Heart Journeys, Inc nonprofit was founded to ensure grief care remains accessible and rooted in collective wellbeing.
When grief is tended in community, everyone benefits: families, neighborhoods, and the next 7 generations. This work helps strengthen connection, resilience, and our collective capacity to care for one another through life’s hardest moments. We place people over profit, community over urgency, and care over outcomes.
A sister project of Corazón Counseling Service, Heart Journeys sustains the work that has been developed and cultivated by its founder, Emilia Ortega-Jara, LCSW and the community based healing arts practitioners that have been part of this community over the last 10 years.
Mission
Heart Journeys emotional mutual aid supports people through major life transitions, from birth to aging to death.
Guided by trained “Corazón Tenders” we practice grief care through ancestral care practices, collective learning, resource sharing, and community rooted rites of passage. Holding sacred space together, honoring our lived experience, and strengthening connections towards collective wellbeing.
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Grief as Sacred Transformation
- We tend to grief across the life cycles.
- We honor it as a doorway.
- We allow it to move through us as it needs .
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Community Care + Emotional Mutual Aid
- We don’t do grief alone.
- We practice care as something we share, not something we “receive.”
- We build support networks where people are held, fed, witnessed, and not abandoned.
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Liberation-Centered, Culture-Rooted Healing
- We center community empowerment through grief informed care.
- We honor cultural lineages, lived experience, and intergenerational wisdom.
- We resist healing models that ignore systems of oppression.
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Ancestral + Embodied Practices
- We integrate spirit, body, and mind.
- We hold ancestral technologies at the center of our care:
nature-based practices, herbalism, danza, drumming, heart songs, limpias, sobadas/rebozo, and ceremony.
A network of grief support for communities across the Inland Empire and Southern California.
Corazon Grief Tenders
Capacity & Skill Building of Community Heart Tenders in Grief-Informed Care
Grief Support Groups
Monthly Bilingual (Spanish/English) Grief Support groups facilitated for youth, adults & seniors. In-person & virtual.
Apprentices
We cultivate an apprenticeship-based network of grief tenders, grounded in community-rooted learning, shared practices and ongoing mentorship.
Grief Retreats
Our yearly retreats invite grievers into relationship with the healing presence of nature through shared ritual, reflection, and rest.
Community Training
Culturally Centered Grief informed education and facilitation of grief rituals to community organizations.
Rites of Passage
Ceremonial initiations that honor transitions and loss through community witnessing and holding.
Your Support Matters
When you make a donation to Heart Journeys, you are directly supporting community based grief care. Your gift helps ensure that grief is met with informed care, compassion, and cultural humility.
Every contribution large or small, helps build a network of community grief tenders.
Sustaining members are an integral part of our growth as a new community-based nonprofit.
Join the Circle of Care, become a sustaining member.
Your monthly support helps ensure that grief is met with presence and compassion, month after month.
Choose an amount that feels sustainable, care grows over time.
What your gift makes possible:
$10/month
Helps sustains our grief tending support circles (Tecito Con Grief)
$25/month
Supports ongoing training for grief tenders.
$50/month
Helps sustain our Grief Informed Care Education Project and community grief rituals
$80/month
Supports our Spring and Fall holistic grief tending care clinic.
$100/month
Ensures scholarships for our annual Nature-based Restorative Grief Retreat to make it accessible.
Monthly sustaining members receive:
Belonging in our Circle of Care
A seasonal grief practice ritual, offered as a gift
Ongoing gratitude for helping this work take root
Board of Directors
Emilia Ortega-Jara, LCSW
Dr. Jennie Luna
Elizabeth Mendez, LCSW
September 28, 1956 - December 10, 2021
Heart Journey’s is dedicated to the memory of my Ama
Maria De Jesus, whose passing inspired a deep commitment to grief care. What began as personal loss became a purpose: to ensure no one feels alone in their grief and that every story of loss is met with heartfelt presence and compassion. My mother's legacy and spirit live on through the ancestral care practices we offer fellow grievers.
-Emilia Ortega-Jara, LCSW Founder and Board President