About Shanti

My Story

As a child of the 60s, my life has been filled with joy and sorrow. In the civil rights and anti-war movement, I marched on Washington and found personal ways to express my desire for a better world. 

I attended the Woodstock concert in 1969, hitch-hiked some 8,000 miles, and gave birth four babies in the 1970s (3 out of 4 at home). After the last child was born in 1978, after a difficult period, I landed in a mental institution, where I spent ten long weeks. 

I know grief, trauma, and loss like the back of my hand. In high school, six friends died in a single car crash. In 1989, a dear friend died with AIDS. In 1994, another friend took his own life. I spent years just trying to get through my days.

Between 2013 and 2018, seven family members died. Two baby great grandsons, a cousin's husband with cancer, both parents with dementia and heart disease, a sister to homicide, and my third born child, Naomi, to addiction and depression. You see, grief was always her downfall. It was mine, too. 

After my mother died in 2018, I was trained as an end-of-life doula with INELDA. Then I took a 6-month online grief training course with Megan Devine and now I work to help people in grief, trauma, and loss. 

I teach classes and meet with clients one-on-one.

Please take a moment to watch this short 2-minute video:

About Naomi