Inviting Abundance

Join us this summer 🌿🔆 for a class or workshop designed to support and nurture those who support others! https://invitingabundance.net/upcoming-events

Herbal Supports for Compassionate Warriors - is a two-hour workshop. You'll learn about a handful of great plant allies for our nervous systems and receive a wee workshop packet from Finlay's Garden.

Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss - is a five-hour, two-part training for those wishing to learn more about grief care and support for families who experience miscarriage, stillbirth, infant death, et al. Joanne teaches this course on behalf of

Build Your Class - is our four-week workshop for everyone cultivating their own class, workshop, or project for their clients, students, patients, or greater community. Receive logistical and emotional support to bring YOUR offering to life.

What Future Are YOU Fighting For?
~Read about the Freedom Ribbon Project.
~Check out our recent publications.
~Join us for an online offering.
Happy Spring!

Loving all of the intention and care here...

Registration extended until April 5th! 📬 https://invitingabundance.net/grief-pen-pals

Grief is all around us and deep within us. The Grief Pen Pal Project offers one of many ways for grievers to work with their grief.

Participants agree to write once a month for 6+ months. Joanne shares optional writing prompts to encourage reflection and connection.

This is an Inclusive, Heart-Centered project. And pen pals agree to a set of rules that center on compassion, self-awareness, and respect. ✍️

This is the 7th & Final year that we're facilitating the Grief Pen Pal Network. https://invitingabundance.net/grief-pen-pals

There are so so so so many reasons to grieve today. Personal Grief. Family Grief. Neighborhood Grief. National Grief. Global Grief. And on and on 💔💔

Grief Pen Pals commit to writing once a month for 6+ months. They agree to a set of Network Rules that encourage compassion, self-awareness & open-mindedness.

More than 300 people have signed up to be pen pals since this project began just before the Covid-19 pandemic set in. If you've been considering becoming a Grief Pen Pal, now's the time!

💌 This is a Trans-Inclusive Offering
💌 Registration is on a sliding-scale basis

We see just about everything through the lens of grief. What about you? Between personal losses & unexpected transitions, deaths of loved ones, the failings of social institutions, collective pain & suffering, violence of all kinds, etc. there are so many reasons to grieve. 💔💔

If you're looking to pass some time in the compassionate company of fellow grievers who want to work with their grief in a new way, we hope that you feel warmly invited to attend our next online Creative Grief Workshop that meets on Sundays from March 8-29.

Each week we share optional activity prompts for engaging your grief through language, design/mapping, embodied awareness, & reflective rituals.

💛 Sliding-Scale Registration

💛 Trans Inclusive Offering

💛 Small Group Gathering

Click our Bio Link to Learn More!

Image Credit: Sébastien Marty - MARTYSEB / Pixabay (Image 5557369)

[Id: text at top reads: "Creative Approaches to Grief Workshop. March 8-29" Below: image of Darkness Grey bowl with gold cracks on a concentric circles mat. Below: "What will you make with your grief?"]

An online offering fueled by hope, learning, and solidarity! https://invitingabundance.net/herbal-supports-for-compassionate-warriors

Please share with folks in your circles who might be interested in carving out some space for self- and collective-care.

Trans Inclusive
Heart Centered
Sliding-Scale Registration

Join our next Creative Approaches to Grief Workshop. https://invitingabundance.net/upcoming-events/grief-workshop-march2026

Together, we'll explore how language, physical environments, our bodies, and rituals can support our grieving processes.

We welcome old and new grief; individual and collective grief. While we designed this workshop with active grievers in mind, we welcome folks looking for new ideas to support the bereaved.

Join us this February 🌅 There's such a need for compassionate and creative teachers and facilitators right now. Are you one of them?

BUILD YOUR CLASS https://invitingabundance.net/build-your-class
is a 4-week online workshop that provides logistical, pedagogical, and emotional support to help you materialize your offering.

Workshop topics:

Week 1: Developing your teaching practice
Week 2: Engaging learners through in-class activities
Week 3: Refining your class/workshop proposal
Week 4: Testing your ideas

In solidarity with all of our fellow grievers...

Dear MISS Foundation and Selah Carefarm Friends,

Year after year, bereaved families honor us with their trust, sharing stories of devastating loss and unwavering love. These families remind us why our work matters and drive us forward in our mission to provide compassionate, meaningful support to those navigating the most unbearable journey anyone can face.

In 2025, the MISS Foundation and Selah Carefarm continued to serve grieving individuals and families through compassionate, community-based care grounded in dignity, presence, and love. Our work reached people locally, nationally, and internationally, responding to traumatic loss with tangible support, education, and sustained accompaniment.

At Selah Carefarm, we provided nearly $300,000 in free crisis intervention and counseling care, ensuring that financial barriers never prevented families from receiving support during their most vulnerable moments. The Carefarm also received 895 individual intakes, reflecting the growing need for nature-based, relational grief care for those navigating profound loss.

Our commitment to children and families remained central. In 2025, we distributed dozens of specialized grief packets for children, including The Colors of Loss and Love in both English and Spanish, offering developmentally sensitive tools to help children express grief through creativity and story. Through our Kindness Project, we distributed 2,165 free kindness packets worldwide, extending compassion and connection far beyond our physical location.

Community education and professional training were also core pillars of our mission. This year, we delivered nearly 500 hours of community education, reaching diverse audiences including institutions such as Harvard Law School and the Mayo Clinic. These efforts focused on compassionate bereavement care, traumatic grief, and the ethical responsibilities of professionals working with loss. Additionally, we provided nearly 100 hours of clinical supervision to Compassionate Bereavement Care® (CBC) providers, strengthening the quality and integrity of grief support offered in communities across the globe.

Peer support remained a powerful avenue of connection. Our HOPE Mentor Program facilitated 90 mentor connections, representing approximately 360 hours of volunteer mentor support. These relationships offered steady, lived-experience companionship to those navigating grief, often during periods of profound isolation. Across MISS Foundation programs, we also completed 338 intake requests from grieving individuals and families seeking resources, care packets, and referrals to grief services. Our in-person and online support groups continued to provide safe spaces where bereaved families could share their painful stories with compassionate peers who understand the weight of similar losses.

Beyond human care, Selah Carefarm continued its unwavering commitment to nonhuman animals. Throughout the year, we lovingly cared for more than 60 abused and neglected animals, many of whom arrived with their own histories of loss, terror, and trauma. These animals are not adjuncts to the work; they are central to the carefarm’s healing ecosystem, offering quiet presence, safety, and mutual restoration. In recognition of our highest standards of ethical care, Selah Carefarm achieved Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS) certification in 2025, affirming our commitment to excellence, transparency, and animal welfare.

Our founder Dr. Joanne Cacciatore was honored in 2025 with induction as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), a distinction recognizing scholars, practitioners, and policy leaders whose work advances social good through sustained, high-impact contributions. She also received the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) Research Recognition Award, honoring her decades of scholarship and leadership that have significantly contributed to the field of thanatology and the understanding of death, loss, and bereavement.

With the support from our fundraising advisor Carrie Ostroski and key team members, the MISS Foundation received a generous grant that spans the next 3 years from the Diane & Bruce Halle Foundation to help support grief therapy services at the Selah Carefarm. We also received very generous funding from Sue Franciose in honor of her precious daughter Emily (pictured below), the Dorrance Family Foundation, the Denver Foundation, the Jordan Kammrath Memorial Scholarship Fund, the Douglas Madsen Scholarship, the Cade Pendergraft Scholarship, and from many other extraordinary givers. These thoughtful and compassionate gifts allowed us to continue to serve our grieving families.

In 2025, a feature-length documentary about Selah Carefarm entered the film festival circuit. Produced by Jon Bregel, the film offers a quiet, intimate exploration of what it means to live with grief rather than “recover” from it. The documentary follows bereaved individuals, rescued animals, and the land itself as they move through daily acts of care, remembrance, and presence. Without offering cures or tidy resolutions, the film invites viewers into a slower ethic of healing rooted in relationship, nature, and compassion, revealing how beauty can emerge alongside sorrow when grief is met with patience, dignity, and love. Bregel’s collaboration with Selah Carefarm reflects a shared commitment to honoring grief with honesty, reverence, and depth.

This Giving Tuesday brought an extraordinary challenge: Grace's mom, a longtime MISS volunteer and supporter, offered a $5,000 matching gift if we could meet it. The response was overwhelming. In just 36 hours, 21 generous donors rallied together to not only match her gift but triple it—raising $15,000 for our programs. Special thanks to Phil and Hethie Parmesano. We are truly grateful for each and every donation, as well as the dedicated in-kind contributions from our volunteers, staff and supporters who work tirelessly to support our grieving families.

We would like to thank each of you from the bottom of our hearts for being a friend of the MISS Foundation and the Selah Carefarm. We simply cannot do this work without you!

We are grateful to everyone who has already supported our work this year. If you would like to make an end-of-year gift, there is still time—online donations and checks postmarked by December 31, 2025 are tax-deductible for this fiscal year. Your contribution helps us continue providing vital support to bereaved families in 2026 and beyond.

https://www.missfoundation.org/donate/

Gentle New Year's Eve love from all of us at the MISS Foundation and Selah Carefarm.