Julie Martella

Julie Martella is an author, speaker, and resilience practitioner whose work lives at the intersection of grief, identity, and forced change.
Widowed unexpectedly, Julie understands how loss can collapse a future overnight and leave people navigating a world that no longer feels familiar. Her work with the widowed community centers on grief literacy, language, and the practical choices that help women move beyond survival and begin living again—on their own terms, in their own time.
In recent years, Julie’s work has expanded into rural water and land stewardship, where families and communities are facing profound uncertainty tied to groundwater regulation, environmental stress, and generational transition. While the setting is different, the human experience is not. The same questions show up everywhere: What happens when the life you planned is no longer available? How do you adapt without losing yourself?
Julie brings a grief-literate, trauma-informed approach to these spaces, helping people navigate disruption, reclaim agency, and stay rooted in meaning during periods of change they did not choose.
She is the author of I Wish There Was Something I Could Do: A Practical Guide to Supporting Grievers and The Weight of Our Things: Navigating Possessions and Emotions After the Loss of Your Loved One, and the creator of the Permission to Live framework, which invites people to release timelines, soften self-judgment, and re-enter life with clarity and courage.
Julie’s work is known for being plainspoken, deeply human, and grounded in lived experience. She does not offer quick fixes or inspirational slogans. She offers language, steadiness, and permission: for grief, for change, and for the life that still wants to be lived.