Lichen

Before & After.Life

Caring. Deathing. Dying.

Loss takes us wild places

For latest events, news and musings.

FEATURED EVENTS

WINTER WORKSHOP SERIES:

Vessels for Life and Death

Weekend Retreats

The quality of our lives depends on how well we do this work.

Hello, welcome.

This is a place to explore and the human work of caring, dying and grieving.

Before & After Life offers practical supports, education and facilitation for people, families, and groups (communities, orgs and workplaces).

Strengthening skills and capacities in caring, deathing and grieving mitigates complex grief, and offers an antidote to loneliness and isolation.


With quality supports and literacy, people can continue to live well and thrive - connected families, vibrant communities, and highly productive workplaces.


Term courses, workshops, community meets and retreats.


Education • Facilitation • End of Life / Death Care • Grief Tending • Home Death Care • Advocate • Compassionate Community Care • Grief Ritual Leadership • Home Hospice Volunteer • Strategic and Creative Collaborations ...


Online/In-Person // Bundjalung Country, NSW

All genders, backgrounds, cultural perspectives and faith traditions are welcome.

This work is available to all, if you are a pensioner,

student, low income earner contact me for details.

Honest work.

Grieving

Caring

Dying

Round Grey Rock

Hard things-

it’s in our

nature

CARING IS CONNECTION // Accompanying people and families through life-limiting illness, sudden death, dying and bereavement. Any age, stage, phase.


DEATH IS LIFE // Enter into a relationship

with death and dying that is informed, prepared, makes possible. Move from fear and unknowing towards insight, choice and sovereignty.


GRIEF IS LOVE // Honour safely and bravely that which has passed from you. Dismantle dominant western cultural norms to explore alternative narratives and experiences. Grief can be generative.

Re/claiming vitality

through connection and loss

The vulnerability and fragility of being human is paradoxically, our strength. Our threads and bonds can be re/claimed to fortify us in

this time, and the times we are on

the precipice of living into.


What is most difficult - that which is hard, stuck and static - can be liberated.

In cultivating our will for noticing, feeling, and expressing, we can move with what is hard.


Let us not swallow, let us instead throw open our throats, unlock the locked, loosen the hard and come into right relationship with the dark.

We may discover that instead of being thrown to the beasts or into a pit, we meet with a portal from which we can travel the expanse of our wholeness.

Lichen

Spaces

and places

to be human

and other than human

UPCOMING EVENTS


Vessels for life and death

Caring, dying and grieving - A hands-on making journey with fibre.

SAT, JUNE 22

CARING // Women Holding Things - Random Weave


SAT, JULY 6

DYING // I’m Not Dead Yet - Coffin Weaving


SAT JULY 20

GRIEVING // A Vessel for Grief - Coiling


THREE WORKSHOPS IN WINTER


Introduction to Francis Weller’s Five Gates fo Grief

Explore the places grief resides and tools to support tending.

We possess the profound capacity to metabolise sorrow into something medicinal for our soul, and the soul of the community. The skill of grieving well enables us to become currentto live in the present moment and be available to the electricity of life.


Francis Weller


Five Gates of Grief 7 week program

Commences June 6, 2024


7 weeks | 6 June - 18 July

Thurs evenings 6-8pm

Brunswick Heads CWA Hall

A re/imagining of living with loss and love.

This is the community work of belonging, kinning, tending; a mingling of the human, the mystery, ritual poetry, journalling, story: Join me through the wintery months to re/imagine loss and grief through the lens of Francis Weller's Five Gates.



Spider Web on Black Background

Uncle Magpie said

when we pull

one thread

everything moves.

Being

together

Emma Beattie

I am part of a wave of people and movements, dedicated to social justice and change. Reimagining and co-creating a spaciousness and reframe on how we care, live, die and grieve, together.


Hello, welcome. I offer practical supports, education and facilitation for people, families and groups - workplaces, orgs and communities.

The more challenging parts of being human are often left untended. It feels vital - necessary and life-giving - to create spaces and places for our humanity to be expressed.


Caring, dying and grieving can be isolating and lonely - it can be different.

Trained. Supervised. Mentored.

This is the work of being human. Grief is often pathologised yet grief is older than we are. Caring, deathing and grieving is the work of communities. I am well supported and supervised. I have colleagues and mentors, am under Gestalt Psychotherapy supervision and apply myself to ongoing training.

Please note what is offered is not psychotherapy.

2020 Death Walking and Celebrancy

Natural DeathCare Centre: Zenith Virago


2020 Death Dying & Grief Culture

Griffith Uni, (High Distinction)


2020 Last Aid. Caring for the Dying at Home

Byron College, Amitayus Home Hospice Service


2020 - Current Hospice Volunteer

Amitayus Home Hospice Service


2022-2023 Support Worker & EOL Companion

NDIS


2023 Member of Palliative Care NSW

2023 Foundation Workshop

Preparing the Way


2024 Member of NDAN

Natural Death Advocacy Network


Advaya - Thrive Member


2023 Statement of Attainment, CHCAGE005

Dementia Australia

Provide support to people living with dementia


2023-2024 Entering the Healing Ground: Francis Weller

Grief Ritual Leadership Training


2024 Ancestral Medicine, Daniel Foor

“Thank you for your love, kindness, wisdom and care in supporting me through Dad’s transition. It all really meant a lot to me that you cared so much. Thank you.” GD

Drift Wood

This work is real, raw and transformative.

It is a truthful meeting place for all of our parts, It is a portal not a pit and a homecoming

to belonging.


EMMA BEATTIE

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I pay wholehearted respects to Bundjalung Elders past, present and emerging;

I acknowledge their continuing connection to, and custodianship of - land, water, sky and Culture. In your company, I live in reciprocity with the lands on which I walk and work, swim and star wonder.

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