End of Life
In beauty may we walk - All day long may we walk - Through the returning seasons may we walk - Beautifully may we walk - On the trail marked with pollen may we walk - With dew about our feet may we walk - With beauty may we walk - With beauty before us may we walk - With beauty behind us may we walk - With beauty above us may we walk - With beauty below us may we walk - In old age travelling on a trail of beauty, lively, may we walk - In old age travelling on a trail of beauty, living again, may we walk - May it be finished in beauty - May it be finished in beauty —
In beauty may we walk - All day long may we walk - Through the returning seasons may we walk - Beautifully may we walk - On the trail marked with pollen may we walk - With dew about our feet may we walk - With beauty may we walk - With beauty before us may we walk - With beauty behind us may we walk - With beauty above us may we walk - With beauty below us may we walk - In old age travelling on a trail of beauty, lively, may we walk - In old age travelling on a trail of beauty, living again, may we walk - May it be finished in beauty - May it be finished in beauty —
—adapted from a Navajo Indian healing chant
residential course - Autumn 2024 to Autumn 2025 - apply here.
Booking deadline: September 1st 2024
Anne is one of the three end of life doulas working together as a Community Interest Company started in 2023 by Sarah Parker (Director). For details of what Sarah, Ruth and Anne offer please visit the Dying with Grace website : www.dyingwithgrace.co.uk
Letting go in love;
cultivating a relationship with my own death
Nov. 22-24 2024 - Oct. 3-5 2025
Course facilitator: Anne Overzee
Booking deadline: September 1st 2024
‘Slowly she celebrated the sacrament of letting go…
Shedding her last leaf
She stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the sky, she began her vigil of trust…
Her emptiness…giving her a new kind of beauty.
(from Macrina Wiederkehr’s poem, ‘The Sacrament of Letting Go’)
This course comprises a series of five interrelated retreat-workshops exploring the theme of our own death. Those who work with the dying often share the view that it can be a time of healing and spiritual transformation. We will prioritise exploring our emerging relationship with our own death in different ways, including through creativity, silence, and ritual; deepening our enquiry through co-creating a field of heart in the context of the wild beauty of Dartmoor.
The course will include exploring together how the bardos (as described in the Tibetan text, Liberation through Hearing in the Bardos) can support an unveiling of our radiant sacred nature through all the transition moments in our lives, including our dying.
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Accommodation:
Accommodation is basic but comfortable with shared rooms, and a stunning environment on Dartmoor. Participants will be expected to share in certain daily tasks to support the cook and keep our environment warm and clean.
Cost:
£1000 per person for the whole course, which is payable as £50 deposit followed by 5 instalments of £190.
To apply:
If you would like to talk with Anne about the course please email her at sarana@posteo.com or ring her on 07717-221504.
NB places are limited (9 participants) and early booking is recommended.
Booking deadline: September 1st 2024
The course runs from the autumn of 2024 to the autumn of 2025. Details of the 5 3-day module content will be released later. They run from Fridays to Sundays.
Dates:
November 22-24 2024
January 17-19 2025
March 21-23 2025
July 4-6 2025
October 3-5 2025
Times:
Friday 10.00am to Sunday 4.00pm
Location:
The High Heathercombe Centre, Heathercombe Brake, Manaton, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ13 9XE
Death Cafes
This is an opportunity to get together informally over a cup of tea and a piece of cake to talk about death and dying. It is a chance to share and listen; there is no agenda, and everyone is very welcome!
Bovey Tracey, Devon
We meet monthly on Tuesdays from 1pm to 2pm.
Upcoming dates:
June 4
July 2nd
Location: Cafe3sixty, Newton Rd., Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13 9AZ.
Booking is essential on 07717 221504
Ashburton, Devon
We meet monthly on Sundays from 2:15pm to 3:15pm.
Upcoming dates:
June 16th
Location: Rafikis, 2a, St Lawrence Lane, Ashburton, Newton Abbot TQ13 7DD.
Booking is essential on 07834 978560
You are invited to make a donation towards the cost of the refreshments.
Dying Matters week (UK)
May 6th-12th 2024
Here are a number of wonderful South Devon creative workshops for Dying Matters Week (UK) in May, to help us explore death and dying through these various creative activities.
These are the ones freely offered in Bovey Tracey, sponsored by Dying with Grace, through funding received from Awards for All.
Please see below for further information about each workshop.
More details about events
+ A creative introduction to choices at end of life: Workshop with Anne and Sarah of Dying with Grace
Details to follow
+ Creative Writing workshop with Jackie Juno - Treasures of the Deep
Jackie will share tips and techniques to write about the Big Stuff of life and death, using strong imagery & concrete form, avoiding cliche and predictability. There will be guidance and time to write, and a chance to share work if desired (no obligation).
Jackie is a multiple poetry slam winner, including Glastonbury Festival Slam 2017 and was a contender in the National Poetry Slam finals at the Albert Hall in 2018. She has been a finalist in many international competitions for her short stories, flash fiction and poetry, including Arvon, Writing Magazine and Mslexia.
She has performed her poetry at two TEDx Talks. She held the title Bard of Exeter 2011-2012 and Grand Bard of Exeter 2012-2019. She has five poetry collections published, the most recent being Priestess of the Powder Puff Experiment with Burning Eye Books.
She is planning a national tour of her latest multi-media one-woman show Cancer Dancer - My Quirky Quest for a Cure.
+ Weaving workshop with Jaini Hadley
Initially an Art teacher for many years, I then re-trained as an Art Psychotherapist and worked for six years at St Mary’s Hospice , Ulverston, Cumbria, helping patients and their families through Art Therapy and creative arts. Our projects included participatory arts ( a large communal weaving); a collaboration involving local school pupils making art with hospice patients; environmental art; and seasonal thematic workshops, eg berries in autumn, and journal making. I also organised many exhibitions of patients’ work including our largest at Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin at Coniston.
Since leaving the hospice I have been able to concentrate on my own weaving, writing (art therapy articles published by Jessica Kingsley and a Lake District magazine) and teaching ( journaling workshops).
In 2015/6 I was artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, donating two large wall hangings to the Park.
I have also exhibited widely, in the Lake District (Keswick and Ulverston), Arizona ( Petrified Forest and Winslow), and most recently in Lancaster and Hastings.
+ Mandala painting with Anne Overzee - enwholing my living and dying through mandala painting
details to follow+ Flat Needle Felting with Yuli Somme
Drawing out; exploring meaning and intention through wool fibre.
The tenderness of wool invites us to touch, to connect and to make. Learning the easy immediacy of flat needle felting we "draw out" the coloured fibres to explore shapes and symbols that hold meaning.
Yuli has worked with wool all her life. Her father died when she was 5 years old and she found the warmth, smell and texture of her parents Norwegian hand-knitted garments comforting, often enveloping herself within their folds.
This feeling has been with her ever since and she has taken much of her inspiration from the traditions of her Norwegian roots.
She trained and worked as a dyer and weaver, switching to felt making in 1987. Over the last 25 years she has found herself working in the funeral sector, developing an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional coffins, called the Leafcocoon.
The thickness and layers of felt cocoons the body, perhaps a legacy of the comfort she found in wool in her childhood.
Her Chagford workshop is where she makes the Leafcocoons, working either direct with the bereaved or through funeral directors.
The covers for the Leafcocoons can be decorated using simple needle felting techniques and her workshops are run from her beautiful Chagford studio.
Bellacouche Ltd.
Stableyard, Chagford, Devon, TQ13 8BW
Tel: 01647 433929 / Mob: 07763 935897