I love how Kahlil Gibran describes teaching. He says, “No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge”.
Being With Dying – a group exploration and learning
A weekend workshop or a series of six, weekly, 11/2hour sessions
This is about learning together and sharing experiences in relation to being with people who are dying.
We use as a starting place the stories in my book, Soul Midwife’s Journal – stories of honouring death. You will need your own copy ($20) available from me.I like to keep the group quite small – around 5-8 participants.
You will find reviews of the book under the Shop tab.
Kind words
Exploring dying and death via the personal stories Margaret offers through her book gave a rich starting point for our weekly discussions. These blossomed into deep sharing of participants’ own life experiences, both as contribution and to open to and receive support from others. I love Margaret’s gentle and clear way, not so much a teacher-student relationship, but rather a respectful space of mutual participation.
Vikki
The ‘Being with Dying” series with Margaret was a simple but potent process. It allowed me to pause with others and consider many different aspects of the physical and spiritual dying process of a person I hadn’t thought about previously.
While I have not come away with a clear ‘knowing’ of what to do when death visits me, or people I love, I have more of a sense of what I can do, or how I can be. . . . that this may include sometimes not necessarily ‘doing’ anything at all. Also cultivating trust that something wise in me, or through me, will know what to do and say. This has been of comfort to me with farewelling my mother as she journeys through dementia. I feel more relaxed about her dying process. There is a sense of presence in me, a softening of fear I hold for her process that wasn’t accessible to me before this series.
Margaret has the most powerfully gentle presence that I feel so safe to be my true self around. I highly recommend this series to anyone who feels the pull to learn more about dying.
Penelope Brown, Motueka
What makes for a satisfying funeral?
A day workshop
We all have funeral stories, some good, many not so. But why are some funerals deeply satisfying and others not so?
To create a funeral that’s truly satisfying requires some key things. For a start we need to understand the process of ceremony creation – this is much more relevant than we realise. Then we must represent in a unique and meaningful way the one whose life we are commemorating. With these and some other basics under our belts we become a great resource in the preparation of funerals. And we never know when that might be.
In this interactive and informative workshop you’ll also have a chance to begin to design your own funeral or that of a loved one. It’s more fun and the creative juices flow better in the company of others!
Kind words
The change I noticed from the beginning to the end of the day was a lightness – the heavy, sad element had shifted. So, though grief is inevitably still part of death and funerals, there is a lightness about it. Definitely more humour and more simplicity. The idea of complexity is not there but has been replaced with a keenness to spend more time on this – to make my funeral box, to gather poems, pictures, ideas, and to knit a shroud or something to be wrapped in.
Sheila
The workshop helped open up the whole topic for me in a way that makes me feel totally comfortable talking with others about death, dying and funerals. It also showed me the incredible choices we have in celebrating the end of one’s physical life.
Jen
Soul-Led Professional Supervision and Mentoring
For people who know that their own evolution is the best thing they can bring to their clients.
Soul-Led Supervision and Mentoring covers three areas:
It incorporates the traditional supervisory role. In this it aims to:
- encourage the professional to work effectively, safely and ethically
- provide a space in which the professional can reflect and evaluate
- create a safe holding so that any concern, difficulty or problem in relation to working with a client can be raised
- with the professional, identify weaknesses and blocks as well as strengths and causes for celebration
- help the professional sustain the resourcefulness required for his or her work through self-care.
It provides guidance and support in extending the professional’s subtle capacities. This focuses on:
- extending the professional’s capacity to be with heavy or complex emotional issues clients present with, without closing off emotionally or wanting the client to stop feeling upset
- extending the professional’s capacity to use the whole of his or her own body as a potential source of subtle information about what is present for the client
- increasing the professional’s courage and capacity to pause and slow the client down, especially given a sense that something potentially important is being overridden or side-stepped.
It offers on-going, deepening Care of the Soul, developing the professional’s capacity and preparedness to:
- listen to the subtle invitations life makes, in matters large and small, and to discern with increasing refinement
- act with courage when it would be easier to ignore a particular invitation or nudge
- allow this deepening evolution to inform all of life, including but not exclusive to the professional’s practice.
Speaking
From my passion about how we engage with death and end-of-life matters, I offer informative talks for all manner of organisations and groups.
We can discuss possibilities, including my sending an outline of my address ahead of time.
Kind words
Margaret is very professional and dedicated; she is totally reliable and takes the time to find out exactly what your requirements are before the event. She is very personable and genuinely creates a reaction of interest in those listening.
David Williams, Head of Goldsmith Management Centre, Letchworth, UK