About Sacred Earth Funerals
The only independent female led funeral home on the Far North Coast NSW.
A return to holistic death care traditions
Bespoke
Personal
Professional
Sacred Earth Funerals was created as a community focused alternative to the profit driven commercialism of the funeral industry. We are dedicated to providing a very personal and unique end-of-life practise that profoundly honours the deceased and provides a powerful comfort to family and loved ones.
We return to the wisdom traditions that were once accessible to our communities when caring for our dying and our dead. As such, we provide a complete range of end-of-life services, including any type of funeral, vigils and wakes, end-of-life planning and a Death Doula service which offers profound emotional, spiritual and practical support for the dying.
Our motivation
Sacred Earth Funerals hold true that our society’s collective apprehension and fears around death underlie nearly all personal anxieties. Further, that we can overcome the death taboo by reclaiming our traditions in being with our dying – our loved ones and ourselves.
For millennia, our ancestors accompanied their dying loved ones to the threshold. No one should die in fear or alienation. All of life is a precious gift and dying is courageous work, we learn much from those who go before us. With awareness of our finitude, we can create the best conditions for our own end of life now.
The Sacred Earth Funerals philosophy
We passionately believe that by emphatically embracing and talking openly about the end-of-life journey, we can once again normalise death as the final rite of life.
We understand that an imminent or recent death is a profoundly life-changing experience. We are here to guide and nurture you through this difficult time with our transparent and informative approach to end-of-life care.
We believe in the capacity of community to embrace the fear of death and transform it into a powerful compassion and presence for those at the end of life.
Sacred Earth Funerals upholds 4 cornerstones of service in all that we offer to our community:
- We maintain healing death-care traditions
- We create funeral ceremonies that honour and celebrate life and integrate loss
- We are focused on authentic connection and grief healing practices for families in our care
- We offer a continuum of care; pre-death to after-death care and final disposition.
Our Wonderful Team
Sacred Earth Funerals is a holistic Northern Rivers, 100% Australian, family funeral home.
The Sacred Earth team are all genuine life-experienced and compassionate people, committed to connecting to our wonderful community through service. Our network of affiliated, passionate end-of-life carers include funeral professionals, creators of ceremony, death doulas and other professionals ready to be of service to our community.
Our Staff
About Mimi - Founder
Mimi trained in Spiritual End of Life Care at age 18 and worked in the Palliative Care ward of St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney. At that time, the ward was full of people dying with AIDS and she was profoundly affected by the suffering and grief with which many people were dying, due mainly to the emotional isolation of being completely unprepared for their own deaths.
Since then she has worked in the funeral industry as funeral director, celebrant of sacred passages, and End of Life Doula. Her current role is as Director of Sacred Earth Funerals. Her specific interests are the emotional preparation that is required as we chart the territory that brings us into conscious awareness of our own mortality and the finitude of our precious lives.
Mimi studied Bachelor of Communication UWS and Bachelor of Naturopathy SCU and offers workshops in Home Funerals, after death care, ACDs & making meaning of Life and Death, and Grief as an initiation into a deeper life experience.
About Greg
Greg has a background in the armed services and welfare of ex-service people before finding his calling at Sacred Earth Funerals.
Greg aims to provide the best end of life care for the deceased and their families and friends in their time of loss and grief.
He believes that this is achieved by bringing back the old traditions and rituals and practises which existed before the rise of the modern funeral industry.
Greg has a deep concern people’s feelings and the welfare of others, and Sacred Earth Funerals has given Greg the opportunity to empathise with people, truly listen to their stories and help them work with their grief to come to terms with their loss by providing the best funeral care possible.
About Bernie
Bernie, at a grand 90 years of age, is a wonderful and dedicated member of our team. He began his career in funerals very near beginnings of the funeral industry on the Far North Coast NSW way back in the late 1960s.
Bernie’s ethos is the same now as it was then.
The most important role of the Funeral Director is to help navigate the after death process for the family, and make it as easy and gentle as possible.
He understands that people are in such a difficult position when they first come through our doors, deeply grieving the death of their loved one.
His role is to provide families with options that exceed what they had hoped for.
Bernie himself has felt the pain of loss of his own beautiful life partner, so he has boundless compassion to share with everyone.
About Kelly
Over the last 28 years, my nursing career has taken me in many directions and has offered me such diverse opportunities. What I found most fulfilling was my time in Palliative Care.
Recent personal experiences have made visible to me again the significance of end-of-life care and death awareness. I wholeheartedly believe that every person has the right to knowledge and agency that supports personal choice in dying, and that loved ones deserve meaningful, compassionate support through the soul stirring end of life transition.
The roles of Funeral Assistant with Sacred Earth Funerals and Death Doula allow me to support those effected by death and dying (all of us), to offer meaningful, compassionate and whole hearted care; it is a privilege to walk beside you in this very important time and invite conversations and decision making that acknowledges fear and worry, and invites hope and possibility through the natural process of dying.
About Abbey
I have had many different jobs in my life but my soul has always longed for more meaningful work. I’ve wanted to be not only useful but to offer heartfelt service to my community.
Through my own experiences with loss and grief I have learned that working with grieving families is where I feel most authentic.
With Mimi and the Sacred Earth team, I have been blessed to join a movement that steadfastly refuses to put profit at the forefront of death care but instead seeks to take us back to a relationship with death that is not fearful or alienating.
Death is an inevitable part of life, I don’t shy away from that but losing a loved one is nonetheless a time of great sadness and grief and what families need most is to be held lovingly and supported gently at their own pace through what follows.
What drives me and guides me is the desire to truly make a positive impact on how families experience the death of a loved one.
I feel privileged and blessed to be given the opportunity to walk this path.
About Lavender
Lavi the Funeral Dog.
The most beatiful, intuitive and gentle natured guardian of the bereaved.
R.I.P. dear sweet soul
