“You may not get to control life’s circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them. We all want to be the authors of our own stories, and in stories endings matter.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal
I work with people and communities to help them tell their stories in life and write their endings in death.
I’ve been helping people to tell their stories for over 20 years as a digital communications consultant. Like many end of life doulas, it was a close death that prompted me to train. My beloved mum died in 2021 and I felt both frustrated and lost that I didn’t have the right knowledge to be able to support her and her wishes.
I’ve been facilitating community grief tending rituals since 2019, after an ‘apprenticeship with sorrow’ that began when I attended my first grief ritual in 2014. So, it also felt like a natural progression to expand my work with people who are considering planning for their death and those that that are dying – to support people to ‘write their endings’. There is a saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and for me it’s the same at the other bookend of life.
I’ve been an end-of-life doula in training with EOLD UK since 2022. I run local Death Cafes with fellow doulas and Compassionate Cafes for my local hospice.
I’m based in St Albans, Hertfordshire and can travel around the home counties, south east and work with people online.
Read more about me and my offerings on my website: www.bigseeds.co.uk