Anna Selena Cho, PsyD, LMFT, ATR

Clinical Director

 

“The ocean provides me an essential connection to the earth and helps repair repeatedly my own mental health, wherein I channel and resource learning concepts to those I have the privilege to help.” he is clinically trained as a surf therapy provider, and pursues her academic teaching methods in private practice and community mental health.

 

Dr. Cho is an adjunct professor at California Lutheran University teaching Group Dynamics and Cultural Diversity and is passionate in the cultural, spiritual, and transformational concepts surrounding mental health, and accessibility of resources for communities in lack of support. She focuses on children families and individuals to help pursue their integration and alignment towards self development towards full potential and capacity.

Her training and professional development has guided her towards utilizing resources from Nature-based and Creative modalities to ensure easily learned and grasped concepts for individuals and clinicians, an essential factor upon the pandemic’s prolonged universal stress.

 

She has designed Art Therapy programs for intensive outpatient programs including Roots Through Recovery (Long Beach, CA) and Community West (for teens and young adults) and has spoken on the topic of Creativity and Healing to clinical sites including the UCLA Social Work Caucus and Santa Monica Family Services. Her diverse history of training including diagnostic evaluations for children at Reiss Davis Child Study Center and adults at PCH Treatment Center, and Expressive Arts practice inform her work in and around the ocean to better serve her clients integrate their lives into knowing.

 

Anna is a proud single mother of a 13-year old grom and believes that parallel process of new learning is essential for attunement and connection, achieving her black belt in Taekwondo together with her son. She has shadowed his surf career and learned alongside him to heal and grow together with Mother Ocean for the past decade; she can be found most mornings surfing to prepare and enrich her life.

Stacy McCrory MA, LMFT, 

Clinical Consultant 

Mike McCrory 

Regional Directors

Santa Barbara, CA

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Partners in love, work and play, Mike & Stacy McCrory are co-founders of TwoCan Retreats, Regional Directors for the Waves of Grief Collective™, and they enjoy hosting Second Sunday Community Drop-in Sessions in Santa Barbara, CA. Stacy is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, also serving as Clinical Consultant to the Collective. Stacy has been in private practice in Santa Barbara for nearly 20 years, specializing in grief and trauma, assisting individuals, couples and families with repairing their relationships and navigating major life transitions. 

 

Mike & Stacy endured the tragic loss of their oldest son in 2016, and have made meaning in hosting and facilitating healing experiences focused on learning to ride the waves of grief, love and loss, and choosing to engage in a life worth living. These programs seek to re-imagine how we navigate grief and loss – how making space for grief in our lives frees us up to experience more joy – enriching not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us. 

 

Mike has spent much of his career in the hospitality industry, so in addition to making sure everyone is safe and well fed, Mike’s special skill is taking care of people and remembering all the little details that matter. He and Stacy are firm believers in the power of community and interconnectedness. They promote the healing power of compassion, and acts of loving kindness, believing that grace, gratitude and genuine respect can in fact make the world a kinder and more peaceful place.

 

Together, they’ve raised four beautiful kids in and around the ocean. They adore their friends and family, love to travel, play outdoors and meet new people. They especially love Costa Rica and can’t wait to share it with you!

Kelsey Hails

Tacoma, WA

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Nature held me when no one else did, grounds me in a way that nothing else can, and soothes and sustains me over and over again. I am a therapist in Washington state who grew up with the gift of the wild at my fingertips and I am passionate about helping others be held by and hold the gifts of healing nature can bring us.  My own journey with grief is one that often left me feeling alone and isolated and because of that it has developed a desire within me to help others know they are never alone in their grief.  I am passionate about helping others find the gifts of community and nature that can hold them when the dark night of grief wraps around their souls.  Through dealing with the grief of my own chronic illness I have come to believe that our bodies hold immense wisdom.  They can tell us stories that invite us to freedom, goodness, play, and healing.  We live in a highly individualistic culture that is disconnected from our bodies and nature and has often lost the value of knowing how to come together and be with those who are hurting.  With Waves of Grief I am drawn to helping create that beautiful intersection, a place where community, nature, and the wisdom of our bodies join together to create a space that is more than what we are alone.  We need one another, we need the gifts of nature, and we need the wisdom that our bodies bring.  

Jasmine Montoya

Solana Beach, CA

 

Jasmine is a Life Alchemist. She is a spiritual space holder & guide who walks beside and empowers souls on their path to self-actualization, self-love, and inner peace. Attuned as a Reiki Master, Sound Healer, and Shaman, Jasmine has spent over a decade on her own healing journey breaking generational trauma and now guides others on their unique healing journey. She loves to utilize the healing powers of Mother Ocean to further deepen the connection between mind, body, and soul.

Stephanie Best MA, AMFT

Ocean Shores, WA

 

I lived through my greatest fear; the death of my oldest son at the age of ten to Leukemia. 

Through the navigation of grief, I have come out with a deeper love, an unshakeable faith, a greater awareness of self and a sense of peace.

Spending time in nature connecting with the ocean has been my centerpoint. The ocean truly has the ability to heal.

I also have a strong belief that we have within us the tools we need to live the life we want, we have within us the strength to heal. 

Connecting with other individuals in the space of community is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves on our healing journey.

It is a sacred and humbling experience for me to walk alongside with others on their grief journey. 

www.liveitforfun.com

Dr. Amelia Rachel Hokule'a Borofsky 

Kailua, Hawaiʻi 

 

Aloha, my name is Amelia and I'm a solo mom of two ocean-loving girls. 

I grew up in Hawai'i and the Cook Islands. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and surf therapist. 

I'm also a founding member of Surfing Moms (@joinsurfingmoms) and run surf therapy workshops through @bluemindsurftherapy.  I am joining the Waves of Grief Collective because I have lost many loved ones this year, especially my closest mama friend and co-parent Nicole Jung. 

In Hawai'i, paddle-outs in canoes or on surfboards with flowers is a practice popularized by the Waikiki Beach Boys and many Native Hawaiians. 

It is an honour to host on these Kanaka Maoli shores and to celebrate the young parents leaving behind bereaved children.  

Sarah Joan Carr (she/her/hers), MSW, LICSWA

Ocean Shores, WA

 

I am a musician, therapist, and surfer. Surfing & being in the ocean is where I feel most alive and at home in my body. I am passionate about mental health, community, and healing in nature. I am drawn to Waves of Grief as I believe deep healing and reconnection occurs when we commune with each other and the earth. I look forward to surfing the ocean waves & the waves of life together! 

J’aime Morrison, Ph.D.

Santa Monica, CA
 

JJ is a theatre director, choreographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She is
a Professor of Movement at California State University, Northridge where she teaches dance,
movement and somatic theory, and stages multi-disciplinary experimental productions. She holds
a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and was a
Faculty Fulbright Scholar in Movement to Portugal. J’aime has taught Master Classes in Dance
and Movement in Lisbon, Shanghai, Dublin, Belfast, London, Los Angeles and New York City.
With Mourning Surf, she turns her attention to grief and the body, specifically how grief is
expressed physically and how movement is an essential part of the grieving and healing process.
For the international organizations Hope for Widows and Camp Widow, J’aime developed a
series of expressive movement workshops offered via Zoom throughout the pandemic and she
continues to build on this work by offering movement for grief workshops through Yoga Soup
and PALMA Colectiva in Santa Barbara, Move Sanctuary in Ojai and Santa Monica Yoga in
Santa Monica. She has facilitated grief movement on retreats with Waves of Grief and TwoCan
Retreats as well as through UCLA’s Arts and Healing Initiative and Reimagine, as well as
private coaching sessions. She has been interviewed for the Podcast, “Grief is a Sneaky Bitch”
and for the publication Seven Ponds. Her writing has been featured in Khôra and Sea Maven
online magazines. After losing her beloved husband Jim to brain cancer in 2015, J’aime began
working on a short film titled Upwell, which composes a visual intersection of body movements
to translate her experience with grieving, illustrating the role of surfing and dance in her journey.
The film has been an Official Selection at numerous film festivals and won “Best Experimental
Film” from The Santa Barbara International Fine Art Film Festival and the California
International Shorts Film Festival. Upwell received the Audience Award from the Cannes
International Short Film Festival.
Mourning Surf offers a safe space to explore the ebb and flow of grief through healing movement
both in and out of the water. With the understanding that grief is a process and that the journey of
mourning is not linear or finite, I engage movement as a meditation, as a mode of transformation
and as a creative force for healing. I have termed what I teach in these workshops, “expressive
movement,” because I am interested in what and how the body communicates, expresses and
transforms grief creatively from the inside out. As choreographer Marth Graham wrote, “The
body never lies,” and until we attend to the physical impact of grief, we cannot fully embrace
and embody the future. Grief really does come in waves, and we must learn to ride them - join us
as we learn to dance the waves...
In fall 2023 Dr. Morrison will be in residence at the University of Oviedo, Spain as a Visiting
Scholar. She will participate in HEAL: Health, Environment, Arts and Literature, an
interdisciplinary research group working in the fields of Medical and Environmental Humanities.
The group examines the literary, artistic, cultural and historical representations of health and
illness, both human and nonhuman, and are particularly interested in the strong connections
between ill human bodies and the degradation and destruction of natural habitats and blue
spaces.

Will Gartman

Wrightsville Beach, NC

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MyPeak Foundation

Will Gartman

Wrightsville Beach, NC

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MyPeak Foundation