Tammie’s personal journey through profound loss has deepened her understanding of grief's transformative power and sacred wisdom. Rather than avoiding or banishing grief, she has found that turning toward it with intention creates space for healing and growth. This practice reveals that it is possible to cultivate the capacity to hold life's full complexity—both its profound sorrows and enduring joys.

As a grief retreat facilitator, Tammie is honored to create sacred space where others can explore their own relationship with loss. She believes that grief, when met with compassion and community, has the power to transform our understanding of what it means to be fully human. Her approach honors each person's unique journey while fostering connection and shared wisdom among those walking similar paths.

Her deepest passion is to guide others in discovering their own capacity for healing and to witness the profound courage it takes to turn toward grief with an open heart.

Sheila brings a synthesis of experiences to community space holding: a 25-year meditation practice, 20 years of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) study and practice, NVC complex facilitation, NVC multi-year mediation intensive study, a decade-long apprenticeship (with a focus on ethical and respectful cultural practice) in medicine work, and grief tending and apprenticeship in the lineage of Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

From decades of depth work in group contexts, she has witnessed and experienced the power of healing in safe, well-designed community containers where people feel free to drop into their hearts. Sheila has the capacity to meet people in their depths, welcoming heartfelt and authentic participation.

Daniel was thrust into the world of grief through a season of death loss where three male friends and mentors lost their lives far too young. As a means of coping with his grief, he sought out the mentorship and ritual spaces that could adequately hold his pain and sadness. He found Francis Weller’s grief work, which both held his grief and spoke to it in a way nothing else had. Daniel apprenticed with Weller for two and a half years before completing formal grief tender training in the traditions of Weller and Malidoma Somé and Sobonfu Somé. He has more than eight years of experience facilitating men’s groups and crafting ritual spaces, and has been offering community grief rituals since 2021.  As an ecologist and wetland scientist, he has a deep love for the earth and the beings that inhabit it, along with an inherent and intimate connection to earth grief that accompanies that love. His approach to holding space for grief is grounded, expansive, warm, and welcoming.

Jamie found his way to this grief tending work through a winter of deep fracturing in his life, where death, a disowning, and abandonment hit in what seemed an impossibly short period of time.  Within six months, he attended his first grief tending ritual and found it so strongly supported his healing that he signed up to apprentice with the leaders of the ritual,  embarking on this journey to give back and support others in the way in which he had been supported.  

Jamie has over thirty years participating in and facilitating deep emotional work, from mythopoetic men’s groups to emotional reintegration workshops to meditation classes and practices.  His life has been about seeking clarity within himself, lovingly, and supporting others on their path to wholeness.

Marcy Koch is an informed elder with over 25 years of immersion in depth work practices, facilitation, and training. Her experience spans mind-body modalities, archetypal psychology, Solastalgia, nature-based soul initiation, Francis Weller’s Entering the Healing Ground, The Work That Reconnects, poetic and creative arts traditions, recovery, shadow work, and ancestral healing. Her calling is to create refuge and healing community—spaces where people can slow down, cross thresholds with care, speak and listen authentically, and honor grief in all its mystery as an integral part of wholeness. Her approach to grief tending is rooted in compassion, curiosity, and deep presence. She brings a keen ear for what is spoken and unspoken, a steady heart, and the capacity to hold connection and support through ritual and somatic practice.