meet alyssa rose
Somatic Grief Coach, Speaker, and Ritual Facilitator in Portland, Oregon
Walking with you through the sacred landscapes of life, death, and profound transition.
Every major loss rewires who we are. When the foundations of your world shift, you need more than just traditional talk therapy—you need a safe, embodied container to process the weight of your sorrow.
I am Alyssa Rose, a somatic grief coach, ritual facilitator, educator, and speaker based in Portland, Oregon. I bridge ancient, earth-based ritual practices with modern, trauma-informed somatic therapies to hold sacred space for those navigating loss, mortality, and deep life changes.
Drawing from years of immersive experience supporting individuals, families, and communities, my approach honors the interconnected somatic, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the alchemical grieving process. Together, we work to cultivate a deeply grief-literate culture—one that is resilient and compassionate enough to transform modern loneliness into a profound sense of communal belonging and connection.
Deeply Rooted Experience in Grief Care and Ritual Facilitation
Holistic Grief Guide & Life Transitions Doula
Since founding my private practice, I have walked alongside individuals navigating their darkest hours. My professional focus centers on creating localized, accessible containers for collective and individual healing throughout Oregon, including:
Monthly Portland Grief Rituals: Facilitating consistent, local community containers to witness and share collective sorrow.
Grief Retreats: Offering annual healing retreats for those navigating loss and change in Portland Oregon and on the Oregon coast.
Monthly Portland Grief Circles: Facilitating consistent, local community containers to witness and share collective sorrow.
Monthly Online Grief Space for Practitioners: Hosting accessible virtual spaces to support therapists, care-givers, medical professionals, and healers who support their communities.
Custom Grief Ritual Design: Crafting personalized, nature-aligned ceremonies for families, businesses, and communities moving through unique transitions.
3-Month Grief Integration Journey: Guiding deep, long-form individual journeys of grief integration and healing in Portland, Oregon and online.
Community Care, Hospice Support, & Local Advocacy
True expertise is built through dedicated presence at the bedside. Since 2017, I have actively embedded myself within local Oregon end-of-life networks:
End of Life Choices Oregon (5+ Years): Extensive training, ongoing education, and volunteer advocacy assisting individuals with legal, compassionate end-of-life transitions.
Signature Hospice (5+ Years): Dedicated companion volunteer providing emotional and spiritual comfort to patients in their final stages of life.
Housecall Providers Hospice: Delivering specialized, gentle hospice massage therapy and comfort care directly to patients' homes.
A Multidisciplinary Education in Somatic Healing & Ritual Facilitation
To heal the mind, we must include the body and the land. My background combines rigorous technical somatic education with deep lineages of ancestral and spiritual care:
Somatic Practices & Bodywork Therapies
Licensed Massage Therapy & Energy Work: Trained at the prestigious East West College of Healing Arts, anchoring my practice in nervous system regulation.
Somatic Experiencing: Training in the deep work of Somatic Experiencing and healing lifelong trauma.
Craniosacral Therapy: Advanced training via the Upledger Institute to gently unwind structural and trauma-based restrictions in the body.
Support through pregnancy and postpartum: Specializations in Mayan Abdominal Massage (via Zhenya Novareign) and the sacred Closing of the Bones Ceremony (via Erin Wilde) to support the life transition of becoming a parent.
Trauma-informed Life Coaching: Spiritual mentorship, somatic release, and trauma healing training via Soulciete & Dr. Erin and The Condor Approach.
Ritual, Lineage, & Transformational Coaching
Grief Ritual Facilitation: Immersive training under the guidance of Laurence Cole and team, specializing in communal grief ritual care.
Ancestral Medicine & Animist Psychology: Deep lineage repair training under Daniel Foor to address systemic, cross-generational grief.
Sacred Feminine Mentorship: Years of deep study rooted in the 13 Original Clan Mothers teachings under Luna Itzell.
Fine Arts & Global Design Foundations
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA): University of Michigan, developing the creative foundation for experiential design and ritual arts.
International Design Studies: Sristi Institute of Art, Design & Technology (Bangalore, India), expanding my global perspective on community, art, and human connection.
in the media
Listen to my TEDx talk on Grief & Belonging
Read the interview on Bold Journey
on grief & belonging
what I believe about grief
Grief is not a disorder. It is not a weakness, not a failure of resilience or faith. Grief is a natural and intelligent response to loss, separation, and change. It is the soul’s way of honoring what matters to us, what we love and have loved, and what we long for. In a culture that rushes us to move on, numb out, or carry our sorrow in silence, we forget that grief is not something that happens to us—it is a practice. And not just that, it’s a practice of belonging, core to capacity to feel connected, seen, loved, and accepted.
We are all carrying untended grief—old heartbreaks, unlived dreams, chronic illness, ancestral wounds, unspoken goodbyes, and changes we navigated silently. Left unacknowledged, this grief can harden in the body and spirit, showing up like anxiety, burnout, addiction, or the aching feeling that something vital is missing. Untended grief behaves like unhealed trauma, asking—sometimes demanding—to be witnessed, held, and metabolized. We need places where grief can speak its many languages: tears, silence, trembling, poetry, rage, remembering.
Grief is not the absence of healing—it is part of healing. It is a continued expression of love, a declaration of longing, a testament to how much we care. In this time of widespread isolation, when so many are sick with loneliness, community grief tending becomes a sacred act of reconnection. It is how we restore the broken threads between us, how we remember how to belong—not just to one another, but to the world itself.
Our culture has forgotten how to grieve, and it shows. We are in urgent need of grief literacy—of learning how to be with sorrow, and how to tend it in others. Community grief rituals are one way we remember what it means to be human together. Personal grief tending is also a key ingredient to this movement towards belonging. In grieving, we do not collapse—we root deeper into life so that we may rise together.
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Most of us have been taught to carry our heaviest sorrows in isolation. A community grief ritual is a structured, trauma-informed container where we gather to witness and validate each other’s losses. Through shared story, silence, poetry, song, and somatic expression—such as our monthly Portland wailing ceremonies—we allow our bodies to release what the mind cannot fully process. You are completely free to share your grief openly or sit quietly in the supportive presence of the village. All of you is welcome here
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Traditional talk therapy focuses primarily on processing loss through the mind. However, trauma and deep sorrow alter our physical bodies and freeze our nervous systems. Somatic grief work treats grief as a physical event. By blending gentle craniosacral therapy, nervous system regulation, energy work, and ritual, we help thaw the places where sorrow has become trapped in your body. This holistic approach allows your heart to integration loss at a biological level, bringing a true sense of emotional relief and spaciousness.
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Anyone moving through a profound life transition can benefit from a somatic grief coach. Grief is not limited to physical death; it is present in the ending of marriages, career changes, the loss of physical health, and the quiet weight of systemic oppression. If you feel numb, stuck, overwhelmed by chronic anxiety, or lonely in your mourning, a dedicated 1-on-1 grief coaching container provides a personalized, earth-aligned sanctuary to help you find your footing again.scription