In Community with

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Maintaining an Authentic Practice: 

Supporting Marginalized Identities in Death 

Davinah Simmons is a Black birth-worker based in Seattle, WA (unceded Duwamish Territory) with a background in counseling and development in a Higher Education context. 

With several years of facilitation experience, Davinah is committed to furthering the healing and liberation those who are systemically oppressed in the healthcare system from birth to death by bringing education and truth to those who oppress. She infuses her personal shadow moments with rage, grief, and power to develop effective and meaningful learning opportunities through story-telling, dialogue, and humor. 

Conversations with Shadows: 

Seeing the Whole of Another 

Dr. Claudelle Glasgow is a non-binary, queer, first-generation Trinidadian/Haitian with over 15 years as a clinical psychologist.  They have practiced with Zen lineages before immersing in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage for over 10 years, where they were ordained as a Shambhala Buddhist Minister, teacher, and Meditation Instructor.  Dr. G's views the sacred, the arts, and community as the ground of healing the internalized patterning Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from surviving to thriving.  The work focuses on the healing and transforming personal and intergenerational trauma, guiding rites and ritual of passage, and deeply experiencing the narratives of our experiences of birth, old age, sickness, and death/transition with humor, non-aggression, and deep compassion.  

The Art of Seeing: 

How Photography Honors Grief 

Shannon MacFarlane is a grief enthusiast and artist who lives, loves, and plays in Tacoma, WA, with her family. She is a close companion with her grief, whom she fondly calls Deirdre. Shannon creates memorial art and tells stories through photography for families who want to honor and remain connected with those they love.

Illuminating the Role of Death in Life

Lyla Rothschild is the programs associate at the Ernest Becker Foundation (EBF). She has a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in French from Kalamazoo College. As early as she can remember, Lyla was extremely interested in human behavior and preoccupied with the concept of our mortality (as well as why no one else seemed to talk about or be bothered by it). After discovering Ernest Becker and its derived field of empirical research, she was amazed to see that there was a connection between our fear/denial of death and our tendencies towards group think, obsessively living up to arbitrary cultural standards, and hating those who are different from us. Lyla has five years of experience working as a research assistant in cognitive and social psychology labs. At the EBF, Lyla is working to spread awareness of the impacts that the denial of death has on the individual and societal level: the more we understand the human condition, the better we are able to cope with it. 

Gently opening the Doorway to Existence: Psychedelics and Death 

Alua Arthur is a death doula, attorney, and the founder of Going with Grace, an end of life planning and training organization that exists to support people as they answer the question 'What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die peacefully?' 

From private end of life consultations and public education about death to online coursework to train death doulas, she is tirelessly committed to bringing awareness to death and dying. She passionately believes considering death can inspire the way people live.  A jewelry addict, Alua is also a life lover, donut fanatic, and developing nation enthusiast.  She is inspired by LIFE, the little joys we can find even in dark times, the freedom of authenticity, and the power in the word YES.  

Community Partnerships: Creative Sustainable Engagement and Education 

Lashanna has been a community organizer since high school.  Gathering groups, small and large, with a shared cause for action, is in the fabric of the way she engages with people.  Additionally, she gets to actively participate in life as a massage therapist, death doula, teacher, community organizer and mother. 

As the new executive director of A Sacred Passing (ASP), Lashanna joins in the community collaboration, creating engaging and productive death and dying educational opportunities. There are not very many spaces that we have to go learn about death as a life event and ASP provides one.  

Through conversations, learning and observation, she feels that the more we, collective inhabitants of the earth, are able to share conversation about death and dying, the better our living is.