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Seeking Ceremony 💛🖤

@seekingceremony

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👋 I’m Megan, humanist celebrant & end of life doula 🇨🇦
💛 I create grief rituals & lifecycle ceremonies
✨ I dreamed up @beceremonial

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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

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The story of Jane Doe and the Cornell 7 hits a nerve in every woman. A mother raising a son, I wonder how all these boys, perpetrators or bystanders, veered off their path, dissociated from human compassion.

When social media, marketing and our patriarchal culture inundates us with toxic messages, how can I teach my child so that he listens to me over an algorithm?

I feel my anger and fear rise when I speak to him about his YouTube feed and video games. This energy fuels my need to control his intake or shut down the WiFi. It turns him off from listening to me. Instead we enter a power struggle.

Conscious Parenting has taught me tools for connection that opens his ears and his heart so that I still have influence in his teen years. He is still willing to listen to me, but I must be connected to myself first.

Need help integrating Conscious Communication through Connection?
Join me at The Vessel in Vancouver Sat Nov 7th 2-4pm for a Conscious Parenting workshop that will get your kids listening!
Registration and details on Events tab at www.FindingConsciousMotherhood.com

Or Eventbrite link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/navigating-screen-battles-with-conscious-communication-tickets-2002104598750?aff=oddtdtcreator

#consciousparenting #parentingsupport #breakthecycle #arleentyndallcoaching #findingconsciousmotherhood

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While everyone was sleeping, we were waking up. We met the cold water with all the things women have been told to carry quietly.

We wrote them down on plates and then smashed the shit out them. We shared our stories and fears and cried. We all have one. Every single woman you know in your life or have ever met, has one.

Then we walked into the ocean, let the cold steal our breath, and howled at the sky while the sun came up over the mountains.

Because maybe rage isn’t something women need to soften, swallow, explain away or make more palatable.

Maybe rage is information.
Maybe it is grief with its eyes open.
Maybe it is the moment we realise that what we were told was normal never actually served us.

And maybe the answer isn’t becoming harder, it’s becoming more clear.

Maybe it’s remembering how powerful women are when we gather. When we witness one another. When we share. When we stop apologising for taking up space. When we stop minimizing our experiences.

I don’t think we are powerless, I think we were sleeping and we’re collectively waking up and I am here for it.
My name is Jane Doe, too.
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#momstrife #grief #rage #rageswim womensupportwomen

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What happens when a group of celebrants from @natural_transitions_institute (formerly Celebrant Foundation & Institute) gather in person to celebrate my book #ritualwithoutreligion?

An evening of ritual, of course!

From opening the circle with sound, to sharing the threads that drew us to celebrancy, to blessing my book with words of inspiration, to closing with story yarn, the space was held with such care by the magical Abegael @lifethreadsceremonies

It was an evening of connection at the deepest level, and I'm so grateful for my celebrant community, including @catherine_chrysalisceremonies (my CFI teacher many moons ago), Paula @contemporary.ceremonies and new celebrant and friend @clairelovewilson <3

May we all find friends that celebrate the small stuff ❤️

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There’s more than one way to say goodbye.

Most people picture scattering cremated remains (aka “ashes”) into a body of water, or letting them fly into the wind, or keeping an urn on the mantel. But there’s another way that doesn’t get talked about as much: trenching.

A trenching ceremony involves digging a hole in the earth, choosing a spot that’s meaningful, placing the remains into the ground, covering them with soil, then marking the spot with flowers, maybe a letter or note, or a natural marker that honours the experience.

Today, I helped my dad release the remainder of his dear friend. We had an ocean scattering ceremony last weekend (see @seekingceremony for the full story) but there was a lot of cremated remains to deal with and he didn’t know what to do with them.

So I went into our forest, found a quiet spot away from people and growing vegetation, and dug a hole. I placed the remaining ashes inside, covered them with soil, and chose flowers from our garden: yellow roses for friendship, pink roses for love, white hydrangeas for peace, and rosemary for remembrance. The same flowers from our scattering ceremony.

It was simple and it was meaningful. Not holding on to the grief, but releasing of it ~ letting it move through us, the way grief needs to.

⬇️

What have you done with cremated remains? Where have you sent them, or laid them to rest? Let’s normalize these stories and inspire people with options!

Also ~ my dear friend @deathsapprentice.ca offers a free webinar on what to do with cremated remains if you want more ideas 💞

#trenchingceremony #crematedremains #ashes #ashscattering #griefritual

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I keep copies of my book in my car now 📚

Today I toured @loonlakelodge, scouting the space for a retreat I’m planning for next May (sign up for my newsletter to stay in the loop!)

The woman who tends the grounds walked me through the property for an hour, and somewhere along the way our conversation turned to grief ~ not only the grief from losing a loved one, but also the grief that doesn’t always have a name or a place to land.

When we said goodbye, I reached into my car and handed her a copy of Ritual Without Religion. She lit up with gratitude and gave me a giant hug!

Later that same visit, I met two people setting up for a retreat of their own this weekend. A short conversation, and I intuitively handed them a book too. They opened it on the spot and started flipping through the pages, grateful for the gift.

This is the part of having a book I didn’t fully expect ~ getting to hand someone something to hold onto, a collection of stories and rituals, passed from my hands to theirs, exactly when they need it.

What a gift this journey is 💝

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✨ Today I received a book blessing ✨

Not a book launch ~ a book blessing. There’s a difference.

A launch asks you to celebrate and sell. A blessing asks you to be with all of it. The joy and the fear. The grief and the comparison. The pride and the uncomfortableness.

My dear friend Nicole @gracefulfusionofbirthanddeath hosted a book blessing for me ~ something I have held for many authors. The gift of being convened by someone else, of arriving without having to lead, of being witnessed in my messiness.

💫 Release Ritual. I spoke three fears aloud ~ fears I’ve carried in my body for over a year ~ and placed my hand where I felt them most. Everyone was invited to place their hands there too. Later, I burned the words, returned the ash to the earth, and released their hold over me.

💫 Presence Ritual. I held my book ~ actually held it ~ and described it to our community the way you describe something you love. The colours, the smell, the weight of it. For so long it existed only on a screen, and now to finally feel it in my hands is incredible! Lisa @iilocreative made this book exactly what it needed to be, and I am so grateful ☺️

💫 Blessing Ritual. I tore the cover from a proof copy and asked my community to share their words with me ~ words I had given them or shown them, or words they thought I might need to be reminded of. I wrote every word down, cut them into pieces, and placed them in a jar.

🫙 My book blessing jar. When I wonder if any of this has mattered ~ I can shake the jar, pull out a word, and remember.

🧜‍♀️ I ended the day in the ocean, of course. I am so grateful to have been held today by so many elements of ritual and story. And by community, always.

💞

Ritual Without Religion is out now ~ link in bio.

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One of the things that I love about ritual is that you don’t even have to believe it for it to work. Doing it is your faith gesture

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A memorial that didn’t need one room to bring people together. 🌳
Further...
Permission to do ritual 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘺.
Further...
Permission to life and death and legacy your way, too.

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“Every ceremony is a beginning and an ending.

A birth ceremony is the ending of something, and it’s also the beginning.

And a death ceremony is the ending, but it’s also the beginning.” - @megansheldon

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Ritual is...
And maybe, to your surprise, is not...

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You’ve never missed your chance to make a ritual of honoring what matters most.

. . . .

What makes a moment a 𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 —and how can those rituals help us live, love, grieve and remember more fully?

The latest @grand.exit episode takes on these big, multi-part, ~existential q’s, as offered by @megansheldon — cultural mythologist, lifecycle celebrant and co-founder of the @beceremonial app (which you should definitely check out⚡).

This one totally lit us up. The conversation is full of creative, deeply personal examples of ritual in action.

Whether you’re welcoming a new baby, grieving a loss or simply marking the quiet in-between moments of your own living, you’ll come away with ideas and invitations to make your own life’s milestones more intentional, personal, and alive.

Hope you’ll give it a listen! Would love love love to know what you think. x

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