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
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.
Our Team
Kate Love, Director of Learning
Kate is a Registered Psychotherapist and a former Life & Loss Coach who supports people in grief. 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. As our Director of Learning, Kate helps develop our courses, weaving in her therapeutic knowledge surrounding mental health and emotional regulation.
Ali Heibert, Ceremony Consultant
Ali is an embodiment coach and transplant advocate living in Northern Alberta, Canada. Born with a rare, genetic illness, Ali has spent her entire life navigating the medical system. She is helping Be Ceremonial develop rituals and ceremonies surrounding health and wellness, with a focus on transplantation.
Nathan Brigham, Video Production
“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:
Emily is a Funeral Director and End of Life Educator with DeathcareBC. 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.
Nicole leads Graceful Fusion and is both a birth and death doula, and a Labor & Delivery and Hospice Nurse. She facilitates birth doula workshops and trains nursing students for Johns Hopkins University’s Birth Companions Program.
Christa Ovenell is the founder of Death’s Apprentice. She is a funeral director & embalmer, an end-of-life doula, and a death educator. She supports Be Ceremonial with retreats, workshops and reimagining how we approach end of life planning.
Christa Andreola is the visionary behind New Narrative Events, an event planning company that designs and curates the most unique and meaningful celebrations of life. Megan often works with Christina as a celebrant for their celebrations of life.
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.
We are proud members of the National End of Life Doula Alliance and have offered several workshops over the years to their members.
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.
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.
The International Death Doula Network has been a champion of our work in the end of life space, amplifying our voice and sharing our rituals with their community. We are humbled to be part of such a diverse and intentional community of death doulas and end of. life educators.
Megan regularly offers workshops and ritual retreat days for the Vancouver Hospice Society, supporting and inspiring their care providers. They are also on a Be Ceremonial Group Wellness Plan, making our app available to their entire team.
We have curated several workshops over the years for the Sunshine Coast Hospice‘s volunteers and staff. This includes offering them rituals for self care as well as ceremonies for community care so they can continue to do this important work.
