Georgia end-of-life doula helping veterans
Before Marine Capt. Kate Hendricks Thomas died of stage 4 breast cancer in 2022, she challenged Qwynn GallowaySalazar to move the needle forward in end-of-life care for veterans.
Galloway-Salazar, 41, said with that charge, she has been on “one heck of a mission.” To date, her work as a end-oflife doula has helped hundreds of veterans and their families.
Galloway-Salazar is the USA TODAY Woman of the Year for Georgia.
Galloway-Salazar joined the Army in April 2001 in order to fund her education. She was called to active duty in 2003 and was stationed at Fort Liberty, North Carolina. She interacted with soldiers who were either preparing to deploy to combat or coming home. It was her time spent there, listening and collecting stories, that would help shape her career after military service.
Galloway-Salazar went to college and majored in criminal justice before receiving her master’s degree in counseling. While working on her doctoral dissertation, focused on post-9/11 female veterans in their transition from the military into the civilian workforce, she met Thomas, whose research was on female veterans.
“She was light,” Galloway-Salazar said. “She encouraged me, she inspired me and she made me see things in ways that I could have never imagined seeing. ... She would meet with me once a month and I would see her health decline. Toward the end, I started asking her existential questions – one of which was: How does one’s military service impact them at the end of their lives? We began having these deep conversations about what her combat experiences were like and how they were showing back up at that point in her life.”
Those conversations set Galloway-Salazar on a trajectory to become an end-of-life doula in 2021, supporting dying veterans and their families. Endof-life doulas are non-medical professionals who may take care of the home, discuss advanced end-of-life planning or just sit and listen to stories to reduce isolation and loneliness.
Galloway-Salazar said she specifically wanted to focus on the needs of veterans and their loved ones because she felt there was a need to say “thank you for your service” in an actionable way.
She later developed In Their Honor, which provides service consulting, trainings and workshops to help raise awareness and educate communities about the unique needs and challenges veterans face at the end of their lives.
While Galloway-Salazar has work happening throughout Georgia, she also has work happening in Oregon, Michigan and Washington.
“To see this work spread is just a dream come true,” she said. “... We can talk about the success that’s on paper, that’s all great, but my true success is serving humanity, serving mankind and leaving a legacy for those to see the world the way that I do.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: Who paved the way for you?
Answer: Kate’s one of the ones who paved the way for me, but when I think about it, every woman veteran that served prior to me, who served alongside of me, they paved the way for me. ... As I do this work, many of my greatest supporters are women that have served and it’s an honor of a lifetime when I hear them say, “You are our voice. The platform that you have with it, we all feel seen, we all feel heard, we all feel valued.”
What is your definition of courage? In short, to get up and keep doing the things that we’re afraid to do, over and over again.
Is there a guiding principle or mantra that you tell yourself ?
It is the quote, “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.” I live by that and every day, besides that mantra, I ask myself, “What’s your why? With every breath that God gives you today, what are you going to do with it?”
What advice would you give your younger self ?
Don’t take yourself so serious, girl. Taking myself so seriously brought many moments of not having a good degree of freedom, fun and creativity that I wish I would have had.
When I turned 40, I realized how important it was to live while I was living. So I show up as colorful, vibrant, carefree ... as I possibly can. I was more reserved, wore a mask and was not as open in my younger years. Now I show up and I show out. Other women have inspired and encouraged me to be the fullest version of myself, because that’s what I deserve and that’s what the world deserves.