About the Facilitators
Shirley Riga, Spiritual Director, Death Doula and Trance Healing Medium
Shirley Riga, (she, her) - Co-Founder. Over the past four decades, Shirley has cultivated a diverse skill set in the healing arts. She is a Spiritual Director, Certified Psychosynthesis Counselor, Usui Reiki Master Teacher, Trance Healing Medium and Death Doula. Her services include End of Life Planning, Soul readings, Reiki healing, and mentoring/coaching, all aimed at guiding individuals toward self-discovery and healing. She is also an author, Hospice volunteer and workshop facilitator
Minda Sanchez, Death Doula
Minda Sanchez (she/her) Co-Founder, is a culture worker who helps people reclaim, remember, and create practices that befriend death as a natural and sacred part of life. She brings her background as a board executive, IT project manager and event planner to help individuals and groups to create rest-of-life plans, coordinate memorial services, convene grief gatherings, and engage in difficult conversations about life and death. She is a Certified Willow End-of-Life Educator, Certified Morning Altars Trainer, graduate of the University of Vermont End of Life Professional Program, and a scholar of Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School. She is co-founder of The Doula Guild, a professional network of death doulas based in Massachusetts, and lives in an intentional community in Boston.
Julia MacMahon, End-of-Life Doula and Social Worker
.png)
Julia MacMahon (she/her) is an end-of-life doula and social worker who supports individuals and families in approaching death with presence, clarity, and connection. Drawing on her background in community social work, mediation, and facilitation, she helps people navigate advance care planning, complex decisions, bedside transitions, and meaningful conversations about what matters most. Her work is grounded in collaborative dialogue, values-based decision-making, and strengthening the relationships that sustain us through times of change. Her path to this work is both personal and professional: after experiencing the death of her mother at a young age and accompanying several loved ones through their final days, Julia came to understand dying not only as a medical event, but as a deeply relational and human passage. She is the founder of Estuary End-of-Life Care, completed her end-of-life doula training through Going with Grace, and holds a Master of Social Work from the Boston College School of Social Work.