Creating a Nest of Care: Perinatal Loss Training for Birthworkers – Monthly Loss Consult

This training is open to birth workers in King County, WA.

This birth worker training centers on the loss of life when intertwined with the womb and birthing.  Join 40 local birth workers in a year-long commitment to growing the web of care necessary to support someone through this loss. 

Creating a Nest Cohort is a 9-month project provided for free in partnership with Sacred Passing, Imani’s Light, and Perinatal Support WA for birthworkers serving families in King County.

Monthly ongoing learning session on the third Wednesday of the month from 10:00am -1:30 pm. Doors open at 10:00am with brunch provided. Content will begin promptly at 10:30am.

Dates and times:

Wednesday, 4/16; 10-1:30pm 

Wednesday, 5/21; 10-1:30pm

Wednesday, 6/18; 10-1:30pm

Wednesday, 7/16; 10-1:30pm

Wednesday, 8/20; 10-1:30pm

Wednesday, 9/17; 10-1:30pm

Wednesday, 10/15; 10-1:30pm 

Wednesday, 11/19; 10-1:30pm

Location: In-Person; due to the nature of the content and curriculum, the sessions necessitate in-person attendance. The experiential learning and community building fostered in this space are not replicable in a virtual format (for months 1, 6, and 7 hybrid options will be a permissible accommodation for health reasons only, not convenience) 

Burien Community Center
14700 6th Ave SW, Burien, WA 98166

Please see the list below and register for as many sessions as you will attend. Space is limited and meals will be provided, so please register accurately for your availability.

Consultation Group structure:

Month 1: 4/16 Ambiguous/Disenfranchised Grief Support:

•  Strategies for supporting families through the intersections of ambiguous/disenfranchised grief support (families with experience with incarceration/ICE, child removal, loss due to overdose, unhoused)  Hybrid accommodation available.

Month 2: 5/21 Getting the News and Medical Advocacy 

• How to deliver and receive life-changing news with sensitivity and support.  
• Empowering families to understand and navigate medical information and decisions early in diagnosis or complications.
  • Continuing support and advocacy for families post-loss, including follow-up care and memorial planning
  • Grief Therapy options

Month 3: 6/18 Perinatal and Infant Disposition Choices /Shrouding and Care After Death Empowering families to honor their children with a disposition choice that honors a family’s beliefs/wishes.

• Techniques for shrouding and caring for the deceased with dignity, including cultural practices and hands-on training.

Month 4: 7/16 Cultural Care Practices: Stories of Loss

• Panel Conversation 

Month 5: 8/20  Bereavement Photography and Memory Making 

• Best practices for bereavement photography, training on creating meaningful memories through photographs, handprints, locks of hair, and other keepsakes.

Month 6: 9/17 Legal and Ethical Considerations in Perinatal Loss – First Legal Clinic 

• Guidance on navigating the legal and ethical aspects of working with perinatal loss, including patient rights, confidentiality, and advocacy.  Hybrid accommodation available

Month 7: 10/15 Birth after Loss Hybrid accommodation available

• Parents panel 

Month 8: 11/19 Building a Community Network & Shifting Perinatal Deathcare 

• Closing of the series with reflection and pulling together strategies for building and sustaining a supportive network for ongoing community and professional support. 

Please note this training is restricted to birth workers serving families in King County.

Please note this training is restricted to King County birth workers.

If you registered for the initial 3 day training, ‘Creating a Nest” please REGISTER HERE.

If you did not attend the initial 3 day training, “Creating a Nest” please REGISTER HERE.

Facilitators: 

Lashanna is an intentional tender and has been such for going on just over 30 years.  A tender of people and spaces, a recovering corporate employee, and an avid learner.  A mistake maker, community lover, consensual hugger, garden witch, and mother; a midwest grown, University of Michigan graduate, artist, facilitator, and holder of heavy things. Creating space for belonging is at the core of their work, from teaching medical professionals to working with youth and play, from shrouding a community member to hand-grinding herbs for tea. Lashanna regularly lives and works in the intersections of death, art, education and love. Her end-of-life work is rooted in a community deathcare model.  Lashanna holds a solid, grounded space for her clients, regularly bringing great comfort to a time that can feel out of control.  Her knowledge, skill, and experience allow her to assist people and their families in their time of death.  Lashanna not only works with people imminently facing death or who have been given a terminal diagnosis; she also works with those living their life fully and wants a doula relationship in place for when death does come closer or an accident occurs. As the Executive Director of A Sacred Passing, Lashanna joins in community collaboration, creating engaging and productive death-and-dying educational materials and opportunities for the community and professionals to learn.  While instructing massage students or doulas, she works to impress the importance of keeping one’s agenda and judgment out of the process while centering on listening, trust, and autonomy. “If energy is neither created or destroyed, I am quite sure we’ve met sometime before” – thegoodwitchofcascadia

Marquita is a Perinatal Grief & Trauma Therapist, Death Doula, and founder of Imani’s Light Grief & Wellness Center. Marquita has over 15 years of serving BIPOC families. She aims to inspire and empower people to show up authentically, while fiercely advocating for those navigating spaces that are not traditionally occupied by people of color. She has also served registered and non-registered families through the different stages of the Organ Donation process.  In her spare time, Marquita is also a digital storyteller, birth & documentary photographer, and content creator. Learn more at ImanisLightWellness.org or by following her on social media @ImanisLight.