Me, the sound practitioner 

I first encountered sound meditation as a participant, attending sound baths offered by others. While I enjoyed them, it was a large gong concert in 2019 — nine gongs and players surrounding the room — that moved me deeply. I had a powerful, transformative experience that stayed with me long after it ended. I knew that night that I wanted a gong, that I wanted to learn everything about them, and that I wanted to find a teacher. Within six months, I had done both — and discovered that I loved playing for others just as much as playing for myself. 

The gong was my first love in sound meditation and remains central to my work. I’ve since expanded my practice to include several other instruments. When I play sound journeys, my intention is not to fix — I cannot heal you — but to offer a soft place to land. A held space and sonic environment in which you can access your own healing. A state of being in which you feel held, settle deeply into yourself, and drop into your own inner journey. 

Each experience is different, and sound meditation can also be a practice — the effects deepen with consistent journeying. My hope is that you leave feeling grounded, relaxed, and empowered in your self-tending and growth, more deeply connected to yourself. 

A life rooted in people care 

In my early twenties (aka the 1990s), I began several years of volunteering and working in health-center and community-based settings, supporting a wide variety of people through complex life experiences. This included training and working as a birth doula — offering care and support during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum.

In 2009, I trained as a certified yoga instructor (I wanted to deepen my own practice and found out I loved teaching, too) and became a licensed massage therapist. That second one started as a bit of a whim during a transitional time — and turned into a deeply gratifying study and career spanning many years. 

Across all of these roles, one through-line has remained constant: I love walking with people through life, especially through its transitions. 

Me, the death doula 

My path into end-of-life doula work was shaped by personal experience and reflection over many years. After being present — death vigiling — with my grandfather during the last week of his life in 2010, I began contemplating dying as a sacred and meaningful process. That time with him was so special to me. It felt so natural to hold his hand and talk to him as he was dying. To tend to him. To open the curtains and let light into the room. It was an incredibly peaceful time and felt very natural to me, even in the midst of grief. 

Over the years that followed, I encountered more and more people navigating serious illness and death — massage clients with chronic and life-limiting diagnoses, people working in hospice — and felt a subtle but steady pull toward this work. 

In 2019, someone very close to me was diagnosed with stage-4 terminal cancer. I spent the years that followed deepening my understanding of what it means to support someone through a life-limiting diagnosis — the fear, the uncertainty, the love, the endurance it requires of everyone involved. That experience changed me, and ultimately confirmed what I had long been moving toward. 

As he became more stable, I began training with the International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA), completing that program in 2023. 

As a death doula, I offer non-medical, non-therapeutic support, advocacy, and steady presence for people who are contemplating death, engaged in their own dying, or navigating a terminal diagnosis. I am an ear, a validator, a question-asker, a conversation facilitator, a vigil sitter, a doer of practical tasks, a companion, a legacy project helper. The more of this work I do, the more I realize how many forms it can take — depending on what is needed and what falls within my scope. I also support caregivers and loved ones. I do some holding of those who are holding the person who is dying. Supporting people through grief, in its many forms and seasons, is a growing and meaningful part of my work. 

In working with me, you’ll find that I hold space gently and frankly, that I can meet your humor (reverently irreverent, if that’s your thing), and that I can meet you wherever you find yourself emotionally in a given moment. I listen deeply and ask questions to support you in deepening your own process. 

Other Me’s 

Outside of my work, I find joy, fun, and healing in bellydance, yoga, and qigong (the newest of these, and I am loving it). I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy books and media, cooking, hiking (which is really just walking) on nearby trails, and birds — all animals, really, but BIRDS. I balance a deep love of solitude with quality time with friends, family, and framily. And I love my Chihuamutt, Anubis. He is nervous. He is mighty. He makes me smile every day.