ABOUT ME
Meet Michelle Carrera: Your Companion in Grief and Liberation
Grief is not what broke me. It’s what made me fluent.
I am Michelle Carrera
Writer. Grief worker. Death dreamer. Companion to what is vanishing, blooming, or just beginning.
I’ve spent my life listening to what most people turn away from, the hush between heartbeats, the ache beneath collapse, the quiet presence of the dying, the sacredness of extinction.
I walk with grief in its many forms: the loss of my father, the unraveling of identity, the collapse of systems, the memory of species. Grief is not my side project. It’s my portal to liberation.
What I Do
I built Grief and Liberation as a living ecosystem for the grieving, the dying, and those who walk beside them. My work braids together:
Writing – lyrical essays, speculative fiction, and obituaries-as-ritual
Grief companioning – one-on-one presence, legacy support, and threshold tending
Community work – public rituals, workshops, and space-holding across movements
I do not offer solutions. I offer presence, story, and a place to compost what hurts into something holy.
Credentials & Lineage
I am certified in:
Death Doula Training, Doorway Into Light (with Bodhi Be + Ram Dass)
Certified Grief Educator, mentored by David Kessler
Interfaith Animal Chaplain, ordained through Compassion Consortium
I’ve held grief rituals in forests and parking lots. I’ve companioned the dying and grieving across age, species, and struggle. I’ve written obituaries for elders, animals, extinct creatures, and former selves.
But my real training comes from collapse, caregiving, queer survival, and returning home to Borikén, where I now live and write.
Roles I Hold
Grief Facilitator, Imagine: A Center for Grief & Loss
LGBTQ+ Youth Mentor, Rainbow Café Sussex
Writer-in-Residence, Grief and Liberation / The Underground Dispatch
For more on my other previous and current projects, visit www.michellecarrera.com
VISION OF LIBERATION
At the heart of this space is a vision that refuses to fragment. Spiritual, political, ecological, personal, collective: it is all woven together, like root and mycelium, branch and breath.
I believe in a world where every being, human and more-than-human. can live freely, with dignity, with enough. Not just survive, but thrive. And I know, deeply know, that none of us get free alone. Our liberation is entangled. We rise together, or not at all.
Spiritually, liberation is about movement, about flow. Guiding souls back to themselves, back to the earth, and back to each other. It means tending the wounds that live in the body and the land, unlearning what colonization taught us to forget, and remembering how to live in balance. It is listening to ancestors and stones alike, letting them speak what we’ve been too busy or too broken to hear. It is sacred rebellion and soft return. It is grief as a compass and tenderness as a radical tool.
Politically, liberation is the everyday work of resistance and repair. It’s breaking the machines of harm, standing beside the silenced, and building something else together. It looks like mutual aid, decolonization, re-indigenization, and a refusal to abandon each other. It’s holding hands in the fire and knowing we will not let each other fall. It is as much about dreaming as it is about doing, rooted in collective care that doesn’t flinch when things get hard.
Ecologically, liberation means falling back in love with the living world. It’s letting awe guide us and responsibility anchor us. It means seeing rivers as relatives, extinction as grief, and climate collapse as both a wound and a wake-up. It is protecting, preserving, and planting. It is fighting for the wild to stay wild and for the earth to breathe freely again, as kin.
This is not a metaphor. This is the work. And this vision, this ever-unfolding, rooted, shimmering vision, is what shapes every word I write, every life I honor, and every offering I bring. Grief, death, love, freedom, these are not separate things. They are portals. And I am here to walk with you through them.