A native Californian, I grew up in Contra Costa and continue to make my home here, raising my daughter and a number of pugs over the years. With a master’s degree in clinical psychology and a specialization in grief therapy, I have been a licensed marriage and family therapist for over thirty years. I entered the field of death, dying and grief as a master’s level clinical intern in hospice care in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic and then moved to hospice work and bereavement program direction in the Bay Area, providing individual grief therapy, grief group counseling and end of life support to clients and their loved ones as well as for hospice and care facility staff. Over my years of professional service in various contexts, I have worked with clients and their families facing a range of end of life illnesses and issues as well as bereavement. I was also a lead instructor in the UC Berkeley Extension professional certificate program on death, dying and grief studies and have provided trainings and education across a wide span of issues in the field to a diverse range of audiences. I spent more than a decade in the crisis and suicide intervention field as both clinician and educator and another decade working in a major healthcare organization as a psychotherapist and case manager. I am currently volunteering at hospice providing end of life companionship and care. I have supported and said goodbye to multiple family members, friends and colleagues, as well as clients over the years, and have negotiated the complicated and oftentimes unpredictable path of grief and the changes a loved one’s death creates.