• Soyeon, Korean-born and American-raised, daughter of Korean Immigrants, is a long-distance caregiver and considers herself a “caregriever”. Soyeon is a trained end-of-life doula and peer grief facilitator. She creates non-judgemental, supportive, and compassionate spaces for intergenerational immigrant families, their caregivers, and their grievers to address loss and grief. Soyeon’s commitment centers on raising awareness about Cultural Bereavement to nurture a deeper understanding and connection with ourselves, our families, and our communities.

    Soyeon trained as an end-of-life doula with the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine Program in 2020 in response to experiencing anticipatory grief for her aging immigrant parents and hoping to find resources to support her immigrant family’s journey.

    Through this process, she came to realize that grief is a natural, unique, wholistic reaction to loss, a phenomenon that we continually encounter throughout our lives. The prevailing culture around grief in the U.S. often embraces silence, denial, isolation, and this is even more so for marginalized communities such as immigrants, refugees, and asylees. It was clear that there existed an insufficiency and, at times, a complete absence of education, support, resources, spaces, or open conversations that considered cultural nuances, this led to the co-founding of MESO.

    Prior to launching MESO, Soyeon was with SFCASA (San Francisco Court Appointed Special Advocates) where she supervised & trained volunteers to serve as advocates and mentors to neglected children in foster care and work with the family court system. In addition, she trained with the Trauma Informed Systems (TIS) Training/Learning Community and San Francisco Safe Start Program to learn and work with trauma-informed practices across systems. Soyeon served as a volunteer with San Francisco Suicide Prevention.

  • Tida Beattie (she/her) is a Thai-American end-of-life doula, grief support facilitator, and immigrant advocate. She creates radical spaces for immigrant families, their caregivers and their grievers to receive support addressing care, loss, death and grief. Tida knows the innate power within any immigrant family - perseverance, boldness, courage, resilience - and empowers them to be seen and heard so they advocate unapologetically for their needs and their human right to live and die with dignity, comfort, safety, and compassion.

    Tida was a long distance caregiver for her parents, an under-resourced daughter as they died, and then, an overwhelmed human, beset with grief. Throughout, she was forced to contend with a racist, dehumanizing care system and a complete lack of culturally attuned resources to support the needs of her increasingly vulnerable immigrant family, creating conditions where invisibility, silence, ignorance, and isolation took over. With the hard-earned knowledge of how such inequities impact immigrants into their deaths and the grief of the next generation, Tida creates critically needed spaces where immigrant caregivers and their family can approach and manage difficult conversations and circumstances.

    Tida is a co-founder of MESO. MESO’s goal is to provide information, to increase capacity, and to offer personalized support based on the pillars of curiosity, community, and compassion. MESO’s signature facilitation is “Getting Started: How To Talk To Your Immigrant Parents About Death”, which strengthens intergenerational communication to address complex needs of immigrant families and prepare in advance of an unforeseen crisis moment. Additionally, MESO facilitates community-focused grief support circles such as “Grief: The Loss of Your Immigrant Parent” as well as providing individualized private grief support.

    Tida has co-produced events such as “Reclaim Your Self, Your Culture through Loss and Grief”, “Multicultural Immigrant Experiences with End Of Life”, “Go Back To Your Country”, “Grief Through An Immigrant Lens”, and “NextGen Grief.” She has collaborated with Reimagine, UC Berkeley, Option B, End of Life Choices NY, Compassion and Choices, and Service Space. In her endeavors, Tida turns to poetry, art, music, writing, food, movement, and nature to reconnect to self, community, and humanity.

    Tida trained as an end-of-life doula through Suzanne O'Briens Doulagivers and with Denise Love's Life Options. She is a resident with Alica Forneret’s Starlight Business Development Residency. Tida is a hospice volunteer with Zen Caregiving Project in San Francisco.