December 1st 5pm pST/8pm EST
Live Zoom Meet & Greet
with Josea & the dark woods Team
Come meet our amazing facilitation team!!
about the event
We will lead a short guided somatic meditation, introduce our team, share about our current offerings (particularly our upcoming LIVE Return from the Underworld Course with Tisha, Susan, Sanaz & Chanda!) & then have an open question period where you can ask us anything.
*Please note that we are not able to offer therapeutic support during this meet & greet 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 our combined years of experience, but this isn’t the right space to do deeper therapeutic work.
Check out our team below – we will all be there to answer your questions.
Meet the Team
Josea Tamira Crossley
Founder, Mentor & Team lead
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 life and death.
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 Ellie Sielern, and for my teachers Mariah Moser (Opening to Grace Relational Somatic Psychotherapy), Peter Levine & Diane Poole Heller, Irene Lyon, Jon Young, and for the strong influence of Joanna Macy, Sobonfu Somé, 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 & grief support group facilitator
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.
SaNaz Hosseini
BIPOC grief support group 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.
chanda Turner
Grief Support Group Facilitator
Hi, I’m Chanda. I live in Inuvik, NWT in the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit Settlement Regions, and am happiest spending time out on the land. I am a lover of skyscapes, good food, candles, kitchen witching, boats, skidoos, intimate friendships, astrology, twinkle lights, and dogs.
I am yearning to rebuild our deep connections to other beings, human and non-human, and experience the vastness of our universe. I am learning to use movement, acceptance, and compassion to heal and discover myself after years of masking and living in trauma response patterns. I have recently completed the Dark Woods Grief Tending and Ritual Facilitation Training, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to hold space and offer support to others on their own healing journeys.
Other hats I wear include: Step-mom, Dog Mom, Marine Protected Area Senior Biologist, Witch, Consultant, Disrupter, Neurospicy Human, Partner, Daughter, Crafter, and Sister. My current day job(s) are in wildlife co-management with the Inuvialuit and Gwich’in peoples, who have signed land claims that guarantee their involvement in wildlife management. I work to move the processes of co-management closer to true, equal power-sharing and consideration of Traditional Knowledge and ways of knowing in what are still very colonial and science-based practices. This work, as well as where I live and who I love, has moved me to challenge my own biases and inherent beliefs from growing up in western settler culture and to encourage others to do the same.
Tisha Washington
grief support group Facilitator
I come to this work with an open heart, honoring the many ways people navigate grief, transition, and change. Born on the bayou, I have been shaped by listening closely–to people, to nature, and to what unfolds when words are lost. My own life has been marked by love and loss, and through those experiences I’ve discovered a deep well of inner resource—a refuge of calm and steadiness that I return to again and again.
For the past fifteen years, I have shared deep companionship with animals in my role as a professional dog walker. It was through years of walking—in every season and all kinds of weather—that this path began to form. Observing the natural shifts in nature taught me to recognize and accept the natural changes within myself—meeting them with an open heart rather than judgment. My support is grounded in practical tools that help you remain steady as things shift—both within you and around you—always guided by mindfulness and compassion.
I hold a Master of Social Work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since graduating, my path has unfolded through a rich blend of training and lived experience. This includes case management and support group facilitation for people living with HIV/AIDS at Whitman-Walker Clinic in Northern Virginia, completing a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and, most recently, training as a Grief Tender with Josea Tamira Crossley through the Dark Woods of Grief: Roots and Ritual program.
I believe grief wants us to listen deeply. Alone, this can feel too heavy a burden to carry. In community, the load is shared and something begins to soften. Little by little, shifts occur and space opens for light to come in.
I am available for walking and in-person sessions in the state of Maryland. For more information, you can contact me at sweetboholife@gmail.com
Susan Adamson
grief support group Facilitator
Susan brings a unique depth to grief work, drawing from decades as a Registered Nurse specializing in newborn intensive care and lactation, combined with advanced training in pre and perinatal somatic psychology, energy medicine, and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy.
Her own grief journey began in 2023 with the dissolution of her 33-year marriage, followed six months later by the sudden death of her ex-husband from long-term alcohol abuse. Navigating this complex terrain of loss, Susan discovered The Dark Woods of Grief, where weekly somatic support groups offered her the tools and witnessing she desperately needed. After attending the 2025 winter Grief Retreat, she knew she wanted better tools to help others find their way through grief. She completed the Dark Woods of Grief Facilitator Training in 2025.
Susan’s work sits at a powerful intersection: she understands that how we navigate grief is deeply rooted in our earliest experiences. For years, she has helped new mothers and babies heal from challenging births and medical interventions, using somatic tools to create safety for overwhelmed nervous systems. When babies are given space to tell their birth stories—to express frustration, rage, or sadness—they develop resilient coping mechanisms that shape how they’ll process trauma and loss throughout their lives.
This foundational understanding informs Susan’s grief facilitation work. She knows that when we experience traumatic loss later in life, those early imprinted patterns resurface. Just as newborns need safe, attuned holding to process their birth trauma, grieving adults need safety and security in their holding and witnessing. Susan creates that compassionate container where grief stories can be shared, emotions can move through the body, and the whole self can be honored through the pain of sorrow.
Susan is passionate about bringing her somatic expertise to those walking the often lonely and misunderstood path of grief, offering the same deep presence and nervous system attunement she has long provided to the newest and most vulnerable among us.