This is not a training to become an “expert” in death and dying.
We’ll be reclaiming the skills to tend to dying and endings of all kinds and democratising a community‑centred approach being alongside dying people.
Together, we’ll explore how death wisdom can be brought back into the heart of our days — to better support our loved ones, ourselves, and our communities.
In a world obsessed with solutions, youth, and avoiding endings, this work invites us to make space for dying and grief in our lives — and to remember that death, too, belongs to the living.
Course Details
Duration: 6 months
Format:
• 6 in‑person gatherings (one full day each)
• 6 topic-focused online sessions
• Optional drop‑in Zoom calls for support
Dates:
In-Person (Sundays, 9:30am–4:00pm)
Feb 8 · Mar 1 · Apr 12 · May 10 · Jun 7 · Jul 12
Online (Mondays, 7:00–9:00pm)
Feb 23 · Mar 16 · Apr 27 · May 25 · Jun 22 · Jul 20
Location: Petersfield / Clanfield (UK)
Group size: Limited to 12 participants
Contributions:
Sliding scale: £200-£400 – pay what you can. Please feel free to be in touch to talk about money. If the suggested contribution is a barrier to you joining, we can talk about ways we can work together.
Fees include all sessions and shared lunches
Why This Work Matters
Expanding Conversations, Expanding Choices
We’ll practise having the hard and meaningful conversations about death and grief — bringing more understanding and choice to our own dying time and to those we love.
Faithful Endings in Troubled Times
Learning to face death with reverence and grief teaches us how to meet not only our personal mortality but also the wider endings of our ecological and cultural times.
Over six months we’ll explore the practical, emotional, and cultural aspects of death, dying, and grief.
What We’ll Explore
Conversations that Matter
– Speaking about death and dying with honesty and care
– Making space for grief in families and communities
– Meeting taboo, silence, and discomfort with presence
Caring for the Dying
– Practical ways to support someone in their dying time
– The work of being alongside — physically, emotionally and mentally
– Dignity, choice, and facing endings
Grief and the Things We Leave Behind
– Grief as a skill and a teacher
– The emotional life of belongings and legacy
– Sorting, remembering, and letting go
Ceremony and Story
– Designing meaningful funerals and working outside the system
– Honouring endings through ritual and beauty-making
– Tending our ancestors and remembering
Culture, Death and the Times We’re In
– Death phobia and euphemism in modern life
– Suicide, shame, and unspoken deaths
– The myth of progress and the humility of limits
– Grief and praise as practices of deep living
Each session weaves practical guidance, reflection, story, and shared wisdom — so you leave not only with ideas, but with skills carried into your life and community.
How We Learn
We learn slowly, in companionship — through in-person gatherings, around firelight, in the woods, in the kitchen, and online — listening, reading, crafting, speaking stories aloud, tending small rituals, and learning from the land.
I accompany people in their dying time, and that experience shapes the way this school is held — with reverence, spaciousness, and a clear-eyed tenderness.
This is not therapy or coaching.
It is cultural remembering, ritual craft, and communal study.
My Approach & Lineage
This work is shaped by years of accompanying people through their dying times, crafting funerals, gathering communities, and tending grief in the woods and around the hearth. My study has been long and varied — myth, ritual, ancestral practice, woodland tending, and the teachings of elders who speak of death with courage and clarity. Nothing here is theoretical. It is all lived, practiced, and woven together now into this offering.
Suggested Reading & Watching
Griefwalker
A poetic documentary about Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people (dir. Tim Wilson). Available online.
Better Off Dead
BBC One documentary (May 2024) with Liz Carr, exploring assisted suicide and disability rights. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Die Wise – A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul
By Stephen Jenkinson (North Atlantic Books)
The Smell of Rain on Dust
By Martin Prechtel — floweringmountain.com
Please get in touch if you have trouble accessing any of these.
Get in Touch
If this work resonates with you, you can sign up here: https://forms.gle/sj2Wtc7WuRifE9JP7
Or if you’d like to talk about whether this is the right time for you to join, I’d love to hear from you:
Emma Collins
emmafcollins@gmail.com
07736 435553