As we enter 2023 I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone the happiest of new years. Whatever this year has in store for us, I hope we're all able to meet it with strength, courage, resolve and good humour.
2022 was a fantastic year for me! After a COVID-enforced false start, my Humanist Celebrant training finally got underway at the start of the year and within months I had passed the assessment which allowed me to deliver naming ceremonies. Having now delivered a number of these in different settings I can honestly say I love doing them. You never quite know what the wee ones are going to get up to on the day, and that just adds to the fun!
I hope to do more in 2023, and this year I would dearly love to help a trans person celebrate their new authentic self by working with them to deliver a naming ceremony, surrounded by their friends and family.
The summer of 2022 saw me shadowing many of my celebrant colleagues as I prepared to be assessed to add the conducting and solemnisation of weddings to my repertoire. I was over the moon when I qualified to be this in September and I'm absolutely delighted that my diary for 2023 (and 2024!) is now rapidly filling with bookings. I've been privileged to meet some truly lovely couples over the past few months, and am very much looking forward to getting them hitched over the coming months and years.
The picture at the top of this post shows me with the fabulous Maria and Razgar, whose wedding I conducted at the stunning House For An Art Lover in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park a few days before Christmas. Such a lovely venue, and I particularly enjoyed the opportunity of speaking a little Swedish during the ceremony! Jätta brå, faktiskt!
Over the past three months I have been preparing for my assessment to allow me to conduct funerals by shadowing a number of these, as well as going along with my celebrant colleagues to meet with families in preparation for the funerals of their loved ones. This was always the aspect of being a Humanist Celebrant which appealed to me most prior to the start of my training. I can honestly say that it is such a privilege to be able to sit with families at such a difficult time, and to listen to them and elicit the story of their loved one's life so that it can be shared with their family and friends in a warm and respectful way during the funeral. I have long held the belief that a funeral should be a celebration of someone's life, and that will very much be my approach to conducing funerals. I hope to complete my assessment within the next few weeks, at which point I will be fully qualified to deliver all of the ceremonies required of me as a Humanist Celebrant.
I'm looking forward to seeing what opportunities 2023 brings with huge excitement and a very open mind, much as I was at the beginning of 2022 - the difference being that I am now a busy full-time Humanist Celebrant, and I'm loving it every bit as much as I hoped I would!
May 2023 bring everything that you hope for, and more!
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