Contributors
Ash Canty
Ash Canty (they/he) is Psychic Medium, Death Guide & Spiritual Life Coach. Their ancestors are Indigenous peoples of West Africa, Cherokee and Blackfoot tribal nations and white french & Italian colonizers. They support and walk others in the threshold of death & dying and coach others in embodying the full power of their spirit and spiritual gifts. They are led by spirit, ancestors and nature beings in all that they do. They offer mediumship readings to those who are here in the physical plane that want to rec-connect with their loved ones or other benelevont beings in multidimensional realms. They believe when we deeply align and listen to the body, mind & nervous system we can gain greater access to experience our own psychedelic connection to the nature of everything and raise the collective consciousness upward and beyond.
You can find out more about their current offerings at: www.sovereignspiritdeathcare.com and on Instagram @sovereignspiritdeathcare
Melanie DeMore
Melanie DeMore is a preeminent vocal artist helping to preserve the African American folk tradition through song and Gullah stick pounding. She is a singer/songwriter, composer, conductor, and vocal activist who believes in the power of voices raised together.
A founding member of the Grammy nominated vocal ensemble Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir, she is also a charter member of The Threshold Choir that brings songs of comfort to those who are in the midst of life’s thresholds, including under hospice care and in their final moments. The singing is offered as a gentle blessing, and not as entertainment.
Roshni Kavate
Roshni Kavate is an Artist, Healer, and Activist. She is the creative director of a grief wellness platform called Cardamom and Kavate and founder of the reproductive justice platform, Marigolde. She believes grief is a portal to wholeness. Through rituals and storytelling, we can reconnect to our origins and be our wild selves. The question that guides her is What is our grief craving? and how can we nourish and feed it?
Roshni earned a B.S in Nutritional Sciences from UC Berkeley, a B.S in Nursing from NYU with honors and Ayurveda Post Partum Caregiver Training from The Center for Sacred Window Studies. She is also trained in Urban Zen Integrative Yoga Therapy to provide complementary holistic care to people with serious illness. Roshni has over a decade of Nursing experience in both clinical and leadership positions working with diverse populations in New York City, Los Angeles and Oakland. Her work has spanned from working as birth doula, transplant ICU nurse, home health nurse and to an end of life nurse. Most recently she worked as a Palliative Care Nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.
Roshni's early childhood was marked by the grief her mother and ancestors experienced by living on the margins based on gender and caste. Similarly in the United States, as a Nurse, Roshni witnessed racialized trauma and its lasting impact on the health and wellness of communities of color. These experiences led her to create transformational spaces for people to reclaim their vibrant selves.
@cardamomandkavate • @we_are_marigolde
www.cardamomandkavate. •. www.wearemarigolde.com
She has created two publications: Mending a Broken Heart: Recipes and Rituals to Nourish Grief and Bloom: A Modern Pregnancy Loss and Abortion Post Partum Care Guide.
Naila Francis
Naila Francis is a writer, grief coach, death midwife and ordained interfaith minister. She holds space and offers ritual and ceremony for people at many of life's sacred thresholds, including birth, marriage, death and other transitional passages. Her work is often informed by her love of poetry, the gifts of healing rooted in nature and community and her commitment to expanding our grief literacy and death awareness. She is a founding member of Salt Trails, a Philadelphia collective making grief public and visible through community rituals. For many years, Naila worked as a journalist, interviewing artists from all backgrounds, before finding her way to the vocations of companioning others through grief and dying after suffering several personal losses in her own life, including the death of her father.
Website: www.thishallowedwilderness.com
Social: @thishallowedwilderness @salttrailsphilly