Book Julie.
A keynote, a workshop, or a conversation, on grief literacy and the end of life. Watch a few minutes of her first. That is the decision, and everything below it is detail.
Julie reads booking inquiries herself. Replies come from her, not an assistant, and she may take a few days. She is often with families.
The Sharon Fitzmaurice Podcast · with Sharon Fitzmaurice
Watch the whole conversationSeven conversations,
every one about loss.
We are given love at birth, and that sacred breath at death.
Julie Wright Halbert, on the Brave Widow Show.
Film
What's Your Story?
Living and Dying Awake
with Jaime Marco & Stan Brown
A three-way call, so she is one of three faces.
Audio
Brave Widow Show
BW 191, Face Death, Grief & Love Without Fear
with Emily Tanner
The show publishes over its cover art, so this one is her voice.
Audio
Every Widow Thing
Ep. 65, Standing in the Ashes
with Whitney & Holly
The show publishes over its cover art, so this one is her voice.
Three more, on the feeds that publish them
2025 · University of Maryland College Park
Women's Development Conference
A self-discovery session through the Enneagram, empowering women toward meaningful change in their personal and professional lives, with greater intention and purpose.
She does not give a grief talk. She gives the one the room needs.
Julie speaks from an attorney’s three decades of argument and a death doula’s training, about the years after her husband Jim died three weeks into a diagnosis nobody told her was terminal.
Every one of these adapts to the room. Keynote, half-day workshop, fireside conversation, panel, staff training, or a podcast recording. Julie shapes the talk to the audience in front of her rather than delivering the same forty minutes twice.
Eight talks, written for two very different rooms.
A ballroom of nurses and a leadership offsite do not want the same forty minutes, so they are not offered the same one.
For grief, hospice, and spiritual rooms
From Ashes to Ascension
How to transform grief into power.
Living and Dying Awake
Integrating lived experience into healing and presence.
The Living and Dying Awake Framework
Descension, witnessing, and rising. A practice for grief.
Sacred Endings and New Beginnings
Navigating loss, letting go, and stepping into soul-aligned purpose.
Eternal Love and Embodied Purpose
The legacy of connection beyond endings.
For corporate and leadership audiences
Living Consciously at Work
Heart-led leadership after adversity.
The Power of Ease vs. Dis-Ease
The nervous system, burnout, and the cost of unmetabolized stress.
The Living and Dying Awake Framework
Empathy, awareness, and reinvestment in teams.
The bio a program committee can print.
Julie practiced national education law for the Council of the Great City Schools for almost three decades, serving as Legislative Counsel on cases that reached the Supreme Court of the United States. Her work in that earlier career was covered by The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The New York Times.
In 2018 her husband Jim was diagnosed with cancer. Three weeks later he was gone. He was 51. They were never told the time would be that short. In the years that followed Julie became a certified death doula, an end-of-life educator, and a transformational soul coach. She founded Rising Phoenix LIFE and began teaching what she had been forced to learn: that the way we meet death shapes the way we live.
She is the author of Live and Die Awake, a grief-literacy book that re-frames how we meet grief, loss, and death. Woven with guided meditations and journaling reflections, it walks the reader into a healing arc of their own.
Julie lives in Sarasota, Florida. She is the mother of two sons, Jacob and William.
Credentials
- Certified Death Doula
- Going with Grace End of Life Training (Alua Arthur).
- Certified Transformational Soul Coach
- Sedona Soul Adventures.
- Hospice Volunteer
- Empath Tidewell Hospice, Sarasota, Florida.
- Legislative Counsel
- Council of the Great City Schools, 1994 to 2022.
- J.D. with honors
- University of Miami School of Law. B.A. with honors, University of Maryland. Admitted to the Federal Bar, the U.S. Supreme Court Bar, and the Florida Bar.
Press
[object Object] · [object Object] · [object Object]
These outlets covered Julie's earlier work as Legislative Counsel at the Council of the Great City Schools.
No form with twelve fields in it.
Write to Julie and say as much of this as you know. Anything you leave out is a question in her reply, not a reason she cannot answer.
Julie is based in Sarasota, Florida, and speaks in person and virtually. Live and Die Awake publishes on November 4, 2026.
- Who is hosting
- The organization, the conference, the hospice, the congregation.
- When
- A date, or the season you are working within. Early is better.
- The room
- How many people, and who they are. A ballroom of nurses is not a circle of eight.
- The format
- Keynote, workshop, panel, fireside, staff training, or a recording.
- What it needs to do
- What you want the audience carrying when they walk back out.
If they should all have the book
Copies for a hospice, a congregation, a care team, or a staff, with Julie alongside if you want her there.
Comfort your groupMore of her, and more of the story
The whole of how a legislative counsel of three decades became a death doula, and what grief reshaped on the way.
Meet Julie