Angela Schellenberg
At a Glance
Credentials & Collaborations
Named by National Geographic (2026) among the world's best grief retreats. Appeared on CBS Sunday Morning's Motherless Daughters segment with Hope Edelman. Teaches at the Omega Institute. Co-leads grief retreats with author Claire Bidwell Smith. Certified Mother Hunger® Facilitator, trained by Kelly McDaniel.
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Signature Conversation
Why We Grieve Animals Hardest: Attachment, Mother Loss, and What Horses Know
- Grief for a pet is often the purest grief we ever feel. The bond was uncomplicated, so the loss is too: no ambivalence, no guilt, just love with nowhere to go.
- For many of us, an animal was the first safe attachment. Consistent presence, touch, and attunement, with none of the conditions our earliest relationships carried.
- Animal loss is often the trapdoor into older grief: the mother we lost, the mother we never quite had, the goodbyes that stayed complicated.
- Horses take it further. As prey animals they read our nervous systems honestly, so the mask we perfected as children simply stops working, and what is underneath finally gets met.
- What this means practically: how to honor animal grief as real grief, and how to follow it to the losses it is pointing to.
Also Speaks On
- Grief is not a stage-based process. It is an attachment injury the body carries.
- The mother wound and mother loss for high-functioning women.
- Losses with no name: estrangement grief, ambiguous loss, the loss before the loss.
- Why grief keeps coming back, and what the nervous system is asking for when it does.
- Equine-assisted grief work: what it actually does, neurologically and relationally.
About Angela
Angela Schellenberg is a licensed grief and trauma therapist in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, and Malibu, specializing in mother loss, attachment, and trauma. Her own grief arrived long before her training did: she grew up wrapped in her mom's love and lost her young, and by 22 both of her parents were gone. That loss led her to attachment theory, nervous system work, a license, and a decade of sitting with women who stayed strong because life didn't stop.
Today her work spans a therapy and coaching practice, the Grief, Trauma & Your Mama podcast and community, and equine-assisted intensives and retreats at Shakti Ranch in Malibu, where a herd of horses helps grieving women reach what talk alone sometimes can't. "Grief isn't a problem to solve. It's a story that needs a witness."