There were eighteen months between my father's pancreatic cancer diagnosis and the day he passed away on Christmas evening 2021. His final six weeks were spent in grueling home hospice, where my mom, big sister, aunt, and I gathered around him as unofficial end-of-life doulas. So many people came by to visit and say goodbye while they had the chance. He told jokes until he couldn't speak anymore, and wanted to hear Notorious B.I.G. more than Jackson 5 Christmas songs.

When he passed, I turned my focus to nurturing (and protecting) my mom with some close calls—some men go crazy for widows, and Nigerian scammers will "invest in Bitcoin for you" if you let them. But just three weeks later, my brother-in-law was taken in a senseless act of road rage gun violence. So I expanded my reach of care to my sister and the children he left behind. There was a news interview, a flood of GoFundMe donations, and the surreal reality of watching my mom and sister become widows at the same time.

What compounded the grief was the realization that we were not as prepared as we thought.

Dad had everything in order: will, trust, power of attorney. But those weren't enough. My healthy 40-something brother-in-law had absolutely nothing in place. Suddenly, we women had to put aside crying long enough to sift through forgotten papers in bottom drawers (or cry, but keep looking anyway).

The hardest part of losing someone close isn’t taxes or attorneys—it’s the hundreds of small, urgent decisions you didn’t know you’d need to make.

Who knows Dad's phone code? What bank accounts did Dad use for what? Quick—have your boyfriend call Yahoo and pretend to be my brother-in-law so we can access his email account and complete the two-factor authentication to log in to his bank account...

We hit a wall—hard—trying to figure out things no one ever thinks to think about. And from that avalanche of overwhelm, the seeds for this course were planted.

It is my deep desire to help every family avoid what we went through. While it’s inevitable that life will life, the fallout doesn’t have to be unmanageable—if you plan ahead.

I didn’t create this course to make peace with tragedy. I created it to honor the grace we found in the aftermath—to help you move through the mess with more clarity, more confidence, and more care. Inside this course, I step into the role of a transition strategist—helping you get your people ready, just in case.

Currently I live in Mexico City, where I create as the founder of Ilium Wing—a fine jewelry brand rooted in ritual and ancestral reverence—and continue my path as a student and practitioner of African spiritual traditions.