Caroline Fernandes

she/her

I am a practitioner of energy medicine for transformation, clarity and resilience, and a death doula with a special interest in grief.

I’m trained in trauma-informed energy healing arts, death & grief midwifery, and radical life coaching… but really I think of myself as someone who enjoys taking really good care of others and has great intuition.

I’m a highly sensitive and intuitive person. When I look back, I was swamped, since childhood, with feeling other peoples’ energy, overwhelmed at parties or at work, and needing a lot of alone time to be OK. I was always trying to “fix” or help my family or my closest relationships in order for me to be OK because it was so intense for me to be around people who were struggling or unsteady in any way. Trying to help someone who didn’t ask for it feels bad for both me and the other person — all of it felt like swimming up river.

In my late twenties I became conscious of the messy soup I was living in, and with the help of some profoundly gifted teachers, eventually (slowly) realized that my sensitivity is a gift if I have tools to manage how I take in the world.  I will always be in a process of great learning and re-patterning. It wasn’t my goal to set up a practice to support and care for other people, but the sturdier and more resilient I got, the more I realized that it’s what my heart and soul wanted to do all along, I just wasn’t well equipped to do it. I believe that we are all deeply sensitive and empathic people, who have unique experiences of living, and are trying to find our way through an often overwhelming world.

I’m interested in our journeys as souls — Why we are here? What are we learning? What are our greatest fears and challenges teaching us? How do we follow our joy and why should we?  What are we here to unlearn?  I’m interested in birth and death, transformation, and the waters that we swim in: the American story, settler-colonialism, the economic-racial arrangement, and Whiteness.  I recently completed a 9-month apprenticeship in Death Midwifery with Narinder Bazen, and Death Doula studies at the Sacred Crossing in Los Angeles.  I’ve completed trainings in trauma-informed energy medicine, bodywork and radical life coaching with The LaChiara Method.  Some of my most profound learning (and healing) has happened in courses held by White Awake (now known as Comrades Education) with Eleanor Hancock and David Dean. I hold a BA from Middlebury College.  Along the road to finding this calling, I was an organic farmer and elementary special education teacher, among many other things.

I believe that we are living in a transitional era in western culture (and in the world). We are transitioning into an entirely new era of technology, rapidly changing climate, shifting world order, war, and a new paradigm with growing openness towards the idea that we are connected to greater consciousness and are deeply interwoven and interdependent. It is a very intense time to be living.  We need support! We need community!  I take safety very seriously. I bring lots of love.  I don’t have all the answers.  Probably like you, I live a life of questions, joy, fear and awe.  I’m humbled and honored to support and witness you.

from a former student

My practice is in Portland, Maine, on the ancestral lands and continued home of the Wabanaki people.