About Ashlie Hempstead
I am a grief tender, death doula, and companion for those standing at life's thresholds.
My work draws on traditional healing arts, ritual, and deep presence to hold what cannot be rushed, solved, or optimized.
I companion people through change and transition, grief, dying, caregiving, and the thresholds that ask to be witnessed rather than fixed. As a mother, weaver, and death doula, I draw on personal and professional experience to create sacred space rooted in belonging, connection, and attunement.
I am grief-literate and trauma-literate, and I hold interpersonal ecotherapy and slow medicine as my working principles. I work with those who stand at the margins of death, caregivers and the bereaved, sensitives and healers, tenders, teachers, artists, and anyone called to this work.
I companion the threshold, not to hurry it, but to help you meet it with more capacity, more ceremony, and less alone.
Personal philosophy
I am here to tend to your heart and body through the arc of your healing process.
I use the body as guide and Earth as my root. Through nourishing relationships with the natural world, I help dysregulated bodies find resonance and grounding, especially in seasons of loss, when the ground itself can feel unreliable.
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Life transitions, climate grief and anxiety, death anxiety
Healing the mother wound, healing exile
Anticipatory, disenfranchised, and collective grief
Caregivers and the bereaved
Trainings & certifications
Fifteen years of formal study, sitting underneath the work.
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Daoist Death Medicine — mentorship and certification
Peaceful Presence Project — end-of-life doula training
Dougy Center — grief and bereavement training
Life Blessing Institute — menarche rites of passage, certified facilitator
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Integrative Psychiatry Institute — psychedelic-assisted therapy training in psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA
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Portland Community College — Interpersonal Neurobiology certificate
Austin Attachment Counseling Center — Transforming the Experience-Based Brain, developmental trauma support certificate
Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative — facilitator training
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Moving Mountain Institute — craniosacral therapy, myofascial release, visceral manipulation
Anne Hill + Carol Gray — craniosacral therapy
Diane Wilson — Classical Hatha Yoga teacher training
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National University of Natural Medicine — Doctorate in Naturopathy, Master of Science in Oriental Medicine, Licensed Acupuncturist
Herb Shoppe — herbal medicine-maker
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Pacifica Graduate Institute — certificate in Ecopsychology
Education for Racial Equity — anti-racism for white community members
Virginia Commonwealth University — BA, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Psychology
((DEI))
All people and all bodies are welcome here.
I defend against discrimination based on gender identity, race, ethnicity, nationality, cultural background, sexual orientation, ability or socio-economic circumstance.
I am committed to decolonizing healing spaces and deconstructing the systemic, hierarchical belief that the doctor is expert of your body, or that your healing should look a certain way.