HFA Webinars
UPCOMING WEBINAR
Coming Soon
January 2026 Webinar: Dr. Kailey Bradley & Nancy Baur
​Children at the Threshold: Compassionate Inclusion in
End-of-Life Rituals
​What does it look like to appropriately include children during a time of loss? When a death occurs at home, children are often closer to the experience than adults expect. Rather than shielding them, thoughtful inclusion can offer children safety, meaning, and connection.
This webinar invites participants to explore how children can be gently and appropriately integrated into end-of-life and home funeral rituals. Drawing on developmental insight, grief-informed care, and diverse cultural traditions, we will discuss how to prepare children, honor their questions and emotions, and support their participation in ways that respect both their vulnerability and their resilience.
Dr. Bradley and Nancy Baur are excited to present on this topic. Dr. Bradley and Nancy Baur have extensive end-of-life care experience and training. They are both clinical counselors and recently started a grief non-profit, The Ohio Bereavement Collaborative.
October 2025 Webinar:
Katey Houston & Mandy Stafford
Return Home: An Inside Look at Terramation
What does it mean to meet death with love, purpose, and a deep respect for the earth? We're incredibly excited to introduce you to two of the hearts behind Return Home: Katey and Mandy. Together, they bring decades of experience and a shared passion for transforming deathcare into a healing, empowering, and natural process. Join Katey and Mandy as they dive deep into the beautiful, natural process of terramation. They'll answer all your questions and share how this choice can be a final, meaningful act for you and our planet.
September 2025 Webinar: Amy Bridger
Creating Meaningful Rituals for Families After Cremation
For many families, the journey seems to end at the cremation. Yet without intentional rituals to follow, grief can feel incomplete and opportunities for connection are lost. This webinar explores how end-of-life professionals can guide families in creating meaningful post-cremation rituals that honor both memory and place. We’ll discuss cultural and historical approaches to scattering, practical considerations for helping families choose the right setting, and creative ways to weave ritual into everyday landscapes. As a case study, we’ll look at Farmstead Scattering Garden—a fourth-generation working farm that has become a sacred space for scattering cremains by mail.
Amy Bridger co-founded Farmstead Scattering Garden with her husband, John, on his family’s fourth-generation working cattle farm in northwestern Pennsylvania, where they live with their two teenage children. Together, they created the scattering garden to offer families across the country a peaceful, nature-based option for final farewells through a secure mail-in process. Their approach offers insight into how land and ritual can come together to provide healing experiences, even at a distance. Participants will leave with practical tools, inspiring examples, and resources to help families move beyond cremation toward meaningful acts of remembrance.
August 2025 Webinar: Silent
Sacred Connections: Designing Home Funerals as Ritual Acts
​What if death wasn’t an ending—but a sacred transition woven with ritual, love, and ancestral wisdom? Join us for a transformative webinar where we’ll explore how to create meaningful home funerals rooted in ancestral wisdom, natural magick, and spiritual direction! This session will explore the importance of including hands-on elements like ritual washing, altar building, storytelling circles, as well as incorporating continuing bonds in memorial rituals.
A practicing witch and Pagan for over 40 years, Silent is an end-of-life doula trained through INELDA and a Spiritual Director at Cherry Hill Seminary. He provides deep listening, reflective questions, and integrative practices like journaling and meditation, enabling others to uncover clarity on their spiritual paths without relying on prescribed answers. From vigil planning and psychopomp rituals to ancestor remembrances and legacy creation, Silent helps others walk the sacred passage with wisdom, ritual, and heart.
July 2025 Webinar: Dr. Elreacy Dock
Understanding How Grief Alters the Brain
From changes in neural pathways and neurotransmitter balance, loss leaves a lasting imprint. Understanding the science behind it can help you navigate it with more clarity and compassion for yourself and others. By learning how the brain adapts to loss, we can become empowered to honor grief while simultaneously caring for the brain and body.
Dr. Elreacy Dock is a behavioral health expert, thanatologist, and certified grief educator. Her multidisciplinary approach aims to advance public awareness while facilitating and contributing to critical discourse surrounding death, dying, and bereavement in our world.
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Elreacy’s session will examine the complex processes that reshape the function of the brain during grief. During this webinar, she’ll explain how our brains continue to ‘search’ for our loved ones after loss, the role of neurotransmitters in grief’s emotional and physical toll, and some evidence-based strategies to soothe your nervous system when grief feels the most overwhelming.
April 2025 Webinar: Emily Bootle
Navigating Unexpected Loss with Community-Led Deathcare
When a death is unexpected, it can feel like all control is lost. But even in challenging circumstances, families can still be involved in caring for their person. Join us for a powerful webinar with Emily, a licensed funeral director and embalmer deeply passionate about family-led deathcare. With experience across the full spectrum of funeral service—from small independent homes to corporate management—Emily has spent her career advocating for hands-on, eco-friendly approaches to death.
Emily's session is about applying the values of community-led deathcare after an unexpected loss. Planting the seed early on that a family can still be involved in the care of their person even when the circumstances are challenging. Using examples from her experiences with families, and interweaving legal and safety considerations, Emily will provide clarity for uncertain times.
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Since the beginning of her career in funeral service, Emily has encouraged folks to take an active role in the care of their dead. She believes that this helps in the early days of grief by re-establishing a sense of control. This could mean anything from retrieving a lock of hair to setting up a multi-day vigil in the home based on the desires of the family. Through real-life stories and legal/safety considerations, Emily will provide clarity for uncertain times—showing that involvement is not only possible but can also be a grounding force in early grief.
February 2025 Webinar: Susan Oppie
The Sacredness of Death
If we are to flourish as a society, it is crucial that we reconnect with the sacredness of death, and heal this wound that has stunted our quality of life in far too many heart-breaking and soul-crushing ways to name here. Time is of the essence. The powers that be (eg military-, criminal-, media-, and medical- industrial complexes, to name a few) are causing us to drift ever further away from a meaningful relationship with both life and death. Simple death rituals may be one of the most powerful ways to help mend the chasm that keeps us in this debilitating void.
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Susan Oppie worked as a registered nurse (RN) for more than 25 years, eleven of those years in Hospice and Palliative Care. In the early part of her career, she became aware of the United State’s morbid disconnect with death. She spent the following years trying to understand how the disconnect occurred, and what could be done to remedy the situation. She attended mortuary school, researched the history of the funeral industry, collected “memorial art”, and held memorial art workshops in public libraries and other venues to help open conversations around the taboo topic of Death. She also became involved in the National Home Funeral Alliance to educate and support families. In 2014, she and two other RNs, Rochelle Martin and Lynn Holzman, started One Washcloth (www.onewashcloth.org) to help bring back the art of deathbed ritual in a simple and nonthreatening way.