October 17: The Beginning of Shamamama

There are dates that hold a story.

October 17 is one of those dates for me.

On October 17, 2026, I will launch Shamamama.org, a place for exploring death, grief, ritual, community, and the many ways we can care for one another through the thresholds of life and death.

October 17 is also my father's birthday.

My father, George Holsten, was my first experience with death. When I was just 18 months old, right before Christmas, he was brutally murdered during a robbery at the establishment where he worked as a night manager. I was deeply bonded to my father. I was the apple of his eye, and when he wasn't working, I was often with him.

I was far too young to understand what had happened, but I grew up inside the reverberations of his death. I watched my mother grieve, struggle with depression, and eventually turn to alcohol. As I grew older, I began to understand how much of her grief had never been given the space, support, ritual, or community it needed.

My mother's first experience with death had also come when she was very young. When she was about five, her little sister drowned. Two generations of women experienced profound loss as children, and neither of us had much language for what those losses meant or how to carry them.

We learned to keep going. We learned not to talk about it. We learned to be okay.

Only much later did I understand how deeply those experiences had shaped me and how the things we cannot speak about can continue to live through generations.

There is another part of my father's story that I hold with deep reverence. He very much wanted a child. I was a planned birth, and my parents even consulted a shaman about when to conceive because they wanted to intentionally have a spring baby. I was wanted. I was planned for. I was brought into this world with intention and love.

And then, before I was old enough to understand who my father was, I lost him.

For much of my life, I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know how to show up for myself, much less how to show up for others experiencing profound loss. But through my own journey, my death-care education, mentors, teachers, and the communities I have found along the way, something has begun to change.

I have learned that grief does not have to be carried alone. Death can be talked about. Ritual can give shape to what words cannot hold. Community can help us through what feels impossible. And in learning how to accompany others, I have slowly learned how to accompany myself.

That has become a profound part of my healing and a deepening of my purpose.

Shamamama grew from this long and complicated relationship with death, but it is not only about death. It is about life, grief, ritual, community, mystery, and the space between them. It is about creating gentler and more connected ways of accompanying one another through dying, death, loss, and becoming.

And so I am launching Shamamama on my father's birthday.

Not on the anniversary of his death, but on the day he was born.

For so much of my life, his story was centered around how he died. I want to honor something else now: the life he lived, the love that brought me into this world, and the intention behind my own arrival.

Perhaps one of the most meaningful things I can say to him now is simply:

Dad, I am here.

I am here because you wanted me here. I am here because you imagined a child. I am here because, for a brief and precious time, I was your little girl.

And I am still becoming.

Launching Shamamama is part of how I am honoring that life, that loss, and the calling that has emerged from both.

I don't believe we have to approach death with silence, isolation, or fear. I believe we can meet it with presence, tenderness, ritual, community, and love.

That is the journey I am beginning.

And I would love for you to be part of it.

Visit Shamamama.org to join the mailing list and become part of this growing circle. Follow the stories and field notes, explore the resources and rituals, share your own experiences, and help me build something that I hope will become a place of connection for people navigating death, grief, caregiving, and the mysteries of being human.

I don't want to build this alone.

I want to build it in relationship—with all of us who have loved, lost, grieved, cared for someone, faced mortality, or simply wondered if there might be a gentler way.

This is my offering.

This is my beginning.

And on October 17, on my father's birthday, I will open the door.

Shamamama

Death. Life. Grief. Ritual. The road between them.