But then you suddenly realize: Grief is the awakening. Grief is a sign of life stirring towards itself. -Stephen Jenkinson

Of Western European, Celtic, and Ashkenazi descent, with ancestors who escaped to these N. American shores in waves—18th, 19th, and 20th centuries—I carry in my bones generations of farmers and teachers, textile workers and lawyers, house-tenders and artists, soldiers and peacemakers, victims and victimizers. I have clumsily wandered my way through more layers of ungrieved ancestral loss than I can count—they continue to echo and call me to this work. In the tapestry of my own grief, the weft threads of, as Francis Weller puts it, “what I expected and did not receive,” weave their way through the warp of “the sorrows of the world”—the rarity of true elderhood, the empty cultural vaults where once there were ceremony and song, the ubiquity of starvation and poverty in a world of plenty, incomplete integrations after life-altering rites of passage, cruelty and injustice where there could be compassion and generosity, a heavy-footed gait across concrete where there had been soft stepping through meadowlands, a hole in the shape of a village. Then there are the physical deaths of those to whom I have attached my heart strings—some sudden, some slow, some self-inflicted. All leave their marks. The wounds raise up as they heal and the keloids catch the light.

I grew up in Southern California, where most of my family still lives. I attended UC Santa Barbara (as well as the Universities of Padua and Venice during a year abroad) for my undergraduate degrees in Religious Studies and Art History. Learning about the world’s faith-based, contemplative, and artistic traditions catalyzed the cultivation of four interrelated and invaluable capacities: 1) a profound sense of wonder, 2) critical analysis, 3) the ability to hold space for paradox, and 4) meaning-making through story, metaphor, and symbol. These skills have become indispensable allies in the arts of grief counseling, group facilitation, ceremony design, and teaching as I practice them today.

In 2012 I moved to Oregon and began attending the Conflict Resolution Master’s program at Portland State University. After completing advanced training in mediation and facilitation, I chose to focus the remainder of my graduate work on exploring cultural and spiritual attunement in end-of-life (EOL) care through the lens of peace-building. Beyond the confines of academia, I have deepened my understanding of grief, dying, and the cultural frameworks from which we meet those two universal experiences by studying with Stephen Jenkinson of the Orphan Wisdom School and Dr. Robert Neimeyer of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, as well as by exploring the work of Martín Prechtel, Frances Weller, Joanna Macy, David Whyte, and Michael Meade.

In 2016 I began a career in the EOL field that would see me through many roles, a number of which I held, and still sometimes hold, simultaneously: hospice bereavement coordinator, volunteer coordinator, and spiritual care provider (i.e. chaplain); community death- and grief-educator and public speaker; group facilitator; and grief counselor in private practice. I became a core member of the now defunct End-Of-Life Care Collaborative, where I got to share time on panels with creative, brilliant, and committed practitioners of traditional and conventional death-centered arts—death doulas and midwives, celebrants and funeral directors, hospice social workers and counselors, energy and body workers. I am now on the board of the newly formed Grief Collective in SE Portland and am fortunate to have been featured alongside many wonderful voices in the field in the 2024 documentary, “Death – Out of the Shadows.” I have been blessed many times over by the opportunities that have been given me and I try to make myself worthy of them.

When I am not working, I am often in the garden or the creek, throwing pottery, sitting quietly on a cushion in the meditation room of our Oregon City home or on retreat, engaged in a natural building project, writing, participating in nonviolent direct action that seeks socio-economic and racial justice, watching old movies, or walking in the woods with my partner, Amanda, and our two doggos, Magnolia (“Maggie”) and Sama.

In closing, I wish to pay homage to the many teachers ancient and contemporary who, while not specialists in grief and death, have shaped me and my work in meaningful ways: Ada Limón, Dr. Amanda Byron, Dr. Angela Davis, angel Kyodo williams, bell hooks, Dr. Christine Thomas, Doyle Banks, Gotama, Roshi Jan Chozen Bays, Judith Handelsman and Greg Smith, Jack Kornfield, Jorie Graham, Joseph Goldstein, SN Goenka, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Dr. Jose Cabezon, Leigh Brasington, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mary Oliver, Dr. Mary Zinkin, Bhante Matale Wijewansa, Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Rachel Cunliffe, Rinzan Pechovnik, Shinzen Young, Mr. Slattery, Stephen and Noah Levine, Amma Thansanti, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Bhante Vimalaramsi, and Bhante Dr. Walpola Rahula.

Please continue reading the “How I Work” page and/or explore the ITC Instagram page if you want to get a little more of a sense of what it is like to work with me. Also, please feel free to subscribe below for (infrequent) updates about offerings and events.