Peace Tree Collective was created in friendship with the vision of community.
We’re three long-time friends who have seen each other through great loss, heartache, and change. We came together to support our collective vision where everybody can be witnessed in their grief while being held in creative community.
We founded Peace Tree Collective not as “experts” on grief, but as artists who have experienced first-hand how our own unique creative processes have created more space to heal and thrive. As facilitators, we funnel our individual artistic practices, trainings, interests into our shared passion of creating spaces where grieving people can express, heal, and not have to be alone.
We have big visions for the future of Peace Tree Collective. Right now, the behind-the-scenes is three friends with a whole lot of heart.
Meet Us
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Meet Us ∞
Maile Crowder, Founder & Executive Director
Maile is a dancer and choreographer with over ten years of teaching experience. She is currently embarking on furthering her education in mental health and group therapy by pursuing a M.S. in Counseling at George Fox University.
How do you grieve? Listening to music, the birds and the wind. Remembering his hands, his walk and his laugh. Touching the moss of an oak tree, placing a rock at his cross, and letting my tears cleanse me.
What brings you joy? Dancing in the sunshine, creating and sharing homemade meals, watching the sun set and the stars shine surrounded by the people (and animals) I love.
Kat Freya, Co-Founder and Creative Director
Kat is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, dancer, and facilitator who believes dance is a ritual for memory, embodiment is resistance to the capitalist matrix, and poetry is a reunion with the robust mundanity of existence.
How do you grieve? Singing the lost songs of my childhood. Sitting down in front of a blank page and bleeding. Remembering my grandmother’s grandmothers who I will never know but know in the flowers, the trees, the sky, and the river. In child's pose.
What brings you joy? Reunions, resurrections, revitalizations, revisions. Long walks in the woods no matter the weather. Being in my body. Poetry. Sharing movement, art, and dinner with others.
Alicia Ralls, Co-Founder and Programs Director
Alicia is a multidisciplinary artist, focusing on ceramics and music. She believes that artistic expression is a crucial factor in healing and creating space to feel the depths of the human experience.
How do you grieve? Allowing myself to swim in the waves of grief. I bathe in my grief. It’s baptismal. Also crying, dancing, singing, writing, walking, and any movement that allows my physical body to begin the process of moving through grief, instead of against it.
What brings you joy? Laughing about the curiosities of life, philosophical conversations with friends while making dinner together, listening to new music, lying in the grass, and experiencing true moments of presence in groups of people.
Our Collaborators
Cory Standridge | The Meaning of February, cinematography
Brady Heinsoo | The Meaning of February, original score
… and you? Are you an artist/creative/human/animal/mineral interested in delving into grief, joy, and art with us? We really want to hear from you. Drop us a line at peacetreecollective@gmail.com
Our Partners
Zeke’s Farm
Speak Out PDX
Packman Farms
… and you? Are you a small business, yoga studio, dance center, or somebody else interested in joining forces to make something incredible? We wanna be friends. Drop us a line at peacetreecollective@gmail.com.