Living Leaves and Me: Our Story

Although Living Leaves is not just about my vision of one day having my own resting place, it's about understanding aliveness, I have to start out by saying "I have always loved cemeteries!" 

Graveyards are a place of history, solace, intrigue, and where our ancestors rest. They are also places greatly misunderstood, feared, neglected, and forgotten. In other cultures around the globe, the world of the living and the dead are not so divided. Practices like ancestor worship, and Day of the Dead celebrations are commonplace and festive. Here, we have walls and scary stories - one of the scariest being the impact this is having on the environment, our economy and our human consciousness.  All of these thoughts were going through my head on a flight home when I first envisioned Living Leaves, and the place I want to eventually rest when I die.

And so in 2019, a seed was planted in my mind

I work in aviation, but my heart has long called me to do much more. In 2019 I decided to try to merge my skills in a way that contributes to the betterment of our environment, to live more consciously, and to help individuals and communities extract  the profound meaning that exists in each arrival and departure,

Although I am a flight attendant, I haven't always had my head in the clouds. For many years previous, I had my feet firmly on the ground, exploring social activism, wildlife rescue and care, research and writing, and I even got my private pilot's license.  I received my B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, and studied Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, Canterbury. After college, I worked briefly in the field of social science research before transitioning to Public Radio, interning first with the News Department at KPFA in Berkeley, then as the first news reporter devoted to Clark County at WYSO in Yellow Springs, OH.

In 2022 I completed my Conscious Dying Coach and Sacred Passage Doula training with The Conscious Dying Institute in Colorado. In 2021 I began  a specially designed program, under the guidance of the late Stephen Gaddis, founder of the Narrative Therapy Initiative in Massachusetts,  in order to help better assist people and communities in re-authoring their experiences and writing their departure stories.  He passed away before this could be completed.

This same year I completed The Green Burial Masterclass with Redesigning the End. As a natural burial advocate, I encourage communities to reimagine their landscapes as opportunities to embrace the cohabitation of the living and the dead in its natural cycle, where one sustains the other. 

Perhaps in doing so, the real and metaphorical divides we see in iron fences, fractured relationships, broken concrete, and forgotten stories can be repaired in our lives, communities, and heart spaces as well. 

The hope is that these public places will nurture concepts of community, reciprocity, and responsibility.

In 2024 I partnered with Linda Gould, otherwise known as The Good Death Doula, to create The Cemetery Chronicles: Stories Unearthed. This podcast is dedicated to telling the stories of local cemeteries, their communities, and the people buried there. Since that time, Linda and I have partnered with Kim Adams of Omega House in creating Delaware's first death and dying professional network. in 2025 I also joined the board at one of the oldest non profit cemeteries in the state, Historic Riverview Cemetery.

At this time II also became a yoga practitioner for my own health, and with my training as a doula, used these skills  to navigate the spiritual and emotional transitions of dealing with trauma and personal growth.

All of this nourished my fascination with the intersection between death and the living world, spirituality, the somatic senses, energetic body, nature, and how I can share this with others through my own journey

From this, Living Leaves has grown.

So....

Although it was in my jump seat on a flight when I first envisioned the seed of what Living Leaves has come to represent today, it has been through relationship and curiosity, through the souls and communities I encounter,  that it will thrive. 

So it’s not just a departure story really. it’s an arrival to a new way of thinking about and experiencing life through death. 

And departures and arrivals are my specialty!