Our Heartfelt Story
Lynnea’s Story
In addition to my corporate life as a coach to executives, I have been serving as an Interfaith Minister for many years, offering life transition ceremonies and as a first responder, post disaster in New York City.
When I became unexpectedly trapped in lockdown during Covid-19 in India in early 2020, I was hearing about the massive losses in NYC and around the US and wondered what I could do given my skill set.
At the time, I was waking up early to sing lullabies to my 93 year old beloved mother, Ann, in Florida. I wept with the thought that I might not be able to be with her nor honor her life properly if something happened while I was so far away. This also brought up my sense of deep loss and lack of closure I felt when my father passed less than a year prior and his wife, for religious reasons, announced to the family that there would be no funeral or memorial in his honor.
All of this moved me to birth Heartfelt Memorials from my temporary home in Goa, India. I felt like it was important that no one else would have to have an 'open wound' from not saying a proper goodbye and offering a loving sendoff to the one they loved and shared so much life with. I made it back to the States but was on my way to see my mom when she took her final breath. I never got to see her or hold her again...like many of us who have lost loved ones during Covid. I sang to her as long as she was conscious. The short of it is that I did not expect to have to be my own first client...but I was. And, well, it worked better than I could have imagined. From all accounts, it was intimate, thorough, inclusive, moving and efficient. It was performed in a manner that was sensitive to these times. We were creative, joyful, duly sad when it was appropriate and people could share as they felt moved or could remain as quiet observers if they chose.
To our great surprise, Kit was the second client of the now budding Heartfelt Memorials, when she too lost her mother named Ann within weeks.
Kit’s Story
In addition to serving as s teacher, a public school principal and an executive coach, I volunteered with Zen Hospice for years, sitting at the bedside of the dying and offering support to their grieving families. That experience served me greatly during 2020, when I was unable to visit my mother in the memory care facility she lived in.
When she died, my friend and colleague Lynnea was there for me, offering perfectly timed, appropriately messaged sentiments just when needed. She knew. I was grateful for her ability to hold space for me while still navigating her own experience of grief - quite a lot to hold and she did it so beautifully. With GRACE and savvy, she cared for herself while skillfully guiding me. So much good stuff came up in the process of preparing for mom’s memorial. I sat with the unknown as well as the discomfort and pain that accompanies the empty space following the end of a loved one's life. It was not always smooth, but it was true and right for me.
This journey led me to realize this was the work I have been preparing to do: support others facing the black hole of loss with a brave and vulnerable heart.
Our Story
After meeting on the dance floor in Mill Valley, CA, we kept a respectful distance from one another for a few years. Eventually, after what seemed like a normal set of courtship zoom calls around potentially working with one another, we struck by the many parallels in our career paths and passions (movement teachers, leadership development specialists, coaches, love of India, entrepreneurs, moms both named Ann, end of life supporters, river guides, etc...) we quickly and unwittingly called in an experience of ‘Baptism by Fire’.
Within months of one another, we both lost and had to bury our mothers virtually and in a form that was unrecognizable — ashes to ashes took on new meaning as we supported each other in the most grueling and unimaginable loss of the one we loved so deeply that our chests ached for weeks, only to remind us of the depth of our love for these extraordinary women whose footsteps we gratefully walk in today.
We are humbled. The caliber of person we found in each other as friends, and now as business partners, is no less than life affirming. We each find in the other someone who can live ‘beyond themselves’, maybe having crossed into a transpersonal place of living more for the whole as well as serving with their own well-being intact. Somehow, the business we are birthing now makes us feel like we are on the right path. It is this we have to offer. The sum total of our feminine power, our "cool girl", edgy, unexpectedly traditional and “zenified” women whom we each admire and delight in...finally, to be unapologetically ourselves at this tender and fierce stage in our lives. Our trademark: intimacy, solidity, dependability, joyfulness, tenderness and passion.