2023 Une Bonne mort speakers

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 Ekua is a Black gender expansive liberationist medicine person who has been intentionally practicing personal and collective healing for over fifteen years. As an intuitive medium and a deep feeler, Ekua’s jam is inviting and supporting collective and individual grief work with ritual and somatic practices, supporting people to connect with their ancestors for guidance, and supporting the dead to transition with grace and dignity. After a life of intermittent displacement, Ekua is currently making home in the mountains of Western NC and trying their hand at collective land stewardship as a means of ancestral and land-based healing. 

Ekua will share about Grief and Pleasure in the Body: A key to experiencing the fullest expressions of erotic power, free flowing creativity, and enhanced sensations of pleasure and euphoria in the body can be found in working with grief. Because grief takes up space in the body, it can displace pleasure and dull experiences of joy and bliss. In this talk, I will discuss what grief is and how it functions in the body. I will also talk about how grief and pleasure intersect in the body and offer pleasure based practices that can support your own grief practice. 

Hope Wechkin, MD FAAHPM HMDC has been the medical director of EvergreenHealth's Hospice program since 2007. She also served as the medical director of EvergreenHealth's Palliative Care program from 2007-2021, and is a clinical faculty member of the University of Washington School of Medicine, from which she graduated in 1997. A family physician by training, she has been recognized by her peers as one of Seattle Magazine's and Seattle Metropolitan Magazine's "Top Docs" on numerous occasions, and she is a sought-after speaker locally and nationally on end-of-life medicine. She is also a classically-trained musician (violinist, singer and composer) who has performed throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

 In this workshop, I will reflect on the view from the "other side of the stethoscope" as I describe the circumstances of my mother's decline and death and its illumination of common themes and nuances in end-of-life care. 

 Eula Scott Bynoe is a full-time Black Woman Parent Widow, a Doula and CBE. Eula was born and raised in Seattle’s culture capital, the Central District, to organizers, and proud ordinary workers. She sees her role in this world as one of messenger, solutionary, community builder, party starter and sister to all who can see her humanity. At 35, in the thick of postpartum depression and the true start to the Covid-19 pandemic Eula's husband first and later her mother passed away. Forced to face all the ways navigating grief was necessary for her mental health and that of her then 2 year old sons, she prayed for this an opportunity to share her new knowledge. Eula pulls from her experiences and shared wisdom of her tribe to create an overview of the ways we all experience grief daily, how to see the beauty in the shifts and the grace required to and from all involved in order to heal. Each of our timelines requires constant metamorphosis. May we all have support on our journey. 

 Eula's workshop will center around this concept: Grief is in all things as nothing ever stays the same. 

 As a naturopathic physician and death doula, Beth assists humans in and through grief, loss, trauma, and dying. She provides grief counseling online and uses tools like biofeedback, breath training, and self-regulation techniques to teach clients ways to regulate their emotions and restore a sense of agency in their bodies. A HeartMath Certified Trauma-Sensitive Provider as well as a trauma survivor herself, Beth uses the same techniques that she teaches to sustain her own recovery. In addition to naturopathic care, Beth provides community deathcare in the Seattle area and volunteers for End of Life Washington and A Sacred Passing. She lives near Liq'tid on the unceded lands of the Duwamish – the First People of Seattle – with her spouse, two smol rescue dogs, and a co-parented neighborhood cat. 

We live in and experience the world through our body and its senses. Cues from our surroundings – including those from other humans – inform our nervous systems about threat or safety in our environment. As humans, we are literally, physiologically made to be together. We are designed to thrive through relationships and community. While social connection benefits us in many ways, it requires a perceived sense of safety, which can be hard to achieve for people with dysregulated nervous systems from things like grief, trauma, anxiety, and burnout. Through discussion of the autonomic nervous system, heart rate variability, polyvagal theory, embodiment practices and more, we will explore the science, skills, and benefits of cultivating the internal conditions for human connection.