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:

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. 

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:

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,

The Life Rites Team.