5-6:30pm pst on Monday, Sep 30th | On Zoom
Live Zoom Meet & Greet
with Josea & the Dark Woods Team
Are you wondering if this way of working with grief & trauma is actually for you?
about the event
We will lead a short somatic meditation, share briefly about our current offerings & 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 150+ 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
Team Lead, Mentor & Founder of Through the Dark Woods 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 am a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor through ACCT Canada and can provide receipts for both 1:1 counselling and group work.
I currently live, work & play in the seaside mountain town of qathet, BC, on the traditional territory of the Tla’amin people.
Elizabeth Claire Burr
Team Mentor & Meditation Practice for Grief Facilitator
Elizabeth has been studying the Vajrayana & Nature of Mind teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition with Mingyur Rinpoche since 2008. **She has taken the Bodhisattva vow, and her deepest aspiration is to support all beings with wisdom and compassion and to practice this in the world as best she can. This has come to manifest in many forms; meditation and yoga teacher, cranial sacral and somatic therapist, founder/owner of a healing arts center, kirtan leader, doula, mothering, mentoring and sacred partnership.
She embodies compassion and joy in a way that is rare in this world, and people often say they experience Love of the Divine, self and each other in a way they haven’t before when being in her presence. She currently resides by the ocean on the traditional territory of the Ligwilda’xw people; the We Wai Kai, Wei Wai Kum and Kwiakah First Nation.
Jane Spielman
Team Elder & LGTBQ2S Community Lead
Jane worked as an educator for 50 years, supporting transformative, inquiry-based literacy for children from birth through teenagers to undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates. 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.
Daniela Abedrabbo
BIPOC Community Lead & Facilitator
Daniela is a clinical counsellor, MPCC and RPC with the Canadian Professional Counselling Association. With over a decade of experience as a Counsellor and Certified Coach, Daniela brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her practice.
Daniela is a highly skilled therapist with a passion for nurturing the connections that bind us together. Her expertise extends beyond the realm of traditional therapy, as she wholeheartedly embraces the beauty of all relationships—whether they be between friends, business partners, or family members and more.
Daniela enjoys the opportunity to guide individuals and groups toward rediscovering the art of truly hearing each other. She believes that genuine connection is the key to harmony and that the path to it often requires vulnerability, openness, and empathy.
In her therapeutic work, Daniela exemplifies the principles of non-judgment, trauma-informed care, and client-centered counselling. She adopts a solution-based and holistic approach, embracing the interconnectedness of the body, mind, and spirit within her practice. Compassion and kindness are at the core of Daniela’s approach. She listens deeply, offers support, and creates a safe space for her clients to explore their feelings and thoughts.
Her dedication to helping people find their light is a testament to her commitment to personal growth, healing, and strengthening the bonds that make our lives meaningful. Daniela is not just a therapist; she is a beacon of hope for those on a journey to more profound, more authentic connections.
Madison Steadwell
Online Community Manager, Facilitator & Neurodivergent Community Lead
Madison Steadwell is a singer, artist, somatic coach, and grief tender. She recently completed two years of study at Wisdom of the Earth Wilderness School, and reverently carries the medicine of deep nature connection and community building. The loss of village being one of her most heartbreaking griefs, she is devoted to learning and embodying the old wisdom, stories, rituals, and traditions of her ancestors (Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh, French, German, Norwegian, Icelandic, Mi’kmaq) and fostering connection with others through them. She is also a graduating student of the Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training. Madison has recently opened up her somatic coaching practice, helping clients to find healing through listening to their body’s innate wisdom.
Being diagnosed with autism at 21, Madison is on a journey of “breaking the masks” and becoming more of who she already is, her bold, magical, natural self! Being extremely sensitive, she recognizes the “wound as gift” in her autism oh so very well. She is now working towards holding space for neurodiverse people to show up and be just as they are, in all their wondrous gifts.
Amber Keith
Community Facilitator
Amber Keith is a trauma-informed, healing-centered facilitator & educator. She is also a ritualist & coach in grief, somatic, and nature connection practices as well as an herbalist and yoga teacher. She believes in the power of community, ritual, nature, and movement to support healing and the return home to who we truly are. She has spent many years working with and advocating for refugees, women’s rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and environmental justice. Amber has a BA in International Studies from Simon Fraser University, training in mental health, somatic and grief facilitation, trauma and somatic therapies, and has led transformational youth leadership programming all over the world. She is a graduating student of the 2023 Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training.
