April 27th 5-7pm pacific /8-10pm eastern
Dark Woods Grief Support Group Q&A
with Josea & the Dark Woods Team
Have questions about our Grief Support Group or BIPOC Only Grief Support Group? Come to this free Q&A and get to know our community more!
about the event
Come bring your questions and get to know our team, community and programs better at this free Q&A session! We’ll begin our time together with a somatic meditation, talk a little bit about our programs and then open it up to your questions.
*Please note that we are not able to offer therapeutic support during this Q&A session. We are happy to answer questions about the work and offer ideas around what could be helpful for your unique situation & needs based on experience, but this isn’t the right space to do deeper therapeutic work.
Check out some of our team members below – we will all be there to answer your questions.
Meet the Team
Josea Tamira Crossley
Team Lead, Mentor & Founder of Dark Woods of Grief Community
For over 20 years, I’ve been working with grief & trauma. Through practices that work with the nervous system & rewiring the brain learned through my studies in Somatic Therapy, Attachment Theory, Deep Nature Connection, Craniosacral therapy, Shamanic Study, Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga, I’ve learned to support people to completely transform how they experience the world and themselves. As a survivor of severe childhood abuse, learning these skills was a matter of necessity.
In terms of walking through the dark woods and returning with gifts, I am a living, breathing example, and this work is my offering to you.
It is my mission to create spaces in this world where people can experience enough safety & belonging, and can gain enough skillfulness to be able to heal.
The body does the rest.
I am deeply and forever grateful to my mentors Elizabeth Claire Burr & Sonara Medicine Wolf, and for my teachers Francis Weller (author of the Wild Edge of Sorrow), Mariah Moser (Opening to Grace Relational Somatic Psychotherapy), Peter Levine & Diane Poole Heller, Irene Lyon, Jon Young, and for the influence of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Martin Prechtel, Gabor Mate & Robert Moss.
I currently live, respectfully, as an uninvited guest in the seaside mountain town of qathet, BC, on the traditional territory of the Tla’amin people.
Jane Spielman
Team Elder & LGTBQ2S Community Lead
Jane worked as an educator for 50 years, but is still deeply excited by and involved in focusing on creating educational spaces where students are immersed in rich natural environments that encourage their own questions and ways of knowing to drive curriculum. She helped build trauma and healing informed school programs all over New York City that got to the root of what was in the way of student’s learning. When her wife of over 3 decades fell ill, she began her study of caregiving and grief. Jane believes that learning how to grieve and face trauma in safe-enough spaces is essential to physical, emotional and spiritual life; and is absolutely essential in the process of discovering the gifts we have to offer the world.
Jane has studied with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist masters, hospice providers and is a graduating student in the Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training. Her work is grounded in these lineages as well as Somatic tools, Internal Family Systems work & Reiki.
Jane is a Jewish anti-Zionist who believes we were born for these times, and a lifelong activist, with a focus on allyship in anti-colonist struggles. She is also a proud lesbian who has always represented and collaborated with other LGBTQ2S folx.
Jane has built her own active practice in Sow the Seeds of Healing to support individuals as well as groups in somatic grief and trauma work.
Raven Wright
Community Facilitator
Greetings, my name is Raven. I acknowledge Turtle Island & my ancestral bloodline to where the grass plains meet the foothills in a hollow clearing in the wood & marsh lands – places otherwise known in both Europe & Central Canada.
In this Autumn of my lifespan I’ve been blessed with motherhood, having born my greatest earth-side teacher ~ a rainbow indigo child. In this season of preparation I’ve become a bereaved daughter & sister, a retired social work counsellor & foster parent. My dedication & gratitude now rests in motherhood, creative & wellness practices.
As a niizh manitoag ~ two-spirit woman, I honour my inherited shamanic duality. Humbly practicing these gifts as an inspirited guide weaving the medicines in the dreamspace. Abled as an intuitive ceremonial ritualist, I gently assist those who desire to navigate liminal thresholds for alchemical revelations & healing.
In the winter of my life I inspire to serve as a death & grief steward; as a humble outpost in both life & death’s sacred transitions. It is a precious honour to be entrusted to enhearten the rites of passage for the bereaved.
Blessings for all relations ~ yours in service ~*RaVen*~
SaNaz Hosseini
BIPOC Community Lead & Facilitator
Having navigated her own path through grief many times, Sanaz is passionate about helping others find their way. As an Iranian woman and an immigrant, she has faced multiple forms of loss, and what is coined as disenfranchised grief, often without access to resources or community support. This journey taught her how isolating grief can feel and the importance of processing it. Over the years, she has learned to channel her grief and recognize its transformative power. Now, she is committed to helping others navigate their own losses.
Professionally, she has a diverse background that complements her role as a grief facilitator. She is a product manager with degrees in electrical and biomedical engineering, and management. She has mentored young professionals and volunteered for a suicide helplin , both of which have strengthened her ability to support people during difficult times. Her passion for storytelling has helped her connect with people on a deeper level and understand the power of shared experiences in healing.
As a facilitator, she strives to create a compassionate and supportive space for others, grounded in empathy and enriched by professional and cultural insights.
She teaches yoga and meditation and is a graduate of the 2024 Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training. She also currently serves as a peer grief facilitator in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.
Tecca Thompson
bipoc community lead & Facilitator
Tecca Thompson is a Grief Tender and Somatic Practitioner who offers steady, compassionate presence for those navigating grief.
She is a graduate of the 2025 Cohort of the Dark Woods Roots of Ritual Foundations of Grief Tending Facilitation Training.