About Us
Be Ceremonial is what we wished we’d had access to during times of transition and loss. We want to empower people with a ceremonial framework that inspires creativity and opens the door to ritual design.
Our Story
We are a husband and wife team who stumbled into ceremony after years of recurrent miscarriages and the death of a parent. We didn’t know how to mark the invisible moments that surrounded our experience, especially since we don’t prescribe to a set religion or spirituality.
We researched and learned as much as we could about rituals and ceremonies so we could acknowledge our grief in meaningful ways. We then decided to make these tools and ideas available to anyone seeking ceremony.
Our Vision
Our vision is to help people reimagine the role of ritual and ceremony in their lives by offering them lots of rituals to choose from so they are empowered to create their own ceremonies to acknowledge any milestones or moments of transition they are facing.
Megan Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO
Megan Sheldon (she/her) is the co-founder of Be Ceremonial, the world’s first guided ritual and ceremony app. Megan is a cultural mythologist, humanist celebrant, and end-of-life doula living and working in North Vancouver, BC. She has created hundreds of ceremonies for people around the world, focusing on what she calls the ‘seemingly invisible moments of change’, such as pregnancy loss, organ transplantation, menopause, living funerals, and death anniversaries.
Megan offers online workshops, virtual courses, and seasonal retreats in British Columbia, Canada. When she’s not crafting ceremonies, you can find her swimming in the sea or meandering in the rainforest with her husband Johan and two daughters.
Johan Hoglund, Co-Founder & CTO
Johan Hoglund (he/his) is an entrepreneur and software engineer, originally from Sweden. After working for over a decade in the corporate world, he was drawn to the innovation and creativity of the startup world. He’s a problem solver and is passionate about creating systems to better understand and address how we can deepen our connections with the support of technology.
After losing his father, he realized how important it is to mark both the big moments in life as well as the smaller, less visible ones. He’s passionate about #slowtechnology and believes that technology is an instrument that can help us create the life we want.
We are all able to craft our own rituals. Humankind has always crafted ritual to mark special events, moments, and places. With the advent of urbanization, we became removed from this creative process as institutions took over.
Our Circle of Advisors
We’re fortunate to have an amazing circle of advisors surrounding our vision. These are only a few of the phenomenal people who helped make Be Ceremonial what it is today:
Kate Love
Kate is a Registered Psychotherapist and a Life & Loss Coach who focuses on postpartum, grief, and legacy coaching. With a background in social work, she has a passion for deep conversations around how we care for ourselves so that we can take care of others. Kate served as our founding Director of Learning, helping develop our ritual courses and ceremony workshops, and now sits on our Circle of Advisors. Learn more about Kate's work here: https://www.katelovestherapy.ca/
Nathan Brigham
Nathan is a filmmaker, designer and distance runner living in North Vancouver, BC. He specializes in short-form video and has skills across the production spectrum. He helped create Be Ceremonial’s video walkthroughs and interactive learning environment.
Emily Bootle
Emily is a Funeral Director and End of Life Educator living and working in Kamloops, BC. She is an advocate for community-led deathcare and has set out to transform the way we approach death, dying, and grief in our society. She introduced Megan to a lot of the community deathcaring principles and continues to share her knowledge and wisdom with families around BC.
Nicole Heidbreder
Nicole Heidbreder has worked as a Hospice Nurse and Labor & Delivery Nurse in various capacities. She facilitates independent birth doula workshops and trained nursing students as a Clinical Instructor with the Johns Hopkins University Birth Companions Program.
As a death worker, Nicole supports people ending their life using Medical Aid in Dying and teaches End of Life Doula Workshops for the International End of Life Doula Association. Additionally, she hosts virtual Death Cafes that are open to the public. You can find out more about her here: gracefulfusion.com.
Christa Ovenell
Christa Ovenell (she/her) is a licensed funeral director/embalmer, end-of-life doula, educator, and founder of Death’s Apprentice Education & Planning. Known for bringing the practical side of death and dying into clear focus, she draws on an M.Ed. in Adult Education from UBC and years of professional experience in death care to make complex systems, choices, and planning easier to understand. She is also a CBC columnist and has built a large, highly engaged online community around helping people understand their options and make informed decisions.
Christina Andreola
Christina Andreola is the owner and Principal Event Planner of New Narrative Events, an event planning company that specializes in celebration of life events. Since 2016, Christina and the New Narrative team have assisted over 450 families (and counting) through the process of planning a fitting and unique memorial for someone they love. The team’s speciality is in Hybrid Events, combining the in-person experience with the presence and participation of virtual attendees from all over the world.
Organizations We Support
We love supporting other organizations with likeminded visions and missions. These are some of the organizations we support with custom ceremony workshops & Be Ceremonial membership group plans.
Natural Transitions Institute
Megan trained as a Lifecycle Celebrant with the Celebrant Foundation & Institute (CFI), now Natural Transitions Institute. We continue to offer workshops and community events through them, and are grateful to be part of a community that helped shape our work.
EOLDAC
The End of Life Doula Association of Canada has been a source of connection and support for us as we aim to shift society narratives surrounding death, dying, and grief. Thank you to the Board and all the members who have continued to support us in our efforts to make end of life rituals more accessible to those in need.
INELDA
We love being part of the International End of Life Doula Association. Megan trained as an end-of-life doula with INELDA and we have hosted workshops and gatherings for their members.
NEDA
We are proud members of the National End of Life Doula Alliance and have offered several workshops over the years to their members.
Humanist Canada
Megan offers masterclasses on end-of-life ceremonies for Humanist Canada, supporting humanist officiants as they create meaningful, secular ceremonies for the people they serve.
Humanist BC
We’re proud to support Humanist BC and its community in bringing meaningful, secular ritual to life’s milestones and moments of change.