Honouring Spirit Babies: Grief ritual for perinatal loss

Your loss may be recent or long past, perhaps even many decades; no matter how small your baby, no matter the extent of your loss, you are welcome.

Miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy, termination for medical reasons, the death of a newborn and SIDS ... a mycelium network of emotions and experiences accompany perinatal loss; too often isolation in grieving can ensues. 

This day invites you to tend wounds of loss, practice what it means to meet in our shared humanity without fixing, without an imperative to 'heal'. We practice being with what is. Tending what is. Sharing what is. This day is a communal space for grief without 'fixing'; a generous place to be with the breadth and depth of loss, practice ritual, cultivate compassion and create and/or continue bonds with our treasured souls who flew. 

We will accompany ourselves and each other, sharing in our collective knowledge, skills and experiences. We explore being in right relationship with loss, to normalise the breadth and depth of what grief offers, and to seek possibilities for adapting and integrating what we feel.

If you are unsure whether this day is right for you, please reach out hello@beforeandafterlife.com.au

We very much look forward to your company.

Facilitator: Emma Beattie [she/her] - Before & After Life
Emma has worked, studied and volunteered in caring and deathing since 2020.  She brings an animistic, post humanist, creative and poetic lens to caring, dying, death and grieving. Her death and dying work and studies intersect a long line of lived experienced with personal loss. Her professional origins reside in strategic thinking, storytelling and social impact. She offers practical supports, education and facilitation for people, families, and groups via term courses, workshops, community meets and retreats. Emma is a member of Amitayus Home Hospice Service, Palliative Care NSW, National Loss & Grief Association (NALAG), the Natural Death Advocacy Network (NDAN) and is an advocate for Compassionate Communities Australia.


Supported by clinician Kylie Duncan (Gestalt psychotherapist, specialist grief counsellor, Clinical Social Worker).

Kylie holds a Masters in Gestalt Psychotherapy, a Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy, Bachelor of Social Work, Bachelor of Visual Arts, and has specialized training in Family Constellation work, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. 

Kylie has worked for over 27 years as a counsellor. She has also worked extensively providing perinatal care to women and their partners in her former position at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Newcastle. Additionally, she worked in the Palliative Care Unit, Lismore, over many years, caring for people who are dying and supporting their loved ones through end of life issues as well as providing bereavement counselling and running support groups. Further, she has worked with the Australian Grief and Bereavement Centre as a trainer and was on the Board of the Natural Death Care Centre, Byron Bay, for 12 years. Kylie is passionate about her work with grief and loss, recognizing the importance of reclaiming and understanding how central this experience is to being human. Her work is influenced by Buddhist and existential psychology, attachment theory, neuroscience, trauma informed practice and mindfulness. 

-----

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 current—to live in the present moment and be available to the electricity of life.

- Francis Weller