We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tasha Fierce a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tasha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In my own life, I’ve noticed that the times when I’m at a crossroads are fertile times. So much beneficial growth can occur during transition if we act with intention. I also see the Earth and the human societies that we’ve built as being at a crossroads. I think a lot of us want to be more in alignment with an ecological mindset, with justice and equity, and we don’t know how. So, I started Liberated Transitions to offer support and guidance to people and organizations navigating these transformative times.

When the pandemic hit, it started me down the path of grief work as well. I realized that our responses to the crisis were really being shaped by unprocessed grief. I underwent death doula training and incorporated the idea of living into our desired legacy into my work. And I began offering grief support groups for disabled and neurodivergent people. I now center the experience of grief in places where it’s not exactly expected, like I hold trainings for organizations on how to work through grief that is collective and that shows up in collective. Things like grief around climate change and mass shootings here in the United States.

Tasha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into this business through my mental health education work, creating and facilitating workshops on radical mental health starting in 2014. Then I began working with a disability justice collective that did workshops for nonprofits and academic institutions. I’ve done that with them for about the last 3 years. My background is in sociology – I got my degree from UCLA right before the pandemic hit – so doing DEIB work is right in my wheelhouse.

The doula work, I got into because I wanted to be a therapist but I didn’t have the energy to go to grad school. And I’m an anti-capitalist abolitionist, so I didn’t want to work within the mental health enterprise, I didn’t want to be a mandated reporter. I have probably twenty years experience doing informal peer support and spiritual work, so I thought, might as well turn this into something I can do for a living.

My offerings are diverse. I meet with folks individually and support them through whatever transition they’re going through – might be a lost job or a cancer diagnosis, really anything that has them moving into a new way of understanding themselves. I do targeted coaching around specific issues, too, like finding a productive workstyle or restructuring a relationship. I also work with organizations in transition, particularly organizations that are trying to become more aligned with values of justice and equity. I help folks create a roadmap to their desired legacy and walk with them as they implement it. I help them make meaning of the path they’ve tread so far.

Besides that, I offer trainings on topics like white supremacy culture, disability justice, neurodiversity, radical mental health, and grief support. I hold grief support groups for disabled and neurodivergent people, and for queer femmes.

I’m also a reiki practitioner, so sometimes I do energy healing sessions, and very occasionally, I read tarot for folks.

It’s been a lot of work finding this niche for myself, and sometimes I wonder at the eclecticism of it all. But, I think with my array of experience, this is about as narrow a scope as I’m going to get!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I first graduated from college, in 2019, I tried to find work and couldn’t. That led me to the idea of starting my own business, which I did in late 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and the ideas I had for expansion – which at that time involved doing reiki healing in my house – weren’t going to work anymore. My business crashed, and I had to figure out how to pivot, which took a long time. I was so overwhelmed with the heaviness of unresolved grief, these spirits that left this realm in great pain and confusion. It took me a year or two to really get back to working on growing my business. I took more training during that time and learned a lot more about what I wanted this thing to be. By 2022 I had reorganized and was back on a path to success, and this year I added offerings for organizations. Now, my revenue is the highest its been.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Word of mouth, absolutely! People I’ve worked with who think my services are valuable have sent me far more clients than any advertising or social media presence. I have a tiny following on IG, but other than that, I’m pretty invisible online. I wouldn’t be able to survive if it wasn’t for my networks getting the word out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.liberatedtransitions.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liberatedtransitions
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liberatedtransitions
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liberated-transitions

Image Credits
Princess Amugo