I am a Certified Thanatologist, Certified Grief Coach, Certified Funeral Service Practitioner, a Grief & Death Care Educator, as well as a Licensed Funeral Director decades of experience researching grief and bereavement while working in acute care settings, funeral homes, and as a Thanatologist and Grief Coach.

I hold a Master of Science degree in Thanatology, a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Funeral Service & Mortuary Science. Additionally, I volunteer as a mentor for aspiring and newly-licensed funeral directors with the Continuing the Vision Mentorship Program, with which I am also a member of the Administrative Team. I also facilitate grief support groups for HealGrief.org, I am in Instructor for the Center for Death Education, and create content as an Expert Contributor for the Help Texts text-based aftercare program.

My passion for grief work is anchored in my years spent working in acute health care settings, my more recent years working as a licensed funeral director, as well as my own experience as a grieving human. Experiencing the grief process in an anticipatory setting before a death has occurred, as well as counseling bereaved families and friends as a licensed funeral director as the grief process (often rapidly) unravels after a death has occurred, has fundamentally shaped how I see and approach grief.

My global understanding of the grief process, fortified by decades of professional & personal experience, and many years of research, has impressed me with the understanding that, while there is universality in the grief experience, no grief experience is greater or less than the experience of another. Grief wears many more masks than one, and loss does not necessarily equate to the experience of death in the biological sense. Rather, grief is a highly-individualized experience, and can be felt in any setting, in reference to loss of anything - be it tangible or intangible.