In 2012, I was staying at a monastery abroad for the purpose of deepening my spiritual practice. I was toward the end of my two-month stay when I was told that a friend of mine—an ordained member of the community actually—a lovely, mild, sorrowful, profound, too-gentle-for-this-world giraffe-of-a-man had taken his own life in the woods nearby. I crumpled, sobbing, full of questions that couldn’t achieve escape velocity. In the aftermath, I was, as most who have cared deeply for someone who died by suicide seem to be, beset by anxious curiosities, haunting doubts, and painful, often involuntary, recapitulations of our last one-on-one conversation. A gnawing burden of anger, shame, magical thinking, and sorrow hung around me. I decided to prolong my stay so that I would be able to attend his viewing and funeral. A few years later I would hear a friend and local home-funeral guide say to a family, “What I know is this: It’s hard to make death real without a body,” and I would understand more deeply the need I felt to stay.

This was not the first time I had experienced death, grieved, or witnessed grief unfold in others, but what followed his death, individually and relationally, transformed my understandings of healing, connection, death, community, and the nature of human emotion more broadly. Grieving in a culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse community well-trained in clarity, honesty, wise humor, and equanimity was a world away from my experience of communal processing. Witnessing the embodiment of psycho-spiritual sensitivity and intelligence, radical acceptance regarding variability in perception and expression, and boundless compassion in the face of vulnerability inspired me to look more deeply at my own capacity. I came to know that there were other, healthier ways to be with death, and I knew that it would be medicine to the deeply troubled place I came from with its wounded intolerance of aging, illness, death, and grief.

 The next ten years would, in one way or another, be committed to listening for and feeling at the edges of my particular contribution to this area of cultural healing. I completed a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution (and Peace Studies) at PSU, which culminated in the creation of an original model for cultural and religious competence in end-of-life (EOL) care. After some time presenting that model at various hospices, hospitals, conferences, and EOL-related organizations, I worked for two Oregon hospices, first as a bereavement coordinator then as a chaplain. I trained with two innovative and brilliant, though very different, grief-workers of our time and place: Dr. Robert Neimeyer (of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition) and Stephen Jenkinson (of the Orphan Wisdom School and subject of the documentary Griefwalker). I was one of nine who formed the core membership of the Portland End-Of-Life Care Collaborative (EOLCC), a group of alternative (read: “traditional”) providers committed to community education and to easing the dying and grieving processes for those lost in the wilderness of the N American death industry. At present, I counsel individuals and groups, organize hybrid education-and-processing courses both in-person and online, and lecture locally, generally to future or present healthcare providers, on the anatomy of grief and the challenges of communicating about death through Inviting The Conversation, LLC. If you would like to read a rough outline of how I understand and work with grief, please see the document entitled “An Approach to Working With Grief,” which you can find by clicking on Handouts in the dropdown menu under the “Resources”.

 I care deeply about my practice being a space that is welcoming, affirming, and accessible to people of all races, ethnicities, religions, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities. If I do or say anything during our time together than undermines that aim, or if you experience any part of my web presence or marketing materials as problematic, I would value your feedback, even if it is indirect, so that I can improve the way that I hold space.

 When not teaching, counseling, or facilitating, my heart turns toward meditation, pottery, gardening, writing, tennis, and exploring this marvelous Earth with my partner and our two doggos, Magnolia and Sama.