Tending to Grief & Reducing Harm

Tending to Grief & Reducing Harm

Webinar hosted by NASTAD in partnership with Reframe Health and Justice. 

Webinar participants will touch on grief in relation to the War on Drugs and intersecting marginalized identities, how organizations can embed grief tending within their programs and operations, and frameworks for centering joy. This panel is moderated by Justice Rivera and features the work of Jessica Peñaranda, Kristin Doneski, and Yamila Rollan Escalona, three amazing practitioners working at the intersection of harm reduction and healing justice. Participants will also have the opportunity to participate in live model grief tending practices which can be incorporated into personal and organizational care. 

 

Please register here.

 

Panelist Bios:

 

Jessica Peñaranda (she/her) is a trauma-informed community care worker, anti-violence and harm reduction educator, and participatory researcher with over 17 years of experience alongside communities impacted by the War on Drugs and systemic violence. She has led restorative justice–based alternatives to incarceration at Common Justice, directed movement-building and advocacy at Sex Workers Project, and co-founded Decrim NY to advance decriminalization and dignity for people in the sex trades. Rooted in healing justice and transformative justice, she facilitates grief mutual aid peer support spaces and conflict transformation at the intersection of relational skill-building. Her passion is supporting people to be in better relationship with one another so our movements are healthy, accountable, and sustainable for liberation.

 

Kristin Doneski (she/her) is a lifelong student of liberatory harm reduction who has had the honor of learning from, working alongside of and being part of communities of people who use drugs in the UK, Massachusetts, San Francisco, Maine and Colorado. She is a devoted grief tender and believes deeply in the transformative power and activism in co-creating grief circles, collective altars and offering Grief Education within communities of people who use drugs, people experiencing incarceration and direct care workers for the pursuit of individual and collective healing justice. She has studied Grief Tending through the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and is currently in her last year of an MA program in Mindfulness Based Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University.

 

Yamila Rollan Escalona founded Yaya Por Vida, a southeast‑Florida nonprofit that uses art‑based healing and harm‑reduction services to support people affected by substance‑use disorder. Inspired by her sister Yaritza “Yaya” Rollan, who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2019, the organization offers creative workshops focused on restorative justice, peer‑led art based healing session, and twice a week care‑kit drives that have saved hundreds of lives. A first‑generation Cuban‑American of Syrian decent, Yamila also advocates for drug‑policy reform under a decriminalization model, emphasizing compassion over punishment.