Five people who think about death and loss for a living, in conversation, moderated by Verhanika Willhelm. Between them they bring research, teaching, cultural tradition, and their own losses. You will leave with a wider sense of what grief can look like, and permission to do it your own way.

Pat Lowinger (Sequim, WA) teaches at Peninsula College, where his courses cover death, ritual, and witchcraft. He studies how different cultures across history have handled dying. You will hear that the American way of doing death is not the only way, and not the oldest way.

Dr. Pamela Steele (Seattle) is a retired therapist, a longtime crisis line volunteer, an author, and the founder of Navigate Grief. She believes grief is not something you beat, but something you walk beside, and that it takes up less room in your heart as your world grows. You will leave knowing you are not failing if it is still there.

Dr. Janet McCord (Wisconsin) runs the master's program in thanatology, the study of death and dying, at Edgewood. She has spent nearly thirty years in this field and is a past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. She will tell you what the research actually says about grief, and how much of what you have been told is simply wrong.

Migizi Miigwan (Port Angeles, WA) is Chippewa Odawa from the Great Lakes region and teaches Integrated Indigenous Studies at Peninsula College, where she built the program. She speaks from both the classroom and her own losses, on how her people hold death and each other.

Carmen Watson-Charles (Port Angeles, WA) is an educator and a culture bearer for her Lower Elwha Klallam people. She works with the local school district and every Sunday holds space at surf camp, gathering people in the healing waters of her homeland. She carries this work through place, through young people, and through community all at once.