Hi, I'm Sarah. Thanksgiving was the hardest holiday for me after my divorce.  Cooking for others is one of my favorite things to do, and it filled me with despair to imagine a Thanksgiving meal for 3. To top it off, My kids' Dad was local and always had a large family meal, which is what I wanted my kids to experience.

When I had been married, we had hosted a large group of friends the weekend before Thanksgiving for many years, but many of those relationships fell away after the divorce and my energy level had no capacity for planning and hosting a large gathering alone.  Many years in a row, I planned a house project for the weekend, essentially missing one of my favorite holidays. I didn't know where to go with my grief, despair or loneliness. 

It has been a long road to claiming my Thanksgiving holiday again.  With support and care, I gradually got in contact with what I wanted, what I wanted for my kids and some new ways to gather that felt good, right, connecting and joyful.

Sarah's Sessions

• Hands on Healing

  -Quiet space for regulation of your energy system 

• A Holiday Care Plan

  -Make a holiday plan that feels authentic and soothing with a curious co-conspirator 

• Deep Listening to Your Grief

  -Explore this season with a receptive, open-hearted listener

• Personalized Grief Ritual

  -Tend to the particulars of your journey in ceremony.

Hi, I'm Syneva. Thanksgiving was the first holiday we experienced as a family after my sister and her husband died of COVID.  I set the table with my sister's dishes as a way to include her.  When I told my family, my niece picked up her plate, marched into the kitchen, slammed it on the counter, grabbed a regular plate from the cupboard and brought it to the table.  No one spoke.  We never used those plates again.

I understand what it's like to navigate so many holidays.  The weight of responsibility, the uncertainty of what other family members need, the desire to create some kind of joy amidst the sorrow, and the ways we shelve our own needs, especially when we have kids to support.

I experienced a lot of pain getting to the place I am today. Through it, I've discovered the essential role of grief in spiritual growth. In ritual space, I learned to drop into a deeper part of myself and listen to the needs of my body.  Rituals allow grief to move, rather than remain stuck. Life is filled with change and change is another way to say death.  We need a sacred space to honor that change, grieve that change, and allow something new to emerge.

Syneva's Sessions

Personalized Grief Ritual

Chose a personal grief ritual with me if you long to....

• Untether from the everyday and be held in mystery

• Find a place of beauty to honor the pain of grief

• Release grief and let it move through you

• Be held and comforted in your sorrow

• Allow all the emotions to flow

Hi, I'm Julia. Before working with individuals in hospice and their families, I knew I had to recognize, process and honor my own grief. As the eldest daughter and a caregiver at heart, I learned how to push my grief deep down within me, unexamined and unexpressed to its fullest. It was easier to care for others than it was to sit in the intensity and pain of my own grief. In graduate school, I began the deep work to uncover and express the many losses in my life. This discovery and expression is a practice that continues to unfold and shift through my life's changing seasons.

Whether grieving the ending of my long-time partnership, the deaths of friends and family, or the dreams and expectations that were never actualized, grief has been ever-present and has demanded I allow it to be heard. Sometimes that voice is a whimper, a scream, a song of tears. However my grief shows up, I know how important it is that my expressions feel safe, held, witnessed and honored by my self and by a loving community.

I draw upon my education, abilities, and experiences to be present via offering of music, deep listening and holding within individual grief rituals, and within retreat and community gathering.  I feel honored to be a witness and tender to grief, whether it be an intimate or larger group.

Hi, I'm Andrea. For a long time I was afraid to touch my grief.  I knew I had a backlog, and when I would tune into it, it felt like a bottomless well that would surely consume me. But then in 2019, my Dad went into the hospital over Labor Day weekend.  We thought we would be taking him home in a day or two, and 13 days later, we were saying goodbye.

This was a huge turning point for me. I had begun healing work with my ancestors shortly before Dad passed.  After his death, I returned to that work in earnest.  I discovered that much of what I thought I was carrying alone was actually ancestral. I learned that when our ancestors are in a healed state, they can literally help us carry the load.  Our nervous system gets extended, and the lineage becomes like a well-tended, living, thriving river. It doesn't take the work of tending grief away, but it does make that once bottomless well feel finite.  Held. It becomes collective work, not individual.

Holding space for others as they come into conscious relationship with their own ancestors, has given me a different way of looking at grief.  Grief is an integral part of being embodied on earth. It's something we share with humans and with the rest of life.  I've come to see grief as a companion.  It's a relationship that needs tending. Sometimes it still bowls me over, demanding that I stop, take time to attend to it. Usually at very inconvenient times! But it hasn't consumed me, and I feel stronger, more embodied, and more durable for tending to it.

Andrea's Sessions

Whether you and I work one-on-one to bring you into conscious relationship with your well and vibrant ancestors, or I have the privilege of holding space for you in an individual grief ritual, I look forward to tending to grief alongside you.