LaUra Schmidt

Founding Director, COFOUNDER

LaUra (she/her) is a truth-seeker, community-builder, cultural critic, and grief worker. She is also the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor. Inspiration finds her in natural landscapes and honest, open-hearted dialogue. ​

While a bit of a nomad, she hails from Michigan, and graduated with a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies. Her MS is in Environmental Humanities.

LaUra has been studying and cultivating personal and collective resilience strategies for nearly a decade. She is trained in nonviolent civil disobedience, and is a Climate Reality Leadership Corps member & mentor. She recently earned an “Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy” Certificate through The Embody Lab.

In May 2023, LaUra & Aimee’s much anticipated book on Good Grief Network’s unique 10-Step program called How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet will be released through Shambhala Publications. For media requests directed to LaUra, email her at laura(at)goodgriefnetwork(dot)org.

Aimee Lewis Reau

Cofounder

Aimee (she/her) is a FLOW Facilitator (Fierce Lover Of Words/Wisdom/Why) born and raised in Adrian, Michigan. She is an edgy & reverent contemplative, healer and yoga/intuitive movement instructor. To keep her sanity, Aimee dances because as Alice Walker said: “Hard times require furious dancing.” She also DJs under the name eXis10shAL.

Aimee received her Bachelor’s degree in English, Poetry, and Religion from Central Michigan University before obtaining her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Georgia College & State University.

In May 2023, LaUra & Aimee’s much anticipated book on Good Grief Network’s unique 10-Step program called How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet will be released through Shambhala Publications.

Sarah
Jornsay-Silverberg

Executive Director

Sarah (she/her) is a writer, lawyer, inspired seeker, and deeply feeling animal. Originally from New York City, Sarah followed her passion for environmental activism west and earned a J.D. with a Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School before settling in California.

Since childhood, Sarah has observed the grace and suffering in the world and wondered, what is mine to do? She has spent a lifetime trying to answer that question by studying and practicing international environmental and human rights law, climate justice activism, early childhood development, therapeutic introspection, and now, community resilience-building.

Sarah first found Good Grief Network as a 10-Step Program participant, while looking for ways to navigate the emotional challenges of living in joy and service during uncertain times. She currently spends her days balancing work, rest, and play, and exploring books and conversations that help her understand her place in the web of things. Though nomadish in spirit, she currently resides as a white settler in the Mojave Desert, on the aboriginal lands of the Kawaiisu peoples.

Dean LaCoe

Director of Outreach

Despite age, experience and an ivy league education, Dean (he/him) is often slow to catch on. He read about and saw signs of climate destruction over the decades. Only when 5,000 nearby homes in Sonoma County, CA suddenly turned to ash and smoke, did he have an awakening.

Actually, first he had a panic attack.

So, he contacted the Good Grief Network looking for some  “stress relief tips and tricks.” Instead, in the 10 steps, he found a supportive network of friends from around the world, a transformative vision, and an enjoyable new role helping others.

Kasia Stepien

Kasia (she/her) is a mental health counsellor and former scientist living on the west coast of Canada. She first came to GGN looking for a community that shared her grief for our changing world, and is honoured to help others find that now as a GGN facilitator.

Kasia is a long-time advocate of hospice and bereavement care, and knows it is crucial to have spaces where the complexities of grief can be voiced, validated, and supported. She believes GGN creates such a space for the grief experiences around ecological change, species loss, and systems collapse.

Kasia also loves to dance, hike, play, snuggle her pets and partner, and cultivate joy and gratitude wherever she can.

Marta Neto

Marta (she/her) is a wholehearted human with a deep sense of wonder towards the planet and all life on it. Her wish to understand the microbial world has led her to move from Portugal to the UK and then to Ireland to do research in systems biology at UCC.

Accepting that factual understanding of social and environmental predicaments is often not enough to drive individuals and institutions through transformative change she creates spaces that invite presence, honesty and connection to support people and systems in transition.

Through facilitating emergent processes like Empathy Cafes, Good Grief Network 10-Steps meetings, and Footpaths groups she meets her need for contribution while finding the communities committed to personal transformation as well as structural change she had dreamed of.

Tiffany Felch

Tiffany (she/they) calls the Pacific Northwest home. She holds degrees from The Evergreen State College and Bastyr University and earns an income as a Registered Dietitian.

What really lights her up, however, is learning and practicing new ways of being on this planet and she has found the Good Grief Network to be a vital antidote to the capitalism and White supremacy culture that have harmed so many of us. Working the 10-steps and cultivating a daily spiritual practice are now essential parts of her recipe for staying somewhat sane in these uncertain times of pandemic, climate chaos, racial uprisings and income inequality.

Tiffany is a mother of two kiddos, 3 adult step-children, 3 cats and 1 hamster. She and her hubby have navigated 10 years of marriage in a blended family with patience, grit, some tears and missteps along with a sense of humor and lots of love. Whenever possible, they can be seen hiking or biking the trail system around their home in Olympia, WA.

Sarah Birch

Sarah (She/Her) is a mother of two young girls, a family girl, and long-time climate change professional, turned Resilience Health Coach (coaching eco-conscious individuals to better health and wellness in stressful times). She loves being in water and the ocean, playing and learning in her emerging learner vegetable garden, dreaming up healthy recipes and having fun with her kids on many rambles in forests and mountains around Cape Town.

She has spent many years deeply worried about the future, but equally spent some time in a state of denial about the rapidity of the changes going on in the world. With two small girls to think about, emotions were all over the place and difficult to process!

The Good Grief network and the 10-Step Programme have been pivotal in her life in creating space to process, in improving her coping mechanisms, and finding community to lean on. She is thrilled to have the ability to hold space for others in similar predicaments as a facilitator for the Good Grief Network.

Kristan Klingelhofer

Kristan (she/her) is a mother, a writer, and a teacher. She currently teaches connection-based parenting classes and facilitates for Good Grief.

What she loves most is to be with her family in the natural world – whether backpacking in the High Sierras, collecting seaweed or spring nettles, or just watching the night sky. As a mother of three teenagers, she has spent many late-night hours contemplating how to parent well into the climate crisis.

She sought out Good Grief because she needed a safe and supportive place to explore her deep sadness about the earth and her anxiety about the future. Since then, she has discovered the powerful relationship between grief, gratitude, joy, and empowerment. She feels honored to be part of the Good Grief community.

Bradley Pitts

Bradley (he/him) is a father, husband, and artist whose work centers on grief and ambiguous loss. Born and raised in New York City he had the privilege of spending the summers of his teenage years camping and whitewater canoeing in the mountains of North Carolina.

Having always been interested in voids and the tension between absence and presence, he awakened to his grief and the possibilities therein when he became a father and lost his father within the same year.

Sarah Stoeckl

Sarah (she/her) works in sustainability in higher education, trying to make her corner of the world more sustainable and educating the next generation for environmental action and social change. Her focus areas in the work to mitigate our overlapping crises are attending to the emotional aspects of trauma and loss and foregrounding social justice.

She loves reading, writing, and cooking; running, hiking, and rock climbing; taking in the beautiful and inspiring, whether that be a mountain, ocean, wild flower, or painting; and hanging out with her partner and weird dog, Jubel.

Karen Hansen

 I (she/her) am a mother of 2 wonderful grown-up daughters and about to be a grandmother for the first time.

I am an educator at heart and soul- working as a teacher or a school counselor. Choosing the international education route allowed me to earn a living while experiencing the world. Over the course of twenty years, my family and I were able to live or work on every habitable continent!

Climate concern turned to climate anxiety and grief and I was carrying that burden alone until I found the GGN. I am now ‘home’ again, in the States, and excited to be working to support others who are looking for community and a place to process what is upon us. Welcome!

Teddy Kellam

Teddy (she/her), M.A.(Ed) co-leads Good Grief Network 10-step groups for parents, and she co-developed and co-facilitates Affiliate Facilitator Training Intensives. A mother of three teens, Teddy has responded to overlapping world crises by training as a transpersonal therapist (certification-2023), hiking in the forest, studying the Medicine Wheel, growing food, and working hard to build emotional resilience.

Teddy is a hospice volunteer and a caregiver for her mother, as well as a former grant-writer, embodiment trainer, and non-profit consultant. She is called to the intersection of climate and mental health – to support the people who support others.  A white settler on Quw’utsun land, Teddy yearns to grow more spacious, to become a good ancestor, and to keep digesting these tumultuous times in order to open to more courage and pleasure. She loves animals, music, her big-hearted kids and husband, and she practices emotional honesty as often as possible. 

Lou Leet

After earning her degree in Earth & Environmental Sciences from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, Lou (she/her) loaded up her dog, cat and three boxes in a Toyota pickup truck and moved to Northern California. She inherited a love of the outdoors and the Earth from her Dad, and worked as a consultant to cleanup soil and groundwater from Alaska to San Diego.

Shamoo, Lou’s 20+ year old cat, lead her on her first natural death journey. Shortly after learning skills from hospice organizations, she founded BitterSweet Animal Hospice & Grief Recovery to help people when their animals were dying. It was a natural bridge to a life learning more about grief.

Lou is a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist and the Regional Coordinator for the Bay Area Grief Recovery Method® Specialists. She is also a recent climate immigrant to Washington State after living with California wildfires. She is an environmental professional in King County, Washington (US) supporting compliance and pollution prevention programs.

LuAnn Collins

After a 35+ years in education, LuAnn  (she/her) now splits her time between being an indie author educator activist and homesteading. From her years of multi-tasking life, she knows anything is possible, wonder surrounds us, beauty is everywhere, and people are inherently decent. She vets all her ideas through her three dogs who are her constant companions, consistent in their opinion of her and role models for being truly happy.

Rosie Walford

Liz Wade

Liz (she/her) enjoys discovering her life as an ever-unfolding story that she calls The Adventures of Elizabeth, or, One Woman’s Quest to Live a Meaningful Life and Contribute to the World. Liz embraces this journey, its many joys and challenges, and all the ups and downs along the way, and tries to remember to take it just one step at a time. She never has quite enough time to keep up with writing about it, though this is part of the journey, and her writings have made their home at livinglightlywithlove.blogspot.com.  

Liz describes her life purpose as creating space for deepening understanding, connection, care, compassion and community, for the spiritual and sacred, and for reflection, learning, healing and growth – for people and the planet. She applies this for herself, and in her many roles – as mother, partner, daughter, sister, friend and community member – while doing work in the areas of climate and environmental activism, personal and group work, and community volunteering. Always, to the best of her ever growing knowledge and abilities, with love, and a little bit of magic.