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@beceremonial

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Reimagining rituals ~ from birth to death
✨App: Design your own rituals
✨Learn: Virtual Workshops
✨Book: Ritual Without Religion
💫 @seekingceremony

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Three ways to gather with us in 2027 🤍

Each retreat considers a different threshold: the turn of the year, the dreaming of what’s next, and the quiet art of growing older.

Swipe through to find the one that’s calling you. ➡️

❄️ Wintering ~ A New Year Retreat
January 15–17 · Xenia Retreat Centre, Bowen Island

A weekend to rest and reflect before the new year asks anything of you. We’ll share sea swims and sauna, nourishing food, and a single word to carry into the year ahead. We're more than half full, so book soon!

✨ Visioning ~ A Day of Ritual & Story
January 31 · North Vancouver

While Wintering helps you release the old year, Visioning helps you dream the new one. This is a one-day retreat, with storytelling and vision boarding as a small circle of women, followed by an optional sauna. 4 spots remain.

🌿 The Art of Aging ~ A Ritual Retreat
April 30–May 2 · Loon Lake, Maple Ridge

A circle of women spanning decades, gathered to mark the thresholds of aging that so often go unmarked. We’ll bring ritual and story, with rest by the lake. It’s an hour from Vancouver, with no ferry needed. With special guest @chloe_._hunter

Our retreats are small and intimate, so we invite you to apply rather than book. Link in bio, or send me a message to find the right fit for you.

#BeCeremonial #RitualRetreat #WomensRetreat #BowenIsland #ConsciousAging #NewYearRitual #Wintering #loonlakelodge by @beceremonial

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3 days ago

Many of us think end-of-life planning happens in a lawyer’s office, often in the middle of a crisis. But we know there's a better way to do this heart-led work.

Your will, power of attorney and advance directive matter ~ but there’s a piece of planning most people skip: the emotional side.

What do the people you love need to know about what matters most to you?

On Sunday, November 22, I’m joining my friend and colleague Christa Ovenell of @deathsapprentice.ca for Head & Heart: End of Life Planning. It’s four virtual hours of learning and reflection, held within a community of care.

Christa brings clarity to the practical side, exploring the systems, choices and opportunities to create meaning at the end of life. I'll invite you to consider the emotional side, including the rituals, senses and stories. Together, we’ll help you create a road map for the people you love.

This is for you if:

🕯 you’ve started thinking about this but don’t know what to do next

🕯 you know there are gaps in your plans

🕯 a diagnosis or a death has made this feel urgent

🕯 you’ve meant to do this for years and need one contained day to begin

You’ll never be asked to share more than you want to. You’ll leave with practical tools, curated resources and clear next steps.

“I thought I was ‘prepared’ with my will, POA and healthcare directive. I realized in this workshop there is SO much more to do.” ~ Past participant

📅 Sun, Nov 22 · 10am–2pm PCT (BC's new time zone)
💻 Online via Zoom
💛 $125 · space is limited

Register at www.beceremonial.com/workshops.

#endoflifeplanning #advancecareplanning #legacywork #endoflifedoula #deathliteracy #ritual #beceremonial by @beceremonial

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10 days ago

Hello and welcome!

If you've stumbled into our world of ritual and ceremony, I want to take a moment to introduce myself.

I'm Megan, a humanist celebrant and end-of-life doula living and working in North Vancouver, BC on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people. I'm also the co-founder of @seekingceremony if you're looking for a more personal take on my own ceremonial practice.

Who am I?

I am curious and empathic, brave and uncertain. I question everything and lead from the heart. I thrive in circles where we are all learning from and with each other. I am drawn to holding space for difficult conversations and bringing light to dark places, especially grief and loss.

I started Be Ceremonial with my husband during the pandemic as a place to inspire and empower people with ritual tools and techniques that are innate to us all.

We are naturally ceremonial - we've simply forgotten or lost connection to how we can craft meaningful and personal rituals for ourselves and for each other.

Sign up for my newsletter to join upcoming gatherings and read my new book coming out soon: Ritual Without Religion: A Humanist Guide to Creating Secular Ceremonies ✨ by @beceremonial

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2 years ago

Wintering ❄️
~ A New Year Retreat for Rest, Reflection & Renewal

January 15–17, 2027 · Xenia Retreat Centre, Bowen Island

I get to return to Xenia. 🤍

Over the years, I’ve held some of my most beautiful retreats on this land, and coming back feels like a true homecoming to a place steeped in ceremony.

This January, instead of rushing into the new year with big visions, we’re going to winter. For one weekend we’ll go deeper into the season itself, into the themes, symbols and metaphors winter holds, and let them invite us to slow down.

Together we’ll:

❄️ Practise radical rest
❄️ Reflect on the year gone by
❄️ Take an optional wild ocean swim, followed by a warm sauna
❄️ Move through a Kundalini yoga class
❄️ Connect with ourselves, with each other, and with the land that holds us

The wonderful @paprikamarika will be cooking for us all weekend, nourishing us with delicious vegetarian food made from local ingredients. 🌿

The intuitive @kimlockhartphotography will be with us too, capturing you as you step into this new year. Each participant will be gifted a portrait. 📷

On our final day, we’ll each invite one word to guide us into the year ahead. It becomes something to hold onto, a quiet compass that steers you toward what you truly need, carrying the memory and belonging of a weekend spent with women drawn to winter’s energy.

Spaces are limited and filling quickly.

Link in bio to register, or send me a message with any questions.

#Wintering #BeCeremonial #BowenIsland #WinterRetreat #WomensRetreat by @beceremonial

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20 days ago

Yesterday we gathered for week three of The Elements of Ritual, my six-week ceremonial training, with participants joining from all over the world.

🔥This week was fire. We explored its symbolism, its themes, its metaphors and mythology, and the surprising places it shows up in our lives.

I invited everyone to think beyond the flame. Fire isn’t only the candle or the hearth. It’s the heat that rises in your body as you move and sweat. It’s the sun on your face. It’s warmth, transformation, illumination, wherever we find it.

And then, yesterday morning, I looked out into our backyard and there it was. Our katsura tree, ablaze in reds, oranges and golds, holding every colour of the flame from our morning ritual. What a gift it is to see fire everywhere!

Want to explore the elements with me? ✨

🔥 The Elements of Ritual returns in May 2027: six weeks of ceremonial training through earth, air, fire, water and ether.

🌿 Or walk the full year with me and @alyssarosehealing in A Year of Seasonal Ceremony. We’ll gather eight times through 2027 to honour each seasonal turning and the in-between moments, moving together around the wheel of the year.

Details and registration in bio.

Where is fire showing up for you right now? 🔥

#BeCeremonial #ElementsOfRitual #FireElement #RitualWithoutReligion #SecularRitual by @beceremonial

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20 days ago

~ A Ceremony Story ~

Aimee missed most of her husband Tom's first celebration of life.

It was held at his favourite country bar: generous, loud, full of love, and it went on until 3 am. It honoured the Tom his friends knew. But an hour in, Aimee could feel in her body that he was being cremated at that very moment, and she had to leave.

Months later, she came to me wanting a do-over. She wanted a gathering on his birthday that could hold her grief and share the whole person she knew.

We designed it together virtually ~ an afternoon under a tent on her farm, 128 guests, at the height of deer season.

🧢 Everyone brought a baseball cap and a story that represented one of four personas: Quirky Tom, Prankster Tom, Outrageous Tom or Generous Tom. Each kind of story got its own cap gesture, and a Generous Tom story meant every cap came off and was held to the chest.

🪵 Small circles of storytellers instead of one intimidating microphone

🔥 A piece of kindling for every guest to take home, with one instruction: have a fire for Tom

One of Tom's friends turned to his wife and said, "This is how it should be done."

Aimee shares: "Where drinks had previously filled the hole of grief, it was honesty, authenticity and support that became the needed medicine."

Aimee's full story, in her own words, is on the blog. Link in bio.

#celebrationoflife #griefritual #ceremonycoaching #memorialideas #beceremonial #ritualwithoutreligion #grief #celebrant by @beceremonial

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24 days ago

**Last call: only a few spots left for Saturday 🕯️**

Grief doesn’t follow a straight line. It moves through us in a long arc, through anniversaries and empty chairs, quiet mornings and the moments no one else sees.

This Saturday, I’m teaching **Rituals for Grief & Loss: Building Your Ceremonial Muscles**, a virtual masterclass in support of the End of Life Doula Association of Canada @endoflifedoulaassociation . Part of the proceeds go back to this nonprofit, which is leading the way for end-of-life doulas across the country.

Together we’ll:
✨ Explore the different types of grief
✨ Learn how to mark and bring ritual into the long arc of grief
✨ Name the silent thresholds and invisible moments that often go unacknowledged
✨ Find ways to hold these moments for ourselves and for those we care for

This session is for end-of-life doulas, grief counsellors, care providers, and anyone holding space for people who are grieving. It’s also for anyone who wants to better support themselves as they walk with their own grief.

We’ll connect with ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us.

🗓 Saturday, September 26
⏰ 10am–1pm PT on Zoom
🔗 Registration link in bio

We’re almost full. I’d love for you to join us. 🤍

#BeCeremonial #GriefRitual #EndOfLifeDoula #EOLDAC #GriefSupport by @beceremonial

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25 days ago

Some thresholds are crossed in silence.

The due date that comes and goes. The first time someone asks, "How many kids do you have?" The day you close the nursery door, or open it again. The anniversary no one else remembers.

For parents grieving a pregnancy, an infant, a child, or the loss of fertility, many of the most important moments of grief happen out of sight. There's no built-in ceremony for them that we can draw from, so sometimes we have to invent our own rituals.

This Thursday, I'm honoured to lead "Silent Thresholds" as part of the @seatoskyhospice Grieving Parents Support Group in Squamish. Together we'll explore simple, meaningful rituals to acknowledge these invisible moments and give them the witnessing they deserve.

I'm so grateful to Sea to Sky Hospice Society for inviting me to share ritual knowledge and ceremonial wisdom with this circle of bereaved parents, and for creating a space where this kind of grief can be spoken out loud. Holding space like this is some of the most tender work I get to do. 🤍

If you're carrying a quiet loss of your own, I hope you know it matters, even if no one else saw it. Please reach out if I can support you in your grieving journey.

#BeCeremonial #SilentThresholds #SeaToSkyHospice #GrievingParents #BereavedParents #PregnancyLoss #InfantLoss #GriefRitual #RitualWithoutReligion #SecularRitual #GriefSupport by @beceremonial

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a month ago

**Session two of Elements of Ritual: Water 💧**

Today in our six-week ceremonial training, we explored the beautiful and complicated element of water.

We opened and closed our gathering by choosing a vessel with meaning — a teacup, a mug, something that held a connection to a person, a memory, a place, an emotion. We poured water into it, added citrus to wake up taste (so often tied to water), and drank as we set our intention together.

By the end, we drank from that same vessel again — carrying the water element back in new, curious ways. Building our ritual muscles, one week at a time.

I chose a teacup inherited from my grandmother, who died the year I was born. When I drink from it, I feel a sense of belonging, of history, of ancestry — a relationship with a grandmother I never got to know in real life, but who I get to bring into my ritual practice anyway.

How do you connect with the element of water? 🌊

#waterelement #ritualwater #ritualdesign #ceremonydesign #ceremonialtraining by @beceremonial

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a month ago

🍂 Today we gathered for the Fall Equinox — the first of our seasonal circles in A Year of Seasonal Ceremony, the year-long cohort I co-host with @alyssarosehealing

We came together to sit with the symbols, themes, and language of this threshold season — and to co-create rituals that help us step across it.

Each of us was invited to bring an object or piece of nature that held both summer’s energy and fall’s arrival. I brought a branch from my Katsura tree.

I’ve watched this tree move through its whole yearly cycle — buds unfurling into full green summer leaves, then turning through yellow, red, and orange as autumn takes hold, until every leaf lets go for winter. And then, without fail, new buds begin again.

Holding that branch today, I could feel both things at once: the warmth of summer I’m still carrying, and the intentions of fall I’m ready to step into. It helped me mark this threshold in my own life — naming what I want to carry forward, and letting go of what I’m ready to leave behind.

✨ We’ve opened spots for A Year of Seasonal Ceremony 2027 — a year spent guiding a community through the Wheel of the Year at all eight turning points. We gather virtually, eight times across the year, as a community of care — with ritual and ceremony at the very heart of it.

If you’ve been feeling the pull toward more intentional rhythm in your year, this is an invitation. 🌗

(Link in bio to join us.) by @beceremonial

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a month ago

Join Megan Sheldon, co-founder of @beceremonial, for this unique opportunity to consider the role of ritual and ceremony at the end of life.

During this 3-hour interactive workshop, Megan will introduce you to the essential elements of ceremony and ritual design. She will also explore the visible and invisible moments that surround the end of life, and the many opportunities to weave ceremony into those moments.

Together you will learn how to craft and convene an end-of-life ceremony, while also considering your own relationship with grief and loss rituals.

Register through the link in our bio to join!

#HumanistCelebrant #Ceremony by @beceremonial

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a month ago

Finally sitting down for my afternoon ritual ~ my teacup chosen to match the wonkiness of jet lag and the first week of school 🤪

In this little sliver of time, it is such a gift to crack open The Little Book of Loss Rituals by @stephing_thru and feel a soul connection with her as she writes on the importance of ritual during times of loss and grief.

There are so many parallels between her journey and mine ~ it’s been like a homecoming to connect with each other across North America and find these moments we’ve each been living, in our own way.

I love supporting other authors as they bring their books and stories into the world. This one is a gift to everyone who finds it. 📖✨ by @beceremonial

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a month ago