Kirstie Celebrant

07/07/2025

Just me having a minute of gratitude xx

02/07/2025

Happy Wednesday kids, the sun's out and those of us with the privilege to scroll through the world's thoughts are all breathing in and out. We're starting on a good foot.

I'm obsessed with language.
With the words we use.
Further evidence of the suitability of my work.

This jumped out at me.
There's an inherent judgement in the phrase 'move on'.
It implies a sense of throwing away or discarding.

Anyone who finds a fulfilling relationship after the one they were in shifted because the person they most loved stopped breathing is honouring their person. Not discarding them.

I've spoken many times about how I would hope that M would find another love after my death.
He's a wonderful partner.
The Kindest person I know.
He's lived 21 years (so far) at my side, he seems to quite like it, and I'd want him to have someone at his side still if it could no longer be me.

And that's the key.

One of my most favourite friends became a widow in her early 50s.
She never wanted her relationship to end.
She loves him still now just as much as she loved him whilst he breathed.
If his breath had continued they would still be together.
But it didn't.

I spoke to someone recently who had just experienced the death of a lifelong friend. They were in that phase of rage.
The bit in which they look at other less-'good' humans and fume that their breath continues.
They were especially cross at their prediction that the partner of this friend would 'move on'.

I suggested that perhaps (should this be the case, this person finding another love in their life) they might think of it as the ultimate honouring of their friend.
They've known real beautiful love. They'd like that to carry on accompanying their breathing which now continues.

Having other love doesn't lessen existing love.
That's the magic.
Parents who go on to love a second child (or a third, or a ninth) don't love their first any less.

If anything they love them more.

Just a midweek ramble to spark your synapses.

Sending love x

Ps are you following our Dead Positive socials yet? All the cool kids are x

28/06/2025

Hello you delightful phone folks.

Never one who might be accused of hastiness, here (maybe 2 months later than promised) is the link for you to acquire a paperback copy of one final act of LOVE.

In kindness to myself it has been an unbelievably hectic 2 months.
By choice like.
No one's making me do this.

Have a gorgeous day, I'm sending love xx

We all want to make things easier for those we're closest to when we come to the end of our breathing years. one final act of LOVE. is the perfect first step towards doing just this. Through a unique blend of practical considerations and anecdotal experiences, one final act of LOVE. will hold you...

25/06/2025

Hello.
I was just giving up on Wednesday for this week when the sky outside my window stopped me in my tracks.

I've never understood the way so many people feel a clear blue sky is the ideal.

Look at the chunky promise of this sky.

Anything is possible up there.

Sweet sleep precious folks x

21/06/2025

Hello sweet faces. Celebrating the solstice by intentionally trying to take today slowly ... we'll see how well that goes.

Also celebrating the legends of Dead Good Legacies

So grateful to them for sharing these screen-snapshots of their relationship with their dad. [It's clear that a large number of animals were impacted in the creation of those texts 🤣]

Sharing the irreverent humour of their interactions is such a generous thing to do.

None of us need permission to take the p**s out of death, but lots of us may need the permission to be honest that this is what we do.

It's a way of coping that those closest to someone often find comfort in, but that those a little further away often feel shocked by.

It also made me think of how grief might be impacted by the presence of an archive of communication.
I live like you do, in a world of voice notes, face time, videos in my pocket.
I am, like you are, never far from a camera and a gallery of images that prompt memories at the touch of a screen.

When my dad died in 1993 I had never even heard of a text. All the phones we owned were plugged into the walls of our house. We had a cine camera which my dad was always behind. It didn't do audio.

I wonder how either having this archive or only having a handful of still images impacts grief.

Would it be easier if I could hear my dad's voice? Or is it better that I can no longer remember how he sounds?

I do have one piece of communication. It's a small rectangle of paper. On it, in my dad's neat capital-letter print (remember, pre mobile phone, capitals weren't shouty, they were just clear) it says
"Please can you get a nice card for mum?"

An instruction I still try to follow.

Sending love and of course welcoming your thoughts too, as always.

Give the women of Dead Good a follow too, you won't regret it xx

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14FG259kxot/

19/06/2025

Today's the day 🥰

As every professional event planner knows, the day always begins with filling a vase with builders' sand using a toddlers' trowel that's 15 years old.

Standard.

It'll all be magical by tonight, promise.

Looking forward to seeing lots of you later for a gorgeous Midsummer Pause.

Sending love x obvs x

18/06/2025

With each day that passes I grow more confident that embracing the inevitably of death is the key to unlocking the true happiness of life.

Nice when someone else agrees. Especially when they agree in The Guardian.

It's too big to tell ourselves that we should embrace each day as if it's our last. The likelihood that this is true is really very small. Instead, as an experiment today try to notice the inhales.

Sending love x

I felt peace flood over me as I realised I no longer needed to seek validation from others. Rather than saying yes to everything, I became more open, present and patient

17/06/2025

Aarrgghg!! Absolute clickbait heightery of utter scaremongering bo****ks.

The language!
The inferences!
The unnecessary fear triggering headline.

Right! I'm on one now.

It's alkaline hydrolysis.
It's gentler on the environment than flame cremation.
It uses water to reduce bodies to bone fragment which are then made in to ashes to be returned to people.
Just like the cremation none of us now blink at, but less harmful to the planet that the breathing folk still need to live on.

There is nothing to fear here. Nothing.

Just the next step forward in technology since we all clutched our pearls over the utter horror of the suggestion of cremation in the 1880s.

Think what else has changed in the past almost 150 years.

Things change and scaring the bejeezuz out of folk for no reason is unimaginative, boring and unnecessary.

Wait til they click on that terramation is on its way too 🫣
I could write the headlines now.

Any questions will be answered openly and honestly at my earliest opportunity... fire away (or don't actually ... splash away? is that better?) xx

15/06/2025

There are approximately 650,000 worse ways to spend an hour this week.

I counted them.

Come and join us. Promise we'll lift your heart x

08/06/2025

Hey there you!
If you saw my post on Friday night you'll be thrilled to hear that the crying theme has continued into the weekend. There's an explanatory ramble, obvs ...

These are my bonus days.

22 days ago I passed what was for me a threshold. I became the age at which my dad died. 49 years and 10 months exactly.

I've decided therefore that these are my bonus days. Days I'll live for us both. Days which I will spend just leaning in to whatever that day is.

The days which are windy like today I'll consciously notice the leaves. The days on which my heart says that my mind and body have had enough for now thank you, I'll spend slowly and with kindness giving myself permission to stop.

I've never been more excited for a new age. 50 doesn't scare me at all. 50 is where I am meant to be. New territory which my dad never got to see which I will explore and relish for us both.

When I turned 49 I wrote a list. It's a list of random things I realised I'd never done and quite fancied doing. I had intended to do all the things on the list before my next birthday. I have ticked many things off, but the list keeps growing. It's now a fluid list of things which I will do as soon as the opportunity arises.

There's nothing especially extravagant on the list. To give an example one thing was to do a painting by numbers, another to sing karaoke.
I have no desire to travel the world. I love my life as it is, pain and all.

Another thing on the list was to see a live performance at The Piece Hall. If you've never been there it's a must. It's in Halifax. It's the world's only surviving Georgian cloth hall. It's genuinely a breathtaking architectural gem just perched there right in the town casually being awesome alongside car parks and Burger King and Markses.

The universe agreed that it was something I needed to do and so sent my favourite to see live band to perform there last night.

It'll shock no one to hear that our favourite James album is Le Petit Mort, it's an album about death. We played it to death when Elkie was little and our favourite track is the one pasted here Moving On.

Without any sense of over inflating myself, this album is what I try to make my funerals... they acknowledge and accept heartbreak where it exists, remind us all that we are indelibly linked by our beating hearts, that the energy of those heartbeats is the never ceasing pulse of our lives, that there is pure joy and uplift to be found in sharing pain and memories and holding space for the love and the good times.

The song is about the experience of being with someone as they die. Last night this was their second track. It was introduced with an explanation of how Tim Booth experienced his mother's death.

"It was quite clearly a birth"

The video here played on the screen behind as me and my two favourites sang our hearts out and cried. We've a lot to cry about. We've a lot to joyfully sing our hearts out over too.

Apparently the video is used in hospices to help explain death to children.
Perhaps it helps to just explain death.

Anyway, it's beautiful and I wanted to share it with you.

Sending love x

Ps I have post-gig throat

First single from the new James album La Petite Mort, out 2 June.Buy the album from http://wearejames.com and receive an instant download of 'Moving On' and ...

06/06/2025

Such a profoundly beautiful experience that all correct grammar went out the window.

Just to clarify I actually did NOT literally cry my leg off. Not literally.

Astonishing though x

23/02/2025

It's National Funeral Planning Awareness Week which, in all honesty, is news that was brand new to me this morning. Any excuse though, eh?

Could I start the week asking for a small favour please? Would you be able to share my page?

Each week I seem to have a conversation with a new person who has been in someway disappointed or frustrated by their experience of a funeral. Sometimes it's been 'fine' but in the breathing space which has followed 'fine' hasn't really felt good enough.

Every week someone will say that they wish they'd known about all the options in advance.

In indulging in a little share you'll be helping me to spread the word so that more people can look back at the funerals they've organised with that real sense of rightness.

It's absolute gold to feel that you've done the right thing. And an absolute balm to your relationship with your grief and your ongoing relationship with the person who has died.

Thanking you and sending love as always x