Dr. Joanne Cacciatore is a tenured research professor who studies traumatic grief at Arizona State University and spearheads the graduate Certificate of Trauma and Bereavement. She graduated with her doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2007. Since 1996, she has worked with and counseled those affected by traumatic death, using nature-based, mindfulness approaches. She started the first therapeutic carefarm in the United States (www.SelahCarefarm.com) based on green-care and has 41 domestic and farm animals there that she rescued from abuse, torture, neglect, and homelessness.
She is the founder of the MISS Foundation, an international nonprofit organization with 75 chapters around the world aiding parents whose children have died or are dying. She also began the Kindness Project in 1997 as a way to help many grieving people honor their beloved children, siblings, grandchildren, and others who have died.
Her research has been published in almost 70 peer reviewed journals such as The Lancet, Death Studies, British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Social Work Education, Journal of Mental Health Counseling, Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, International Journal of Nursing, Birth, Social Work, and Families in Society. Her latest book, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief, won the Indies Book of the Year Award in self-help for 2017.
Dr. Cacciatore is a medical consultant and trainer who has presented grand rounds and provided individual and agency consulting and training all around the world. She is the recipient of the prestigious Hon Kachina Award, the Sr Teresa Compassionate Care Award, the Empathic Therapist of the Year Award, Arizona Foothills Arizona Women Who Move the Valley Award, and the Parents of Murdered Children Father Ken Czillinger Award.
On a personal note, she is an outspoken ethical vegan (meat/fish free since 1972) who hikes barefoot and is a voracious reader.
Her entire body of work began on July 27 of 1994 when her baby daughter died. Since then, she has committed her life to the service of others suffering traumatic deaths.
She is a mother to five children, now all grown, “four who walk and one who soars.”
Karla Helbert, LPC, C-IAYT, E-RYT, is a licensed professional counselor, internationally certified yoga therapist, yoga teacher, Compassionate Bereavement Care® provider, and an award-winning author. She is also a bereaved mother. Karla found the MISS Foundation after her first-born son died of a brain tumor in 2006. Currently, she is a MISS Foundation support-group facilitator, chapter leader, and member of the Foundation’s Bereaved Parent Advisory Board. She is the yoga consultant for the Selah House Respite Center and Carefarm, as well as creator and co-teacher of the yoga curriculum for the Compassionate Bereavement Care® Yoga Provider (CBC-Y) certification course offered through the MISS Foundation.
Karla’s therapy practice has a focus on loss, grief, and bereavement, working in particular with those affected by trauma and traumatic death. Additionally, she has trained in Integrated Movement Therapy™, a holistic therapy approach using yoga’s philosophical, spiritual, and physical framework to address the needs of a whole person. Karla is also a self-taught artist, reiki practitioner, and aromatherapist and uses these modalities in individual ways with clients as well in her own personal practices to support and address mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. Seeking to remain as aware and present as possible to all of life, she sees grief, her own and that of others, as both a learning and a growth process. She is the author of the award winning books Finding Your Own Way to Grieve: A Creative Activity Workbook for Kids and Teens on the Autism Spectrum, Yoga for Grief & Loss, and The Chakras in Grief & Trauma: A Tantric Guide to Energetic Wholeness. Karla lives and works in Richmond, VA with her husband and their daughter.