EverTree Hope Management
Hi, I’m Elisa.
My grief story began in childhood...
My story of hope came many years later.
Now, I use my experience to guide others through grief as a speaker, retreat leader, author, and grief educator.
Whatever brings you here, welcome.
Retreats & Speaking Events
Lived experience, storytelling, grief support, spiritual reflection, and over 3 decades as an educator come together as Dr. Everts speaks and leads retreats for your communities. Those who are facing grief, loss, illness, caregiving, mortality, and hard questions about hope will lean in and learn how to hold space for hope.
- Senior Living Communities
- Hospice & Grief Organizations
- Caregivers & Helping Professionals
- Universities & Conferences
- Faith Communities & Retreat Centers
Testimonials
“Your speech was magnificent. A perfect 10 out of 10. Beautifully structured, poignant, funny, insightful and ultimately, joyous. One of the finest I have seen in Toastmasters.”
— Rick Taylor, DTM, Past District 29 Director (2022-2023), Toastmasters International
“Elisa's retreat helped me to tap into griefs that I had buried, and work that I didn't know I still had to do, including the loss of my adoptive dad over 18 years ago and the fresher passing of my biological father, whom I only met as an adult. Whether your grief is the biggest thing in your life right now, or something you thought you had "moved past," Elisa's wisdom can help you navigate it.”
— Mike, Full Day Retreat Participant, St. Francis Springs
“Every word you said created a new idea or a new perspective in my mind about my future and what I should do with my life. Thank you for everything. You are a blessed gift.”
— Andre Ducros, Psychologist, Spain
Available Now
January 2026
I Should Wake Before I Die
When linguist and educator Elisa Everts was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer, doctors told her she had less than a year to live. (Spoiler alert: she’s still here—and mildly annoyed by expiration dates, platitudes, and people who whisper about cancer like it’s Voldemort.) Yet I Should Wake Before I Die isn’t merely a story of surviving illness—it’s a chronicle of resurrection: rising from the layered grief of losing a brother, a best friend, and nearly, herself.
With humor as rebellion and wonder as prayer, Everts invites readers into a luminous reckoning with loss and joy. Equal parts irreverent and reverent, this book is a love letter to life—proof that resurrection is real, sometimes quiet, sometimes ridiculous—and that even in the valley of shadows, healing, laughter and grace can still wake us up before we die.
Upcoming Book
Coming Soon
Gasping for Light
Nourishment for the Grieving Soul
When I was grieving, I fell into darkness. The darker it got, the more I found myself gasping for light.
Gasping for Light is a small book of reflections, poems, prayers, and mantras for the hungriest hours of grief. It does not promise that everything happens for a reason. It offers company, something to meditate on, and a place to rest.
Open it anywhere. Read one page. Sit with one poem. Borrow a prayer when you have no words of your own. Or begin at the beginning and travel from darkness toward light at whatever pace your grief allows. I chose not to start with brightness, because when you are in agony, too much of it is hard to stomach.
I almost didn't make it. This is the book I wish I had had back then: small enough to hold, and steady enough to keep you company in the dark.
If you are gasping for light, come and be fed.
Hope After Loss:
My Journey as Your Companion in Grief
My grief story began when I was four and my little brother Brian died. I didn’t understand how deeply that wound lived in me until much later. I carried it quietly for decades, buried beneath humor, achievement, faith, and sheer determination. I never imagined it would come roaring back.
Then my dear, dear friend Diane died.
Her death didn’t simply break my heart; it broke me. It ripped open the old wound I had spent my entire life trying to outrun. All the grief I had hidden away as a little girl came rushing to the surface, and I cried for her, for myself, for the child I had been, and for my little brother, for seven long years. Grief gutted me. I felt that I had fallen into a hole, and I didn’t know where the bottom was.
Therapy began to stitch me back together. Slowly. Miraculously. With help, I learned to stop running from my pain and finally turn toward it. That’s when hope began to return. Not as a feeling, but as a practice (actually a whole set of practices, which I share in [book title]). These were a lifeline.
By 2019, I was the happiest I had been since childhood. Whole in a way I had never known. Which is exactly when life handed me the trash sandwich of a stage IV cancer diagnosis.
And yet this time, I didn’t collapse. I did not fall back into my hole. Everything I had learned about grief, love, presence, and healing carried me. Surviving cancer changed me, but waking up to my own life changed me more.
Now I write, teach, lead retreats, celebrate my beautiful life, and sit with people in the valley of grief. My work is shaped by personal experience, trauma therapy, spiritual practice, and a conviction I learned the hard way: the valley of trouble can become a door of hope.
I am a Certified Grief Educator through David Kessler’s program. I’m also studying thanatology at Marian University and training in grief support, so I can be a steadier, more compassionate presence. What I offer is not a cure or a map. It’s story, accompaniment, and the lived truth that small resurrections are real. And they may lead to big ones.
If you are grieving, or loving someone who is, you are welcome here.
Let’s walk this rocky road together, awake.
Latest Field Notes
The Number of My Days
Dolly Day
