Be Ceremonial

11/26/2025

Ritual for Christina Baldwin means slowing down and paying attention.

Oh how I loved this interview with one of my teachers and mentors. Christina and Ann's movement The Circle Way has long inspired me and has completely informed how I convene ceremonial space.

I loved her simple and yet poignant description of ritual and ceremony in this clip. You can watch the full interview in the Be Ceremonial App (www.app.beceremonial.com) along with other mentors and teachers of mine.

This work continues to expand my experiences of ritual in the world, and I am forever grateful I get to be in conversation with so much wisdom and grace.

How do you define ritual or ceremony? I have a project I'm exploring for 2026 and would love to hear from as many people as possible!

11/25/2025

Thank you to everyone who joined me last night for my Grief Rituals & The Holidays gathering.

I love creating space for our personal and collective grief to breathe ~ giving us permission to welcome grief in rather than push it aside.

Read my latest blog post for ritual ideas and inspiration this holiday season 🎄 ✡️ 🕯️

https://www.beceremonial.com/blog/welcoming-grief-into-holiday-traditions/

Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of “The Grieving Brain,” reminds us: “Grief is the natural response to being aware of a loss and, during the holidays, you are going to be more aware because we carry out all the rituals we’ve always done with the people we’re close to.”

Ritual turns our private sorrow into something witnessed and held. When we engage in ritual, we’re saying: this matters. You matter. This loss matters.

Rather than pushing grief aside to make room for celebration, what if we invited it to the table? What if we created rituals that acknowledge absence while still making space for joy?

As Francis Weller beautifully writes: “The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.”

This holiday season, may you find ways to honour both your grief and your gratitude. May you give yourself permission to adapt, to rest, to cry, to laugh, and to be exactly where you are. And may you remember that by making space for grief at your table, you’re not ruining the holidays. You’re making them more honest, more tender, and ultimately, more human.

11/15/2025

I just watched Come See Me in the Good Light and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Andrea Gibson has this way of making you slow down and really see the world we inhabit ~ the morning light through your window, the way someone you love laughs, the weight of a conversation.

This documentary reminded me that the extraordinary lives in the everyday. That presence is a practice. That paying attention is its own form of love.

If you need a gentle reminder to find beauty in the small, quiet moments of your life, watch this film. It will change the way you look at everything, especially death.

11/14/2025

12 years ago, I attended an Art of Hosting retreat on Bowen Island. We stayed at Rivendell Retreat Centre and had the most magical week exploring, connecting and deepening our practice of convening and gathering.

10 years later, I reached out to Rivendell to host my New Year Retreat in the space that once held and inspired me, and they said yes.

I’ve since hosted 3 retreats in this space and my upcoming New Year Ritual Retreat in January will be my last one (here, at least).

It’s bittersweet, as I reflect on the magic of the lands that surround Rivendell and the intentionality built into the lodge and sanctuary. Every piece of this place was crafted with love and a desire to welcome people into a place of belonging.

Time is an interesting concept ~ on the one hand, that week with , .017 Chris Corrigan and so many more feels like just yesterday…I remember the sunrise and the conversations by the fire, the anticipation and the relief at finding a home for my practice.

On the other hand, it feels like a lifetime ago. So much has transpired since ~ so many goodbyes and new hellos, so much grief and oh so much love.

This is my love letter to Rivendell ~ a place that opened me up, inspired me and held me and countless others as we reflected, contemplated and committed to activating the changes we want to see in our world.

Join me this January for my farewell retreat ~ a chance to experience the magic of this place through my eyes one last time 🥰

🍲 will nourish us
📷 will capture the 2026 version of you
🍶 will help you let go and move forward
🪢 will inspire you to craft your vision for 2026

4 spots remain for my New Year Ritual Retreat ✨ comment RETREAT and I’ll send you a link to apply.

11/11/2025

🌺 When I was a kid, Remembrance Day felt big and heavy, but I couldn’t connect to what it actually meant. It felt so far away from my day-to-day life.

Now raising two kids, I want this day to be more than performative. Rituals aren’t just about looking backward. They’re about choosing what we carry forward.

Today I’m taking my kids to the ceremony I used to attend as a child. Then we’re heading to the beach at sunset. While I swim, I’ll invite them to reflect: What kind of neighbour, friend, person do they want to be? How can we take care of each other?

It’s not elaborate. Just space, time, and an invitation to think.

What rituals help your family connect to Remembrance Day in ways that feel real?

Link in bio (blog) for more ideas on creating meaningful rituals with kids. 🕊️

11/05/2025

As we approach the holidays, this season can often amplify our grief, making absence more present and memories more tender.

Join us for an intimate virtual gathering where we’ll explore meaningful ways to weave sorrow into the season’s rituals, creating space for both grief and gratitude to coexist.

This workshop is not about “getting through” the holidays; it’s about redefining our rituals and creating meaningful ways to carry our love and loss forward into our celebrations.

Comment HOLIDAYS for a link to apply

*We're offering a 50% discount for active Be Ceremonial members!

10/24/2025

Almost 12 years ago, I experienced three recurrent pregnancy losses. I felt so alone and uncertain as to what to do or how to acknowledge those seemingly invisible losses.

Little did I know then that my story would one day be featured in the beautiful magazine, sharing the grief rituals I crafted to honour each baby, each loss.

My life changed during that time of grief ~ I was cracked wide open and in that void I recognized the need for ritual and the power of ceremony ✨

I’m eternally grateful to those babies for teaching me how to grieve with attention, intention and reverence. This work was born from them 💞

How fitting that the first photo of me here was taken by , co-founder of the 🦋

And the photos on the second page were taken by my dear friend who helped me and .ca design ceremony boxes for pregnancy loss at Lions Gate Hospital.

The things I’ve learned, the people I’ve met, and the experiences I’ve had since my losses feel extra poignant today.

I hope you can pick up a copy of or start an annual subscription to support local storytellers. This issue is The Death Volume and it’s a phenomenal read cover to cover 🫶

10/20/2025

I’m in the final stages of editing my upcoming book Rituals Without Religion: A Humanist Guide to Creating Secular Ceremonies ✨

And as I work through each page, I’m finding myself even more inspired by my friends who have written their own books.

I’ve been reading my friend ‘s book Feel Better Now and pouring over every sentence, every word. I’m reading it as a reader and also as a fellow writer who understands that each semi-colon has been thoughtfully placed, each chapter carefully curated.

The gift of her book is that it focuses on mindfulness, connection to nature, and the power of daily rituals and rhythms ~ all of which I need reminding of right now, in the thick of it.

Part of this writing journey so far has been phenomenal ~ crafting my outline, choosing the ceremony stories to share, designing my cover with 💜

And part of this journey has been a slog. Finessing each sentence, reviewing each page, making sure things fit together and flow as a whole entity.

I’m an ideas gal ~ I’ve got plenty of them! But taking one idea and diving deep into it, refining and editing it over and over, that’s a challenge for me.

And yet, that’s where the joy lies. That’s the impact of a good book ~ to know it was born out of love and creativity, and then expertly reviewed to ensure it’s of substance and will have an impact on a future unknown reader.

It’s taken me longer than I anticipated and yet the deadlines are self-imposed. This book is coming from so many different parts of me, and I realized the other day that this book is following its own gestational period!

It’ll be around 9 months from conception to birth, which feels so fitting in the end 💝

For now, I’m loving ‘s book and wanted to shine a light on it for others who are in their own creative birthing journey!

🎉 congrats Cat ~ and thank you for the reminders.

Stay tuned for a few more books that are inspiring me right now!

10/18/2025

Today, Christa .ca and I convened the second session of our four part course: End of Life Planning.

The focus today was on Before Death ~ and living our legacy now while we are still alive.

I invited everyone to create a word cloud of some of the words that best describe them ~ and to then place that paper into our EOL Box (a treasure chest of our emotional heirlooms, as Christa calls them!)

I also started using a beautiful journal that Cecilia sent me. She gifted me this fiery red journal after my Ceremonial Training course because it reminded her of me 🔥

Now the journal she gifted me sits in my end of life box ~ how’s that for legacy!

It’s funny how alive I feel talking about death ~ I smile bigger and laugh more and notice the sounds and scents around me BECAUSE I am attuned to the magnificence of this one wild and precious life I have.

What’s in your EOL Box? I’d love to know 💞

10/07/2025

Oh how I loved this conversation with Christina Baldwin

You can listen to the full interview (50min) for free in the Be Ceremonial app ~ it just might be one of my favourite interviews ever!

Christina shares some beautiful stories, including the origin story of The Circle Way, as well as moments of shared humanity, like a woman singing Amazing Grace on an airplane after a woman's husband dies on the flight home.

I wish we lived closer because Christina inspires me with how she calls in and convenes community. In a time of increasing divide and feelings of isolation, Christina exemplifies what it means to listen with curiosity and gather with intention.

I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did

10/07/2025

It's podcast release day apparently!

I'm on two amazing (and vastly different!) podcasts today...I hope you listen to them both because at the core we're all talking about the same thing: intention + meaning.

First up, tune into my conversation with Dina Bell-Laroche Sport Law and Alayne Hing about the need for ritual and ceremony in the sports world. https://sportopia-episode-1.castos.com/episodes/episode-58-the-importance-of-ritual-and-ceremony

Second, I join Fiona from Deadly Serious Conversations to talk about the power of ceremony at the end of life and during times of grief & loss. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-47-the-importance-of-ceremony-and-ritual/id1522800087?i=1000730508178

Storytelling is my love language, so these podcast stories are filling my heart up!

Podcast Episode · Deadly Serious Conversations · 07/10/2025 · 44m