Meet Elena, your companion through the terrain of grief.

Bodies of water, in this very moment, are carving their way, stretching their legs toward the sea, traversing broad expanses, shaping the land as they go. Each of us, a living river, a moving story, making our way to holding estuaries. Ecosystems where we meet each other, exchange stories, nutrients, our bodies of water merging.

Elena seeks to be such a holding estuary, a place of confluence, a steady presence in the shifting tides of grief. For over a decade, she has tended to the human landscapes of birth, death, and the liminal spaces in between.

Her apprenticeship with grief began with her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis in 2019 and deepened through the years of witnessing, caring, and companioning her through her death. When her mother died in 2022, the experience left an indelible imprint. One that called her into deeper service in the realms of loss, remembrance, and tending to the often-unspoken spaces of grief.

Elena has spent several years immersed in grief work and trainings with Francis Weller and his colleagues, practicing communal grief rituals, the sacred ecology of sorrow, and the ways grief asks to be metabolized and witnessed. Through her ongoing volunteer work with End of Life Choices Oregon (EOLCOR), she has accompanied individuals through their final hours, bearing witness to last breaths and the processes that follow.

Her background is interdisciplinary, drawing from:

More than a decade of somatic training in bodywork, breath-work, meditation, movement, and trauma-informed care, exploring the ways grief lives in the body and how it asks to be tended.
Years of birth and postpartum doula work, guiding new life into the world, tending to the raw, liminal space of early parenthood.
Her own lived experience of loss, tending, and remembrance, recognizing that grief is an ongoing relationship, not something to "move through."

She is currently completing her studies in social work, psychology, and ecology, exploring the ways these disciplines intersect to support a more relational, embodied approach to grief work. Her studies deepen her understanding of how grief is held in the nervous system, how the more-than-human world plays a vital role in our healing, and how tending to loss is, at its core, an ecological practice.

Elena holds space for those who are grieving, those who are dying, and those standing at the edges with them. She approaches this work not as a guide or expert, but as a fellow traveler; one who has walked these landscapes and continues to listen to what grief is asking of her.