On October 7, 2024 (the day I turned 70) my birthday gift to myself was to send the final draft of my memoir off to the publishers. Just before pressing the send button, I typed this wish into the preface of the book: “I want to travel the world (physically and virtually) sharing and listening to stories of continuing bonds beyond the death of the beloved people, animals, places, and other sentient beings we love.” During the past 12 months, my birthday wish is being granted again and again through so many meaningful experiences of sharing and listening, listening, listening.
In September, 2025, I was unexpectedly given a life-changing opportunity to share and listen in a very special way by participating in a day of Across the Veil Constellations.
Sarah Kerr, founder of the Centre for Sacred Death Care in Victoria, BC facilitates Across the Veil Constellations. Sarah is a renowned sacred death-care practitioner and teacher who is passionate about guiding others to find the healing gifts that can accompany death and loss. Each constellation she facilitates is a sacred, transformative ritual for learning and healing.
William Peters, founder of the Shared Crossing Project, introduced me to Sarah by email a couple of years ago but we had never met in person. When my good friend and professional celebrant Gail Peekeekoot, invited me to go to Sarah’s workshop in her place, I immediately said yes.
As soon as I said “Yes”, I felt uplifted and unnerved by an immediate recognition that – in addition to going to a group workshop – my very personal intention was to visit with my unborn child (Conceived Jan 1/73. Died late Feb/1973)
My story of continuing my loving bonds with Em is in my July 11/25 post: In Memory of our Not Yet Children).
Two days later I was at the workshop. Sarah was guiding us to represent and witness four Across the Veil Constellations offered by members of our learning community. During the one or two hours it took for each ceremonial constellation to unfold, I experienced a powerful healing and learning ritual that felt like a spiritual version of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.
But instead of being together playing out a social issue on an improvisational stage, we were together representing individual experiences with death in a sacred energetic field. Our shared goal was to resolve what is unsettled or unknown about a death and the soul’s journey through the afterlife.
Throughout the day, we all did our best to support each other to heal and learn as each complex and ever changing constellation gradually clarified and resolved. But, because I was on such a personal journey, I was out of balance with myself and with the group for the first couple of hours. Thank goodness for the helpful guidance I received for calming and quieting myself. By lunchtime, I was in the zone and feeling fully welcomed as an equally valuable contributor to our common purpose.
The fourth constellation of the day was my opportunity to get to know my unborn child, who I have named Em (for Embryo).
As I watched my personal story form into a constellation, I vacillated between being fully present in my deep, clear, strong, calm, here-and-now mature self and dissociating into my traumatized, overwhelmed, confused, intense, overly talkative, disoriented inner child. I was only 18 years old when Em died.
With everyone’s gentle guidance and support, I mostly managed to return to my body and breathe into a slow, quiet, still place of listening and witnessing with peaceful awe.
Although my answers to Sarah’s careful questions provided only the barest bones of information, I experienced and felt the unfolding of Em’s constellation as a true and accurate account of his or her journey through life, death and afterlife.
I learned that – although our unborn child remains a barely formed soul – she or he is safe, loved, and happy to be remembered, acknowledged and loved by me, his or her father, and my Mom.
The feedback from the group was that the simplicity and peace in the scene reflected the depth of the work I have done to recover my memories, reconcile with Em’s father, and come to terms with Em’s death.
Sarah has a video about another mother of another unborn child that explains how my grief had been hidden from me and everyone who loves me. Neither the tiny, not fully formed embryo baby Em OR my tiny not fully formed identity as Em’s mother had ever been acknowledged.
All that the members of the Across the Veil Constellation community did to acknowledge Em and me was healing and fulfilling. As Sarah said, everything we experienced during the unfolding of the constellation was “as real as rocks.”
Now that I know Em is so safe and so loved in what Sarah calls “the village of the ancestors”, my fear-filled grief is resolving quickly. I no longer feel as if my baby and I are forever trapped in a game of hide and seek gone wrong. I am coming back into balance with myself, returning to how I used to feel a few months ago (before I embarked on recovering my memories as a result of the letter of apology from Em’s Dad).
I am again experiencing each moment of each day clearly, calmly and mindfully. I am celebrating the music and harmonies of my spiritual system, emotional system, physical system and nervous system once again working together as an integrated whole. I am once again safe and secure, continuing my loving bonds with Em, with my Mom, with John and with everyone I love who has died.
With the help of my book, I am travelling the world virtually and in person sharing my story and listening to others’ stories about Continuing Loving Bonds.
I am an ordinary person who became extraordinarily special and magical by receiving the greatest gift there ever was which is simply to love and be loved in return. Most people in the world have also become extraordinary by fulfilling the main purpose of life which is to cultivate unconditionally loving relationships with one or more family members, friends, pets, and the more-than-human wild beings in nature. Some of us have even found intimate love with a soulmate. The outcome of deep love is deep grief. My mission is to help you transform your deep grief back into the deep love it has always been through a well researched but little known set of practices called Continuing Loving Bonds. If you haven’t already done so, I hope you will subscribe to my blog by leaving your email below. And, you can click here for more information about how to sign up for our Continuing Loving Bonds Story Sharing Circles that will begin again in October.
CONTINUING LOVING BONDS 