My story has always been rooted in sonder: the realization that everyone around me is living a life as vivid, complex, and unique as my own. Our individual lived experiences can separate us, but they can also bring us together through calm presence, compassion, kinship, and love. From this posture, I am deeply committed to holding space for all humans to be their truest selves, to show up fully in relationship with one another, and to experience meaning, value, and belonging.

As a young adult, my unconscious method for sorting significant childhood trauma was to fix the problems I believed were in my control. My career in social services and nonprofit management took off rapidly. I became a program manager and mentor for ‘high-risk’ youth in my early 20s. I joined the Peace Corps and focused on connecting rural, impoverished youth in Namibia with basic welfare services, and then I became the CEO of an economic development organization serving families in Tanzania. I was a certified foster care parent. I worked as a head coach for Seth Godin’s altMBA international education program. I founded two national social ventures, one that battled workforce pay inequities and another to help teenagers embrace their intersectional identities and stop code-switching.

And yet, the most difficult and most meaningful work of my life began to unfold by surprise when I turned 30. My mom, who was also my best friend and co-pilot in life, a fiercely brilliant activist and unconditional lover of life and people, was diagnosed with cognitive impairment at age 56, and then dementia, and then young onset Alzheimer’s. While my personal and professional thresholds were expanding, hers began shrinking. I took care of my mom for eight years and eventually became certified with Providence ElderPlace to be her full-time caregiver, a role I held with good humor, angst, love, and pain. I was 38 when my beloved parent died in my arms at home. Her movement through this threshold wasn’t easy or peaceful, but we were together, always.

I’m not convinced that ‘getting past’ immeasurable loss is a reasonable goal, but I do believe we can learn to walk alongside our grief. We can allow ourselves to be changed by these extraordinary experiences. For me, this looked like shifting my career focus to pediatric and adult end-of-life care. I began studying with Upaya Zen Center, and I volunteered with Anchor Health and George Mark Children’s House. I then graduated from a residency program at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, during which I served as a full-time spiritual care provider in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for one year. I regularly collaborated with palliative care doctors, nurses, social workers, and music and pet therapists to offer counseling, advocacy, and compassion for hundreds of adults, children, and their families. 

Throughout my life, one common thread has always proven true: my capacity to connect in meaningful ways with others, especially those who bring intersectional identities and different cultural perspectives to the table, equals my capacity to catalyze change internally and externally. My understanding of love, equity, inclusion, and belonging developed from complex, textured, lived experiences. These stories created the canvas for a personally crafted mythology that centers mystical awe, interconnection, intraconnection, and love. We belong to each other because we are each other. Together is better.

—

The cosmic moniker Breq Lightner was gifted by a pediatric patient many moons ago. Breq is also known by their birth name Rebecca ‘Beck’ Channer. Breq lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and uses they/them pronouns in honor of their expansive and multitudinous internal universe.

• 25+ years convening diverse stakeholders to design and coordinate social service programs that advance racial, economic, and psychosocial justice in North America and Africa.

• 10+ years combined as a pediatric and adult hospice caregiver, grief counselor, humanist celebrant, and patient advocate specializing in complex illnesses and dementia.

Relevant Education:

• Anchor Health Hospice Volunteer Training Program

• UCSF Clinical Pastoral Education Program, Level I & Level II

• Upaya Zen Center G.R.A.C.E./Being With Dying Clinician Training

• Seth Godin’s altMBA International Leadership Program

• Providence ElderPlace Home Caregiver Training and Certification

• Undergraduate study in English, Black American history, and theatre arts at Rutgers University and Grinnell College

Accolades & Achievements

• Ida M. Cannon Award for Competence, presented annually by the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Pediatric Social Work Department

• Heart of Service Award, presented annually by the UCSF Department of Spiritual Care

• PICU Employee of the Month, presented by the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital

• Featured Speaker, Belonging at Work Global Summit

• Featured Guest, In Trust Podcast “Breaking the Code of Belonging”

Areas of Focus:

• Complex grief counseling for individuals, families, and organizations

• End-of-life planning and caregiving for kids and adults who are dying at home or in a hospital

• Memorial and ‘celebration of life’ facilitation

• Patient advocacy and goals of care planning for kids and adults with complex illnesses

• Curious accompaniment: how can I support you in having the time of your life before you die?