Ashley Kellem

I am a Black woman from the South, whose Southern roots inform my practice, and how I show up for the people I work with. I don’t shy from the realities of life, but I also welcome in and make space for those tender mercies we forget exist to support us. This isn’t work we are supposed to do alone. I’m here to remind you of that. I have worked for a number of years in hospice care, and with medicines that offer a more compassionate and integral way of being with ourselves, and the world around us, so that we might be, and remain in integrity with ourselves, and the story that encapsulates the fullness of who and what we are.
We don’t talk about death. We have created it to be an isolating, terrible reality, filled with fear and despair. We grieve alone and we die alone, and are told that this is the way that things are supposed to be. I am Storyteller, and no story can be told, unless it is allowed to have an end, just as it is given a beginning. The stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, never feels quite as important, as when we are at the threshold moments in our lives. And death is just another threshold. There can be beauty here alongside the ugliness. Peace alongside the pain. This isn’t work we are supposed to do alone. I’m here to remind you of that. It is a story, that even at the end—especially at the end—you still get to shape.