About Me

In 2012, my beloved husband Mitch died of carbon monoxide poisoning in our cabin in Northern California, and at 30 years old, I found myself a widow with our two year old daughter Ava, and six weeks pregnant with our second daughter, Amelie. Death was suddenly real to me in a way I had never experienced. Grief flooded my heart, and the realization of life’s impermanence made me acutely aware of what was important to me, heightened my spiritual awareness, and fueled my desire for a deeper, more meaningful life. Death as painful as it was, became my greatest teacher about how to live better.

Within two months following my husband’s death, I found the strength and focus to complete my Master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology, a mind, body, spirit approach to healing, which provided me with not only the tools to navigate my own grief, but also the foundation for the work and services I would eventually offer to others. During this time, I also followed my intuition and moved back to Costa Rica with my daughter and my pregnant belly. Costa Rica was a country Mitch and I had moved to after College where I had been an elementary school teacher, and where we had a tight-knit community of support who also grieved the loss of Mitch. I enrolled my daughter in my friend’s Montessori preschool, and spent that year processing my grief through writing, meditation, singing, prayer, long walks on the beach, yoga, many tears, and being held by my friends, and my community. I slowly began to teach meditation, yoga, and journaling workshops.

Later that year, I home birthed my second daughter, Amelie in the quiet of the night in the jungles of Costa Rica with my midwife. I spent the next year juggling the demands of being a grieving mother to two young children, and just before Amelie’s first birthday, returned to Southern California to receive the support of my family. I spent the next three years creating yoga, meditation, and writing workshops, online courses, offering private coaching and holistic guidance sessions, blogging, and publishing two children’s books on bereavement. I helped my daughters process their grief in various ways at their respective developmental stages, and dreamed up what my next steps in life would be.

After a series of road trips that spanned the course of three years, I found our next spot on the globe that would foster more healing, growth, and adventure. In 2017, my daughters and I moved to the San Juan islands, off the coast of Washington State. The girls thrived on our island home and we were welcomed into the community. I taught the Social and Emotional Learning curriculum at their elementary school and worked as a sexual abuse and domestic violence prevention educator for a local non-profit organization. I continued on my healing journey, and then in 2018 on a Christmas holiday to Southern California to visit family, I was introduced to Dave, the man who would become my husband. We fell head over feet after our first date, and by the end of the Christmas holiday, he’d booked a trip to visit me on the island! We spent the next year and a half in a long distance relationship dreaming up what it would be like to be together full time and join families.

In 2020, me and the girls moved to Southern California with Dave and his two children until we made the even bigger move to Pennsylvania as a family of six, where we were married, and the journey of family blending began! There have been many challenges and many joys in blending our families, and at times the learning curve has been steep, but I am proud of all of the time and energy Dave and I have put into raising our children these past 5 years! Dave adopted my two daughters, and they are now blessed with a father in heaven and a father on Earth. And Dave’s children have embraced me and the girls with loving arms. Grief still arises in various ways, and we continue to offer support as the girls create meaning and understanding of their early loss. In the midst of our blending, I also returned to graduate school to get my Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology in 2021 and spent the next three years working as both an outpatient therapist and a school based therapist for a counseling center.

And in 2024, I made the choice to return to my entrepreneurial work as teacher, writer,  life coach, holistic practitioner, and yoga teacher, and to embrace the mind, body, spirit approach to healing that had served me so well, and to offer this in service of others. You can read more about my journey on my blog, and you can learn more about the services I offer by checking out my ‘work with me’ page. It would be my honor to accompany you on this part of your journey, wherever that may be, and please remember, after the darkness, comes light.

Much Love!

Alexandria Romero Gareis

~Education and Professional Credentials~

• Master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology with a Specialization in Spiritual Psychology from Sofia University in Palo Alto, California. Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Sofia University in Palo Alto, California. Bachelor’s degree in Psychology & Communication from San Diego State University in San Diego, California. 200 hour Yoga Teacher Certification in Prajna Yoga.

• Professional experience as a Life Coach, Elementary School Teacher, Mindfulness Teacher, Sexual Abuse and Domestic Violence Prevention Educator, Social and Emotional Learning Teacher, Grief Counselor, Grief Workshop and Retreat Facilitator, and Therapist. Alexandria is the published author of two children’s books on the topic of bereavement called, “Where Is My Daddy?” and “The Way She Knows Her Daddy.”