Alternative Services
Customised Rites for All Occasions
Naming Ceremonies
Mark the arrival of your precious child with a heartfelt naming ceremony that captures the joy, the hopes and the dreams you have for their future.
Create a personalised ceremony that celebrates the uniqueness of your child, strengthens family bonds and welcomes them into a loving and supportive community.
A support network is vitally important for healthy children. Many families are turning to “Guide Parents” as an alternative to Godparents and “naming ceremonies” as an alternative to traditional baptisms. The bonds created between friends and extended family are just as important today as they ever were. It’s a great honour to assist families with building the foundations for a support network. This strengthens the ties between people so that children grow up surrounded by a community of loving adults, both family and friends.
Celebrations of Life
It’s a great honour to assist with a memorial for someone after their departure. This plays a significant role for a community as they come to terms with the loss of a cherished friend and associate.
However, a memorial does not have to wait for a definitive ending. More and more people are choosing to celebrate their loved ones while they are still with us. Why wait for a funeral to gather a lifetime’s friends and family together?
The late, great Alan Watts was a strong advocate for celebrating our time here on earth. This can serve as a cause for great festivity or deep reflection in the company of friends and family. The mood and the manner of gathering to celebrate a lifetime can vary greatly but the motivation is always the same: to honour the presence of someone we love and wish to cherish.
Grief Mandalas
The process of grieving is a journey which inevitably twists and turns through many stages. Grief mandalas can help us to come to terms with the end of a chapter in our life. It may be the death of a loved one or even an unfulfilled dream which must be released. A grief mandala can help to bring closure and signal a new beginning. I can help individuals and groups find peace through this beautiful, symbolic process. These are often held in nature such as on a beach or in a forest. They can be held anywhere which seems right for the people concerned and the specific purpose at hand.
Life Stories
Since my own parents went into care, I have taken to visiting residential settings to deliver presentations about “Life Stories”. Sometimes I feature those I encounter during the course of my work. Sometimes this takes the form of an open interview with one of the residents. Other times I use celebrities like famous authors, musicians or inventors as a way of exploring the fascinating trajectories people take through life. The goal is to combine moving moments with humour to create a valuable highlight of the day for those in care.