and I practiced every day. I loved it. I played really seriously for a good 15 years. I considered becoming a professional harpist. Someone wanted to hire me as a harp teacher for their child and I had to take a serious look at myself and decide if I wanted to do that. I decided I didn’t and now I only play the harp occasionally and I just do it for enjoyment, for leisure, for my own satisfaction.
“I’ve never thought about beauty, and I’ve never thought really about products enhancing my beauty. I’ll wash my face, but I don’t even put moisturizer on every day. I’ll just put it on if I feel like I need it.
I really believe in natural beauty — both the physical and the more unseen beauty. I’m beginning to realize that your aura is something that’s more powerful and more felt by others in ways that are more meaningful than any physical beauty.”
on her exercise routine
I ski, but skiing is a seasonal exercise. I also do yoga — I like Souk Studio. And I run and do core work, so I’ll run to Pier 25 on the Hudson River. I go to the end of the pier and then I do my core work out there. It's a beautiful place, right at the end of the pier, near the water under the trees, and I do this whole core workout and then I hang out for a while and then I run back.
on what she’s reading
I used to only read fiction. The Hare with Amber Eyes was the first nonfiction book that really captivated me. I would say now I'm about half fiction, half nonfiction, and some poetry. I usually read according to my mood. Sometimes I'm reading because I want to learn. Sometimes I'm reading because I want to be captivated by the writing and the storytelling. Sometimes I just need to be distracted. I like mysteries and science fiction when I want to be distracted, but I don’t want to read total trash. I like Dune by Frank Herbert, Kurt Vonnegut, I’m a big Sherlock Holmes fan. I’ll have a poetry book I’m reading and that will take me a long time because I'll just read a few poems at a time.
Being Mortal is probably the most well-known book that focuses on the question of how to think about death in a more positive way. It's written by a medical doctor, but he writes in such an approachable, beautiful way. It's not written in an introductory style, but I think it's a great introductory book for a person who wants to start asking that question themselves. When Breath Becomes Air is the next step. It was written by someone who knew they were going to die and it’s great if you want to really start thinking about how you want to frame your life. It's a wonderful book.
on asking for music instead of gifts
I ask my kids not to buy me gifts anymore. Instead, every Christmas, I ask for two playlists — one chill playlist for hanging out and relaxing and one running playlist. I listen to those for the whole year, and the next Christmas they give me two new playlists. There's just so much new music these days. I don't want to be spending all this time finding new music and I don't want to waste my time listening to bad music. So, I only listen to music that my two children curated for me. What's really interesting is that when I listen to the playlist, even though both my son and my daughter contribute to it, I can tell which ones come from my son and which ones come from my daughter. My two new favorite songs, one came from my son, and one came from my daughter.
on her favorite beauty products
Burt’s Bees Lip Balm, Dr. Woods Lavender Castile Soap, La Prairie Skin Cream, Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion
on her style and the meaning of her scarves
I want to be comfortable but well put together, so, I mostly wear leggings — I buy a lot of Aerie leggings — and a tank top and I also have a lot of really nice knitwear. I don't really shop. If I see something and I like it, then I'll probably buy it in all the colors because I do like to wear color. I like magenta, purplish, red, eggplant, those sorts of colors. And I've been trying to expand. I wear a lot of blue slate and olive green now.
And I love wearing a scarf. I always wear one, particularly when I’m in the role of an end-of-life doula. It's a visual and physical reminder of the work I’m doing. I mean, you can also think of it as a fashion accessory — it's a little bit of bright color, it's a little bit of a pick me up. So, it serves multiple roles for me and for the patients. One of my early patients was a woman who told the hospice staff that she didn't want to see any volunteers, she just wanted to be left alone. I didn't get the message and I knocked on her door and I asked her if she wanted to have a visitor. And she let me in. She was the first person I worked with whom I closely identified with — I saw myself in her. She was approximately my age. She was a typical New York woman, strong and independent. We ended up having an amazing relationship and I was present at her death. And she told her sister, and her sister later told me, that she let me in the room because she liked my scarf. And now I always wear a scarf. You never know what it is that's going to get you in the room.
I get my scarves all over. Now people gift me scarves. And I often buy scarves when I’m traveling.
virginia’s favorite spots in new york city
My favorite place in all of New York is Pier 25 on the Hudson River. It was the place that saved my sanity during COVID. I would go out to the end of Pier 25, and I'd sit on those lounge chairs, and I'd look out at the water and just think about what's happening to this world. I probably went there a few times a week during COVID and now I go there pretty ritualistically, when I work out but also when I just need a place to breathe.
I go to Union Square Farmers Market at least once or twice a week to shop for fresh fruits and vegetables. I like the Knoll Krest Farms stand and the one stall that has the mushrooms. And during the summertime, the stall at the northeast corner, on the north side has the best peaches.
For sushi, I go to The Lobster Place in Chelsea Market, for ramen I like Ippudo on Fourth Avenue. I also like The Grey Dog at Union Square, Modern Bread & Bagel on West 14th, and Posh Pop Bakeshop on Bleecker.
