Meet Megan Sheldon

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Megan Sheldon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Megan, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

In my early 30s, I experienced a grief storm. My father-in-law was diagnosed with ALS, I had three recurrent miscarriages, and I was losing my hearing.\n\nI was raised secular and didn’t feel like I had access to rituals and ceremonies connected to these types of grief and loss. I started to research and study and understand how I could bring ritual and ceremony into my life in ways that felt personal and meaningful. I was mindful of not appropriating from other cultures, and was drawn to the universal elements of ritual.

I started to create my own rituals and ceremonies to acknowledge both the larger rites of passage we move through as well as the daily moments of change. I became a humanist celebrant and an end-of-life doula and started to create ceremonies for others who were experiencing what I called the ‘seemingly invisible moments of change’. These are the moments where we aren’t quite sure what to do or how to acknowledge what we’re feeling, like going through IVF, ending a long-term relationship, planning a living funeral, or reaching a death anniversary.

I helped a woman create an abortion ceremony 30 years after her abortion. I supported a young woman who was turning the age her mother was when she died to create a ceremony that felt meaningful to her. Throughout these experiences, I realized we are all ceremonial, it’s in our bones. Our rituals and ceremonies may look different from one another, but there are also key components and ingredients that are woven into them.

My husband and I decided to create an app that offered people the tools, techniques, and frameworks I’d come to learn about, as well as ritual ideas and stories of inspiration. We wanted anyone who was seeking ceremony in their own lives to have a place they could come to be reminded that they can create their own rituals and ceremonies, they just need to know where to start.

Our app offers daily rituals for self care, offering rituals that can help express anger, joy, and grief, as well as rituals for setting boundaries and dealing with burnout. We also offer ceremonies that span the lifecycle, from birth to death and everything in between. These include ceremonies surrounding pregnancy loss, coming of age, divorce, menopause, celebrations of life, scattering ashes, and pet loss.

My purpose continues to reveal itself, but I now realize that I am meant to hold space for difficult conversations, convening and gathering and inspiring people to honour, mourn, celebrate and acknowledge whatever emotions are arising in them. I want to bring light to dark places, especially as it relates to death, dying and grief.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m a Humanist Celebrant and End-of-Life Doula ~ I create ceremonies for people across the lifecycle, with a focus on grief and loss. I’m also the co-founder of Be Ceremonial, the world’s first self-guided ritual app that empowers you to create your own ceremonies to acknowledge daily moments of change as well as significant rites of passage.

My husband and I created Be Ceremonial because it’s what we wished we’d had when we were going through unimaginable grief and loss. There have been so many moments when we wanted to do something but weren’t sure what to do or where to start. After learning about the power of ritual and ceremony, I started to create ceremonies for all of those seemingly invisible moments of change, for myself and for others.

I’ve created menopause ceremonies for groups of women, reimagining what it means to age with intention and meaning. I’ve created divorce ceremonies and friendship ending ceremonies, organ transplant ceremonies and dementia ceremonies. I believe that the more we acknowledge the changes we move through, the more we build our ritual muscles so we can face the more challenging times of loss and grief with rituals at the ready.

For so many of us, we have been disconnected from ritual and ceremony. I’ve spent years researching my own lineage and ancestry to better understand what my ancestors may have done to acknowledge their own rites of passage. I’ve also come to realize that sometimes we have to let go of what was and create something new. We are faced with so many new rites of passage and daily moments of stress and transition, so we need new rituals to acknowledge our current reality.

My vision for Be Ceremonial is for it to become a community hub for anyone seeking insight and inspiration into the world of ritual and ceremony. Our app is a community-led platform where every member gets to offer insight, advice and stories about their own relationship with ritual and ceremony.

The app features 72 daily rituals for self care, spanning how we start the day to how we close the day, how we process anger and grief and joy, and how we face burnout and boundary settings.

We also have over 35 lifecycle ceremonies, from fertility and birth, to relationships and seasonal cycles, to end of life and our relationship with grief. You can choose your own ritual adventure by picking from hundreds of universal rituals to create a ceremony that feels like you. The most important part about ceremony for us is for it to be personal and meaningful to the person creating it.

Our app also features a learning environment, with pre-recorded workshops and story interviews with our mentors and teachers. We believe the more we learn about ritual and ceremony, the better we can apply it to our own lives. We also have an online community where our members can meet, connect and support one another through this journey of life.

This coming year, we hope to add new features that give our members more rituals to choose from, including the ability to create their own based on unique circumstances and specific needs. We recently launched a Group Wellness Plan where we now have employers and businesses purchasing Be Ceremonial for their teams, acknowledging that there are so many visible and invisible moments we move through in life, and the more we recognize them, the better our mental health and wellness will be.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’m an empath, meaning I feel things deeply and take things personally. For the longest time, I was led to believe this was a ‘soft skill’ and one that I shouldn’t parade out in the open. As I’ve leaned into this work I’ve come to realize that my empathy is my super power. I’m able to support people during their darkest times and their highest highs. I wish I had seen how valuable and rare it is to hold space for our own emotions as well as the emotions of others.

I’m a catalyst and an igniter, which for me means I love creating and starting and diving into new things. Maintaining things has been a challenge for me, so I’ve often seen my ability to come up with wild and innovative ideas as fun but not sustainable. I now realize that I wasn’t surrounding myself with others who could help my qualities and skills thrive by bringing their unique gifts to mine. My husband holds so many opposite qualities to me; he’s structured and pragmatic and a true problem solver. Together, we bring out each other’s true gifts and have created something that doesn’t exist in the world!

I’ve always been interested in death and dying, but I was taught from an early age by society that I shouldn’t ask too many questions about death as it could be perceived as weird, dark or unhealthy. Through my end-of-life doula community, I’ve met thousands of people who are also fascinated by death and want to acknowledge the many aspects of dying and grief that often get swept under the rug. I walk toward the fire and approach difficult conversations with ease. I would say to anyone who has an unconventional interest to find likeminded people and to talk more freely and openly about your passions. There are others out there who will become your community, but only if you are vulnerable by being open first.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?
If you work for an innovative company or values-aligned organization that prioritizes mental health and emotional wellness, I would love to connect and find ways to make Be Ceremonial available to your team. I’ve been working with innovative businesses who want to walk the talk when it comes to supporting their employees, and it’s been phenomenal to see what it does to a team culture to create space and have conversations around the things we are going through in our personal lives.

Every single day, people are going through visible and invisible moments of change. Things like IVF and fertility struggles, pregnancy loss, divorces, the death of a parent or loved one, reaching a death anniversary ~ if an employer can offer tools and frameworks for their team to acknowledge these moments of change with intention, I believe we will all be so much better off.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.beceremonial.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beceremonial/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beceremonial
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megansheldon/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beceremonial

Image Credits

Photos by Felicia Chang Photography and Corrina Holburn Photography