End Of Year Wrap Up
Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to read our end of year newsletter. Some of you are reading this having worked with us as your Funeral Directors this year. And others still are with us as our Doula and Counselling clients, navigating love, life, loss and grief in its myriad of forms. We are deeply committed to you and to this work and we are so honoured and grateful that you found and chose Life Rites to walk alongside you.
As the capacity to gather in actual numbers opened up this year relished the opportunity for families and communities to gather in IRL as well as continue to zoom and livestream. The way we hold funerals has opened up and changed and we are continuing to meet this with creativity and flexibility.
Alongside our core work as end of life doulas, counsellors, celebrants and holistic funeral directors, we continued to increase death literacy in the wider community.
What a year it has been!
Here are some highlights:
Opening the Boutique Funeral Home
On August 14 we finally launched Life Rites in our Boutique Funeral Home in Hurstville, with a Death Cafe and community information afternoon. It was wonderful seeing so many smiling faces in our ‘home away from home’. We were pleasantly surprised by how many people eagerly flocked to our mortuary on the tour. Being able to demystify what actually occurs in a mortuary and how lovingly and well we care for our people was met with welcome curiosity and such great questions.
We didn’t win but it felt like we did!
On August 17 Life Rites and the team attended the ACON Honour Awards. We were one of four finalists in the Best Business category. We were in good company, and while the award went to Sock Drawer Heroes, we had an excellent night meeting, chatting and dancing with wonderful humans. Again, we were greatly affirmed by how many people were ready to talk about end of life services.
Death Cafés
Alongside their hands-on doula work with many of our families this year, Kim Somerville and Danielle Coppleson worked with Jo McIlveen and her team, St George Bereavement Support, and offered a series of Death Cafes throughout the Shire. These information events and death cafes introduced locals and all who attended to our Life Rites unique model of doula-led care and encouraged people to ask for and expect more from their funeral rites.
Australian Doula College
Victoria contributed a session of home after death care at the (also long awaited) Australian Doula College, ‘from Womb to Tomb’ end of year retreat.
https://www.australiandoulacollege.com.au/retreat
This was a beautiful event and the relationships and doula training offered by the ADC in collaboration with community members from remote Indigenous communities is humbling and incredible.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Victoria and Sarah returned for the second year to Bradfield College to lead a vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance. Connecting with teenagers in their final two years of school, and their teachers, in a safe environment gave us room to reflect on how beautiful and powerful life is when we are actively practising love, understanding and proactive allyship.
Life Rites at Coastal Twist!
As we continue to offer our model of care far and wide, we participated in the Coastal Twist Festival at Umina Beach on the October long weekend. We held a day long Death cafe and introduced Coasties to Life Rites and our partner care centre in Tuggerah. We shared chai and cake, spoke with and listened to wonderful people, from teenagers to elders, about all things relating to end of life, death, and dying. We look forward to returning and caring for more Coasties this year.
In November, Members of our team participated in the Open Day at Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium - presented on doula led care. So great to see this work gaining attention and traction within the mainstream funeral industry.
Creative practice is a driving underpinning
of our work here at Life Rites.
Hidden at Rookwood Cemetery
This year it was our pleasure to become of one of the sponsors for Rookwood Necropolis' ‘Hidden A Sculpture Walk’ We hold a long association
with Rookwood and look forward to ongoing work together.
Grief Works at BrandX
On a performative note, ‘Grief Works’ at BrandX, a night of in-process performances by artists who have worked with Life Rites for their funeral rites of their people.
Day for Night
In October, Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor, Victoria Spence and Sarah Barry performed the Opening Ceremony in Day for Night for Performance Space at Carriageworks, in their performance personas the Cosmic Nuns. Aunty Rhonda welcomed us to Country and opened our hearts by singing ‘True Colours’.
The wider community work gives us so much, yet none of it can exist without the reality of being at the threshold of life, love, dying and death, each and every week.
Holding space for everyone who comes through our doors, breathing or not breathing is the core of our work, and none of this is possible without our team.
A few words from the team:
Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor
Aunty Rhonda continues to lead our team. Alongside her leadership and guidance she’s deep in her Masters at UTS and the myriad of activist and creative communities she is a part of. “I look forward to the ongoing relationship with Life Rites and the team and continuing to find ways to tell the story of this work to my people’"
Victoria Spence
Victoria has also continued to lead and followed many of our people through their end of life, funeral rites and ongoing ceremonial and counselling support. She is very excited about the growth and consolidation of Life Rites. Both for our team and for the broader landscape of holistic end of life care. Bring on 2023.
Sarah Barry
Sarah has stepped into the roles of both funeral director and funeral celebrant this year, alongside working with her doula clients. She continues to be the ‘High Priestess’ of our onsite mortuary, caring for the dead with dignity and respect. When partners, friends and family have wanted to participate in the after-death care of their person, she has assisted them in that process, and she is currently training other doulas to also hold space in the mortuary.
Kim Somerville
This year has seen Kim grow into the space of community education and connections, especially with Social Workers. She spoke at the Sutherland Shire council event for the ‘Sandwich Generation’, which was hosted by the wonderful Jean Kittson. As part of her ongoing professional development, she completed an online training module for infant cooling mats (Manaaki Mats) - enabling parents and families to have more time with their babies at home vigils. 2023 will see Kim continue her most treasured work of home based death care, education and mentorship for new and upcoming doulas.
Vaike Neeme-Samson
being a 'doula for the doulas' has been Vaike's focus at Life Rites this year, as her 'Admin and Office Backbone' role has spanned HR, marketing, arts support, mortuary assistance, client relations, company development and accounts structuring alongside actual admin; basically whatever it takes to midwife the birthing of Life Rites' new phase. Alongside this she has begun a part time Bachelor of Social Work at University of Sydney, seeking to formalise her innate love of healing social forms.
Janne Sverdloff
Janne worked alongside us to care for some of her community members and friends as a doula and celebrant. Janne also works with Red Nose, including Sands as the Supervisor of the National team of Bereavement Support Workers who form the Hospital to Home team. The program supports families who have experienced perinatal loss, neonatal loss or the unexpected and sudden death of a baby up to the age of one year. She and Kim Somerville co-lead our Life Rites baby and infant care program. She also contributes to the Prepaing the Way training program.
Danielle Coppleson
Alongside her work with Life Rites and her private doula clients, Danielle volunteers with CanCare, providing education to improve volunteer death literacy, such as understanding the referral pathway for health services, recognising the signs of dying and education on after death care options.
Martin Neeme-Samson
Martin’s work with Life Rites this year has included ceremony, counselling, and accompanying the preparation of a 'living funeral'. The nexus of ritual, rite of passage and deep dialogue inspires him greatly. Alongside this, Martin has almost completed his PHD which brings so-called heretical and mystical ideas back into mainstream theological discourse.
Cally Bruer
Cally continues her work as a funeral attendant alongside her art making, pottery and massage practice.
Our team is growing!
We say hello to Vicki Melson, a masseur and newly trained doula who is stepping in to the mortuary where she is putting years of massage skill to the deep privilege of physically caring for our dead. We are excited to have her on board.
Welcome also to Sonja Godfrey Chan, a celebrant and doula with a particular interest in aged care end of life support.
Pat Joyce joined us this year as a funeral attendant and brings so much knowledge and skill from her years working in Aged Care. She will co-lead the aged care team with Sonja.
Skye Robertson, who is based on the Central Coast and is our Life Rites celebrant for local families. We are so glad to have you on board.
We say farewell to one of our associated doula’s, Kellie Bova, who moves to the Gold Coast. We wish you all the best Kellie. So to Jen Drysdale, our bookkeeper, thanks for crunching all those numbers to help us stay afloat and fair and equitable in our pricing.
Also to our fabulous digital native and social media human, Béatrice Barbeau-Scurla, who is moving to Melbourne to pursue their true love of Stand Up Comedy. We totally recommend you find and follow them on socials . We are not sure what we will do without you Béa!
We thank Vaike Neeme-Samson, who has been the best backbone a small org can hope for. She will be scaling down her work at Life Rites to dive more fully into her Social Work studies. We are not sure what we will do without her when she does move on!
2023 and Beyond!
We have exciting plans for next year, including:
Our long awaited Mortality Festival,
A curated series of death themed film nights at our funeral home
3 Death Cafes
Doula Led Information afternoons
And even some Training !
The program and schedule will be announced early next year. Please make sure you have signed up to our newsletter to be across all we do.
Finally,
It’s a big gig to run a social profit ethical business in the Sydney Metro setting and to hold bricks and mortar premises.
We want to share with you our deep gratitude for the way you have shown up for Life Rites this year, whether if be through bringing your people to us for their funeral rites, referring members of your community to our services, coming to our Death Cafe and Open Day, attending Grief Works, following us on Instagram or Facebook , or reading our blog .
All of it makes a huge difference in helping people find us, so that we can offer everyone the best possible care in end of life and after death services.
So, if you feel for it, we invite you to help people find us and what we do, by leaving us a review here.
We would be most grateful.
Mostly we want to say,
Thank you
Go gently with all that endings bring and see you in 2023.
Warmest,