Grateful Grief — On Demand Guest Speakers

Francis Weller, MFT, is a psychotherapist, writer and soul activist. He is a master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions. Author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief; The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, (with Rashani Réa) and In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty, he has introduced the healing work of ritual to thousands of people. He founded and directs WisdomBridge, an organization that offers educational programs that seek to integrate the wisdom from indigenous cultures with the insights and knowledge gathered from western poetic, psychological, and spiritual traditions. Learn more here.

Susan Cain is the #1 bestselling author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which spent nine years on The New York Times best seller list, and has been translated into 40 languages. Susan’s TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times. LinkedIn named her the Top 6th Influencer in the World, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to curate the Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all their proceeds to children’s literacy programs. Visit Susan and join her newsletter, The Kindred Letters.

David Whyte grew up with a strong, imaginative influence from his Irish mother among the hills and valleys of his father’s Yorkshire. He now makes his home in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.The author of eleven books of poetry and four books of prose, David Whyte holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, Amazon and Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures and workshops. His life as a poet has created a readership and listenership in three normally mutually exclusive areas: the literate world of readings that most poets inhabit, the psychological and theological worlds of philosophical enquiry and the world of vocation, work and organizational leadership. Explore his upcoming May Poetry Series here.

Dacher Keltner is a leading expert on the biology of human emotion. A UC Berkeley professor of psychology, director of the Greater Good Science Center, and bestselling author, Keltner studies compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities and search for meaning. In his groundbreaking new book AWE, Keltner unpacks the emerging science of awe — one of our most consequential yet famously elusive emotions — revealing what physically happens in our bodies when we experience awe, and why we became predisposed to awe through evolution. As Keltner details throughout AWE, the death of his brother, Rolf, from cancer was a seminal moment in his understanding of awe and his decision to write this book. He shows awe to be a central pathway to healing and growing in the wake of a trauma or loss.

Patricia June Vickers, PhD developed trauma training programs for Indigenous peoples and respected professionals in the trauma field, specifically as it relates to Indigenous peoples with focus on wisdom in spiritual aspects of ancestral law. She has ancestral roots in Ts’msyen, Haida and Heiltsuk nations on her father’s side and English on her mother’s side. Patricia’s Interdisciplinary doctorate included researching through Ts’msyen language (Sm’algyax) and sacred stories (Adaawx), transformative aspects of ancestral law (Ayaawx), which hold many answers to queries about life, purpose, meaning, healing and recovery of the authentic self. Her Master’s degree in Educational Psychology gave her the opportunity to study healing through Indigenous cultural teachings ritual and ceremony. As an artist, she integrates her learnings from trauma healing work to images of hope and transformation from suffering. She is a mother of four and grandmother to ten. Learn more here.