 It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Di Holmes in Denver on June 20 at the age of 53.Di, a certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach, lived in Denver, her home town, with her husband, Conner. The two were sweethearts at Denver’s Thomas Jefferson High School. Their three children are Brian, Teanna, and MiDian (another child, Matthew, is deceased), and they have 10 grandchildren. Di (pronounced “Dee” and short for Drollii) first became aware of Shadow Work® in 2007 when she attended the Underground Railroad Training Odyssey offered by the Inward Journey African American Council. She soon began Shadow Work® trainings in group facilitation and coaching. In January 2010, Di was a guest at the annual group facilitators’ recertification gathering, where she helped lead an experiential workshop on racial diversity. She became certified in January 2012 along with her training and facilitation partner and close friend Terrence “Big T” Hughes, also of Denver. Her counseling practice, Harambee Family Service Consultants, specialized in domestic violence and sexual assault counseling, family leadership and child advocacy.
She was also a volunteer child advocate with Denver CASA and a community supporter of Montbello/Green Valley Ranch. For three years she was Denver site coordinator with Family Leadership Training Institute, a public-private partnership that works with local communities to provide knowledge, skills and tools for civic engagement. Di died surrounded by her family, of complications following a three-year battle with breast cancer. She will be missed.
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Di was active in the Denver community, as a volunteer with the Denver Police Academy for 13 years, helping to train police recruits by role-playing real-life scenarios. She was National Chair of the African American Domestic Peace Project, an initiative of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community of the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work, her alma mater. As she wrote on her blog, the AADPP was an “opportunity to work closely to establish what we can accomplish as a tribe to address our issues of domestic violence.”This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in July 2013. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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