Nicole Heidbreder is a mother and homesteader on a communal farm in rural British Columbia, the traditional, unceded territories of the Cheam, Seabird Island, Skwah, and Kwaw-kwaw-a-pilt First Nations. As a student of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, she infuses her life with mindfulness and engaged activism. Her current work as a sacred grief facilitator uses grief movement and mindful self-compassion to support people navigating family dynamics at the end of life.
“I was brought to this work by a profound love to hold compassionate witnessing to people going through major life transitions. Exposure to the work of Roshi Joan Halifax early on, in my 20s, started me on the path of gathering skills to support people at the end of life. These skills were then fortified through my work as a full-spectrum doula and then strengthened even further as a hospice nurse and through supporting people engaging in the work of medical aid in dying.”
Nicole has been an End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium certified hospice nurse, and a Johns Hopkins School of Nursing clinical educator. She has spent the last two decades dancing between birth and death as a nurse in labor and delivery and hospice, and as a full-spectrum doula for birth and end of life. Nicole is also a grief educator, grief movement guide, and level II Reiki practitioner.