Renowned teacher and mentor Sobonfu Somé was one of the foremost voices of African spirituality to come to the West. Mentored by her Dagara elders, she brought ancient indigenous African wisdom to our Western culture in a compassionate, loving, and joyful way. 

Since the beginning of her journey in the West Sobonfu has traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe, conducting workshops on spirituality, ritual, grief, the sacred and intimacy. Her work has moved African spiritual practices from the realm of anthropology, to a place alongside the world’s great spiritual tradition, with a message of profound significance and practical application in the lives of Westerners.

She was in Africa when she passed January 2017. She is now an ancestor.

Malidoma Patrice Somé Phd., West African Elder, author and teacher, as representative of his village in Burkina Faso, West Africa, came to the west to share the ancient wisdom and practices which have supported his people for thousands of years.

For more than thirty years, Elder Malidoma shared the Wisdom of his Ancestors and tribal Elders: the Dagara Cosmology, and awakened a deep knowing in the hearts and bones of those who have recognized in his name, his books, his voice, and the Spirit world inviting the renewal of a deep and abiding relationship with all beings on Earth.

Elder Malidoma is the author of several books, including Ritual: Power, Healing and Community, Of Water and The Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, and The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose through Nature, Ritual, and Community.

Dr. Somé held three Master’s degrees and two Doctorates from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. He was an initiated elder in his village in Dano, Burkina Faso, W. Africa.

He traveled throughout the world bringing a message of hope, healing and reconciliation through the powerful tools of ritual and community building. Malidoma passed in December 2021. He is now an ancestor.

Thérèse Charvet is the owner/director of Sacred Groves, a small intentional community and a place where ceremonies, circles and classes are offered. She has lived in the woods of Bainbridge Island Washington for nearly forty years, has been a nurse, a practicing midwife doing home and clinic births in Kitsap County, and was the Midwifery Program Director for 13 years at the Seattle Midwifery School.

She runs a Women’s Mysteries School, offering rituals and circles that empower and connect women with the “blood mysteries” of being a woman, the teachings of the grandmothers—inner and outer, ancient and modern.

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Thérèse has been offering grief rituals at Sacred Groves since 2002, inspired and mentored by her experience with grief rituals offered by Sobonfu Some and Joanna Macy. This work has grown over the years, a team of co-facilitators, including Laurence Cole, has developed and many have been touched by the healing power of her grief ritual leadership. 

A few years ago Thérèse, Laurence, and others began a grief tending mentoring program for the next generation of grief tending ritual leaders. She holds a place of mentor and elder in her community

Laurence Cole is a a song elder, ritualist, and community activist from Port Townsend, Washington who travels the world facilitating community healing and transformation through the power of song and ritual. 

Laurence has a gift of helping groups of people rediscover the healing power of grieving communally, bringing his special gift of group singing to everything he leads .  Guided and inspired by the teachings of Malidoma Somé, Sobonfu Somé, Angeles Arrien, Michael Meade, James Hillman, Francis Weller,, Joanna Macy and many others, Laurence creates a safe and brave, non-judgmental space for folks to rediscover their natural human capacity for healing together. Blending song, poetry, easy grounding movement, small and large group sharing, humor, silent reflective solitude in nature, and the co-creation of a beautiful ritual setting, Laurence provides a journey through the depths and heights of our aliveness, often leading to a sense of renewal, connection and even an awakened capacity for radiant joy.

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 bestselling, 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: Soul Work for Times 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. 

For over forty years Francis has worked as a psychotherapist and developed a style he calls soul-centered psychotherapy. As a gifted therapist and teacher, he has been described as a jazz artist, improvising and moving fluidly in and out of deep emotional territories with groups and individuals, bringing imagination and attention to places often held with judgment and shame.

Francis is currently on staff at Commonweal Cancer Help Program, co-leading their week-long retreats with Michael Lerner.

Joanna is a scholar of Buddhism, General Systems Theory, and Deep Ecology; and her teaching incorporated all of these varying disciplines. She never taught anything that did not excite or move her. 

Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna’s workshops and trainings in the Work That Reconnects, and have been forever changed by this ground-breaking group work. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, Joanna has devoted her life to five decades of activism.

Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the rich connections between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. She is also a translator of Rainer Maria Rilke, whose poems have long inspired her. The many dimensions of her work are explored in her books. World As Lover, World as Self is a wonderful starting point; it weaves together personal story, philosophical exploration and creative practice.