Are you a therapist, artist, healer, or wellness practitioner looking to bring creativity into your work? Do you dream of weaving healing with art, ritual, movement, or advocacy — and finding collaborators to bring it to life?
The Creative Healers Hub is a monthly, in-person gathering space for healers, creatives and activists who are actively pursuing the infusion of creativity and healing in their professional work.
It is a place to gather, create collaborations, share feedback and resource each other as we imagine nontraditional ways to tend to the wounds of the world.
August’s Creative Healers Hub gathering will feature special guest facilitator Elizabeth Coplan, founder of Grief Dialogues. With award-winning accolades, Elizabeth pioneers a movement to use theatre as a way to open the conversation around grief, death and dying. During this workshop, each participant will be given guidance and space to create their own grief monologue, writing not about a specific part of grief, but to that grief, as a way to help move through it.
Participants will receive a prep guide in advance with reflective prompts. Light refreshments will be provided as well as yoga mats/blankets/floor pillows. Please bring whatever would support you in this writing workshop: a notebook or laptop for writing, headphones, pillow/blanket/mat, etc.
Exchange
The Creative Healers Hub is a free community offering from Return to the Table, a collaboration between Melissa Deeken & Soodeh Montazeri, and Shelterwood Collective.
Logistics
We will gather on the 3rd Sunday of each month in person at The Studio at Shelterwood Collective for light facilitation, organic networking, open dialogue, and light refreshments. RSVP required so we can set a place for you.
Elizabeth Coplan
Founder & Executive Director of Grief Dialogues
Elizabeth Coplan is a marketing and public relations veteran with more than 40 years of experience in corporate communications, professional services marketing, and strategic consulting. After leadership roles with Fortune 500 companies, Deloitte, and Davis Wright Tremaine, she founded a successful consulting practice serving clients including Merrill Lynch, Laird Norton Wealth Management, and the University of Washington School of Law. Following personal loss, Elizabeth turned to playwriting and founded Grief Dialogues, a nonprofit using theater to spark conversations about dying, death, and grief. She is an award-winning playwright, filmmaker, producer, essayist, and podcast co-host whose work has been recognized nationally.
Dr. Soodeh Montazeri, Ph.D.
Soodeh is a design researcher, behavioral scientist, and founder of the Nün ‘O Namak Collective, a community-driven food project that harnesses the transformative power of food to foster belonging and well-being. With professional experience spanning academia, startups, Fortune 10 companies, and NGOs, she brings expertise in human behavior, emotion, and connection. Her own journey—transforming a complicated childhood relationship with food into a source of healing and creativity— guides her work today. Through workshops and communal gatherings, she creates spaces where food becomes a medium for comfort, storytelling, and care, supporting individuals and communities as they navigate life’s most tender experiences.
Melissa Deeken
Melissa Deeken is a social worker turned psychotherapist, grief tender, and dancer devoted to weaving healing through the layers of body, mind, and soul. She brings a deep respect for the wisdom of the body and the power of creativity in the healing process. In the margins of her life she finds renewal in the water, on the dance floor and through acts of solidarity or protest for human rights. With great care and imagination, she is co-creating this gathering space for those who feel siloed in their work and wish to explore how wellness, art, and activism can intersect to create collective medicine for the world.