Hi, I'm Angela Schellenberg.
Licensed Therapist & Grief Educator | Founder, Grief, Trauma & Your Mama
I lost my mother twice. The first time I was 11, when she was institutionalized and the mother I needed disappeared. At 16, my father was killed by gun violence. At 22, I lost my mother again to three consecutive strokes.
I know grief that is sudden and violent. I know grief that is slow and complicated and almost impossible to name. I know what it means to grieve someone who is still alive.
Before I became a therapist, I worked alongside orphanage leaders in Shanghai, Chiang Mai, and Saudi Arabia, helping children build identity and a sense of safety after loss. I watched how early relational rupture shapes a person across a lifetime. That shaped me too.
I'm a licensed trauma and grief therapist, Attachment-Focused EMDR specialist, certified Mother Hunger® Facilitator, and equine-assisted healing guide. I created the Healing with Horses Somatic Grief Retreat in Malibu, co-lead retreats with Hope Edelman and Claire Bidwell Smith, and have taught at the Omega Institute. I'm licensed in California, Washington, and Arizona.
This work is not about moving on. It's about understanding what you've been carrying, and how long you've been carrying it alone.
My Story
What Brought Me Here.
I lost my mother twice. The first time I was 11, when she was institutionalized and the mother I needed simply disappeared. At 16, my father was killed by gun violence. At 22, I lost my mother again to three consecutive strokes.
I know grief that is sudden and violent. I know grief that is slow and complicated and almost impossible to name. I know what it means to grieve someone who is still alive.
That history is part of what brought me to this work. Part of what keeps me in it.
Before I became a therapist, I spent years working internationally alongside orphanage leaders in Shanghai, Chiang Mai, and Saudi Arabia, helping children build identity and a sense of safety after loss. I watched how early relational rupture shapes a person across a lifetime. That shaped me too.
I'm a licensed trauma and grief therapist, Attachment-Focused EMDR specialist, certified Mother Hunger® Facilitator, and equine-assisted healing guide. I created the Healing with Horses Somatic Grief Retreat in Malibu and co-lead retreats with Hope Edelman and Claire Bidwell Smith. I have taught at the Omega Institute. I'm licensed in California, Washington, and Arizona.
I'm also writing my memoir and launching my podcast, both called Grief, Trauma & Your Mama.
This work is not about moving on. It's about understanding what you've been carrying, and how long you've been carrying it alone.
What We Work On
Areas of Focus
Trauma and Loss Recovery
Grief is not one thing. It can be sudden and violent, or slow and almost impossible to name. This work creates space to understand what you're carrying and where it lives in your body.
Mother Hunger® Therapy
When the mother you needed wasn't available, that absence shapes more than childhood. It shapes how you attach, how you trust, and how you understand your own needs. This work draws on Kelly McDaniel's Mother Hunger framework to make sense of that history.
Grief and Attachment Work
Loss reorganizes more than emotion. It reorganizes identity and the nervous system. This work explores the relational roots of grief and what it means to carry loss that was never properly held.
Equine Assisted Therapy
The nervous system responds to relationship. Horses offer a particular kind of presence that supports regulation in ways talk alone sometimes cannot. This modality is coming soon to the practice.
Ways to Work Together
Over a decade of professional experience in mental health care, specializing in trauma and loss.
More than two hundred women supported through grief, attachment wounds, and relational loss.
Licensed in California, Washington, and Arizona.
An Initial Conversation
If you've been sitting with something and want to understand whether working together makes sense, this is where to start.
A free 15-minute conversation. No pressure, no intake forms. Just a chance to get a sense of each other.