Do you know why I became a Celebrant?

joyaneal
Feb 19
5 min read

Updated: Feb 20

There’s always a story behind why we do the work we do. Especially those of us who work in vocational roles that feel more like a ‘calling’ than a ‘job’.

So this is my story……..

Joy Neal, holding a print which says 'choose joy'

Back in 2016 I met a wild woman. She was my first and only Instagram friend who became an IRL friend.

She’d just moved to Kent and messaged me to say “I don’t know anyone here – do you want to hang out?”

We bonded over a love of beaches and VW camper vans, and the intensity of the early years of mothering tiny people.

She had a loud laugh and a huge smile, and she was fiercely opinionated (and always right!) about everything!

She was joyful, unpredictable, often confrontational, and charmingly outrageous!

Full of energy, audacity, ideas and schemes, a naturally charismatic leader with a huge heart and an unwavering belief in herself, who never stopped fighting for what she believed was right.

Her two great passions were the environment, and her babies.

I have never known anyone more besotted by her children,

or more tireless in her campaigning.

She was definition of 'eco warrior', spear-heading the zero-waste and plastic-free campaigns in her town. She was a sender of thoughtful cards and thrifted gifts. The kind of woman whose perfect weekend involved beach litter picking, browsing charity shops and good wine!

(And she was a force of nature who wouldn't hesitate to challenge me if she caught me using cling film or travelling without a reusable coffee cup!)

Ours was a friendship forged through muddy walks in the rain with babies and toddlers on our backs, summer picnics, thermoses of coffee in playgrounds, chips on the beach, foraging in the Kent countryside, and swapping photos of our sourdough triumphs and disasters!

I never saw her without her kids and mine, it was 2 years into our friendship before I even knew her surname (!), we rarely managed to finish a sentence, we never met each other’s partners, and we never went to the pub – instead, we’d text photos of 5pm G&T’s and commiserations on the exhaustingness of tea-time chaos and feeding picky eaters.

But despite all the unfinished conversations, we went deep - in the way that women’s friendships do when you meet a fellow over-sharer, with whom you can navigate the highs and lows of motherhood. And figure out who you are, in this new world where you’re suddenly defined by being someone’s mum.

She had big dreams of the places she’d take her kids and the eco-businesses she’d build just as soon as breast-feeding/potty-training/sleepless nights/toddlers/lockdowns were less all-consuming!

But, in the end, she never made it past those all-consuming early years. She never fulfilled all those big dreams.She never got to watch her babies grow into the amazing people that she knew they’d become, and to see the fruit of all the love she had poured into them.

She was diagnosed with late-stage bowel cancer just before Christmas 2021and died 4 months later.

It snowed on the day of her funeral - in April.

It was the kind of unseasonally wrong weather that felt appropriate for the utter wrongness of her death.

Her funeral was led by a celebrant, who’d clearly done her research and who did her best.

But she was ill-equipped to hold space for the depth of grief and shock in the room.

The broken husband trying to be strong for his kids.

The shattered children in the front row - wide-eyed and overwhelmed by all the people watching them.

The other parents facing the heartbreaking reality that not everyone gets to see their kids grow up.

The crowds of friends and fellow campaigners – standing room only – trying to make sense of it all.

The unimaginable horror of the most ‘alive’ person we could imagine being…...dead.

I couldn’t bear to stay at the wake, so I headed home, via a café where I stopped for a coffee and to write in my journal.

I needed some time alone to cry and rage and grieve before re-entering family life and trying to act ‘normal’ for my own kids while my heart was breaking over the shattering implications of my friend’s death for her little ones.

And as I sat there in the corner feeling angry and sad, and frustrated by the failure of a traditional funeral ceremony to capture her vibrancy and essence - I heard my friends voice in my head.

She said ‘You should do that job. You should be a celebrant’

I had never considered being a celebrant.

But it was so clear.

So assertive and bold and so HER.

She had always been direct. Insistent. Bossy some might say.

( And I said later - only half joking - that I was pretty sure that she’d haunt me forever if I didn’t at least look into it!)

And so I did.

Faced with the evidence that life is too short and too unpredictable not to follow my heart, and the prompts I was being sent, I decided to go for it.

There and then in the café I wrote in my journal ‘I think I’m going to be a funeral celebrant’……And I started googling how to do that!

By the time I made it home, I had manifested a whole new, unexpected path.

A few months later I closed my baking business, went on a residential training course and launched my celebrant business ‘Joyful Celebrancy’.

And that was the first step into a new career which uses all the skills and experiences I’d collected over the years and continues to bring me great joy, connection and satisfaction.

I hope that my beautiful friend would be glad. This print she gave me says ‘choose joy’ and that has become a mantra – even in the saddest of situations - and always makes me think of her!

The summer after she died her local friends organised a fabulous celebration of her life on the beach which was the kind of send-off she’d have approved of!

Recently I had the privilege of working with another widow with young children, and I felt her presence so profoundly as I helped that grieving family create an alternative funeral ceremony which gently included and encompassed everyone, and held space for all their goodbyes.

The week before my friend died I sent her this poem ‘If I ever have to leave you, Love’ by Donna Ashworth.

I hope that her family know this to be true……

If I ever have to leave you Love,

Please know I didn’t choose it.

You were my every waking thought,

My world, I wouldn’t lose it.