Bridging Transitions offers emotional, spiritual, and practical support to those living with limited life expectancy, the dying, the people who love and care for them, those living with grief, and anyone interested in conscious living and dying. We serve individuals, families of origin and chosen, care circles, and communities of all makings.    

We hold dear that connection to ourselves, each other, community, Nature, and the Sacred, are vital for living and dying well, and that in the end…it is all about love.         

Bridging Transition facilitates and teaches workshops and educational retreats on many related topics, including certification courses for death doulas and death midwives.

We provide mentoring and community for those serving or wanting to serve at end-of-life. Our graduates are a growing heart-centered community of friends, Doulas, and Midwives with many continuing on the path to serve and be students at the bedside. 

Birgitta and Cheserae have known each other for over two decades. As mothers raising children on the same street, they developed a deep friendship and found a common interest in being with mystery. Bridging Transitions brings together their unique gifts and their shared passion for conscious living and conscious dying. 

Based in Los Angeles and Ojai respectively, Birgitta and Cheserae teach, consult, and serve families together while also providing a series of unique private offerings and individual end-of-life support.

Growing up in a small rural community in The Netherlands, Birgitta grew up witnessing the cycles of birth and death in nature and saw them mirrored in her community. Dying happened at home and death was not hidden from sight. Her maternal grandparents lived in the caretakers’ house in a beautiful tree-filled cemetery. Here, she discovered the gifts of stillness, beauty, ritual, the need for remembering, and the need for places of rest. 

There was an intimacy with death that made Birgitta keenly aware of life’s fragility and preciousness. Something that her father, a child holocaust survivor, and the stories of family loss always brought into sharp focus. Death was always right in the middle of life, reminding her that every day was a gift, not to be taken for granted, and to be lived fully. 

In her early thirties, married with 3 young children, Birgitta loved and cared for a very dear friend who lived for several years with Leukemia before dying. It was excruciatingly hard and exquisitely beautiful, filled with heartache and grace. The experience uncovered gifts in her that had laid dormant until then: she helped her friend obtain peace and clarity, and was an anchor for the family during this time.  

Over the following years, Birgitta found herself being called upon to listen, hold space, and bring love as medicine to people experiencing challenges with aging, illness, dying, death and grief.

She became a Certified Death Midwife with Sacred Crossings and credits its founder, mentor, and friend Olivia Bareham with much of her early work experience and with showing her how to serve humbly and with an open heart.

Birgitta believes the work found her. She feels supported and guided by her life experiences, sense of wonder, communion with Nature and the Sacred, love of creativity and ritual, wisdom traditions and mindful living. 

Birgitta’s ability to foster deep human connection, and orient us toward Love, inner wisdom, and the Sacred, make her a person to reach out to when navigating challenging life transitions. 

As part of a collective shift to re-imagine dying, death and grief, she is passionate about building bridges with community and health organizations, Hospice, care facilities, end-of-life, and death care providers.  Birgitta co-leads Death and Dying Collective Los Angeles, a peer collective for end of life and death care providers located in the greater Los Angeles area. 

When she is not working, you can find her with family and friends, drinking tea, creating nature altars, making jewelry, enjoying her garden, and learning something new. 

Birgitta is married to a devoted public school teacher; they are grateful parents to three kind (young) adults. She travels “home” to The Netherlands as often as she can. 

Her guiding question is “What would Love do?“

Life can be bewildering and having someone walk beside you and guide you is a blessing of immeasurable worth.