My hair used to be down past my shoulder, just reaching below my collar bone. I cut it myself because it was too long and this was the outcome.

In 2024 alone, there were 5 deaths in my family and friend circle. This includes my uncle, baby Alani's grandfather, who is Laotian and Buddhist.

This is a Buddhist tradition. When someone dies and they have services at the temple, males (if they choose) will become novice monks and females can choose to become a nun. In doing so this helps the spirit during the transition after the physical death.

For me, I had to shave my head, my eye brows, and my beard.

My sister, Stacy, was vibrant, talented, and full of life (and she was also the mischievous one who snuck out of the house to be with her friends).

She had received a scholarship to attend Regis College but during the summer after she graduated high school she was an instructor for the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA)

She was dedicated to teaching and inspiring other cheerleaders whether they were in the sport strengthening their skills or even those just starting.

One camp, I was voluntold to join her on a six-hour drive to Maine so she did not have to drive alone. As she taught at the camp I waited at the hotel until she returned, except for the last day where I helped the cheerleading team with tumbling/flips.

On our way home, just 45 minutes from returning the rental car, we both fell asleep. That was the day everything changed. I was just a teenager, and our youngest sister, Taylor, was only two years old, when Stacy died at 18.

Unknowingly, I carried the weight of that loss in ways I couldn’t fully talk about. Grief isn’t just emotional—it settles in your body, a truth I’ve come to understand deeply in my work as a social worker and grief educator.

I sought healing in different ways: I attended grief conferences, facilitated workshops, and even created a grief group specifically for siblings who are LGBTQIA+.

But nothing quite reached the depths of my pain the way somatic breathwork did.

Somatic breathwork wasn’t what I expected. I thought I was learning it to guide others, to help them navigate their own journeys with grief, trauma, and pain. But instead, my breath became my teacher.

It helped me connect with the grief that had been stuck inside me for over two decades—grief I wasn’t even aware was still lingering. Through breathwork, I found a release that wasn’t possible through words or traditional therapy alone.

Experts like Dr. Alan Wolfelt and David Kessler remind us that grief is a process we carry, not something we "get over." Breathwork taught me that healing doesn’t mean forgetting; it means finding ways to move forward while honoring what we’ve lost.

Today, I share my story and this transformative practice with others—not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve walked the road of loss and know the power of healing through breath.

Whether or not you’ve experienced the death of a loved one, I believe we all carry unspoken grief—whether it’s from loss, unmet dreams, or life’s unexpected challenges.

Somatic breathwork gave me the space to reconnect with myself, and I hope it can offer the same for you.