Laurel Miller is passionate about working with people, young and old, around end-of-life topics. She completed the Anam Cara Program at the Sacred Art of Living Center. She volunteers with Compassion and Choices working with individuals and their families as they make their end-of-life choices. She’s a member of the Southern Oregon Hevre Kadisha. She leads workshops that support the participant’s desire to explore themselves and the mystery of life and death. Also a seasoned mediator, an independent coach and facilitator, Laurel is dedicated to supporting individuals and the conversations that they need to have before they are no longer able.

Selene Seltzer is a Clinical Healthcare Chaplain in private practice in Ashland OR (SpiritualCareAssociates.net). She has a specialty certificate in Palliative Chaplaincy and is an End of Life practitioner. She offers psycho-spiritual counseling and support for those facing illness and injury, life transitions or loss. She works together with clients, their families, and their healthcare providers to optimize emotional, social, spiritual wellbeing and quality of life. She is passionate about having a conversation about “What Matters Most?” and providing “whole-person” support and care to those wishing to live as well as they can, for as long as they can.

Julian Spalding serves on AARP Oregon’s Diversity Advisory Council, sits on the board of Ashland at Home and is co- founder of Rogue Valley LGBT Elders. He is an enrolled member of the Osage tribe of Oklahoma. Julian was instrumental in starting and facilitating Resonating Core Groups in Albuquerque during the late 80’s in collaboration with Barbara Marx Hubbard’s Global Family, a San Francisco-based organization. He published ABQarts, a magazine of the arts in Albuquerque from 1997 to 2009 when he sold it to retire to Ashland, the town of his birth, with his husband Terry
Brown. Julian publishes poetry at http://julianspalding.wordpress.com.

Pat Fitzsimmons is currently the volunteer "on-call" chaplain for Asante Ashland Community Hospice and has served with the organization for the last seven years. He is ordained as an interfaith minister and spent 18 years living, working and teaching in intentional spiritual communities. Pat has continued his education here in Oregon completing four modules of the Richard Groves, Anam Cara training. Pat says: “I see myself as an anam cara, a soul friend and companion. I am ineffably drawn to abiding in the mystery of the moment with those in the dying process (and aren't we all).

Lily Myers Kaplan, the founder of Spirit of Resh Foundation (www.reshfoundation.org), is dedicated to using story to build recognition that death is part of the wholeness of life. She is the author of Two Rare Birds: A Legacy of Love, holds an MA in culture and spirituality and is an ordained non-denominational minister. Lily has also been a hospice volunteer manager but she maintains, “My most valued credential is my personal experience of transforming my own losses into legacy.” Embracing death, whether literal or metaphorical, is the foundation of Lily’s transformational approach to counseling individuals and facilitating groups.

Jennifer Mathews is a writer, consultant and laughter yogini with a passion for uplifting the human spirit. After her life- partner died in 2011, she began sharing her experiences of death, grief, joy and optimism to support others on their journeys (JenniferMathews.com). Jennifer works with the community outreach and training team for the award-winning film Death Makes Life Possible. She's been facilitating conversations about death and the afterlife in various communities around the country. Her home base is Mount Shasta, CA.