Heather Martel
Navigation support for dying & death
Change is the only constant. We can learn to be like water.
We can work with life’s little deaths as preparation for the inevitable.
I offer counselling around practical matters and guided practices to support the more subtle aspects of dying, death, and life changes – along with the grief that often accompanies.
Shaped by countless teachers including Eastern Ontario’s seasonal changes, Fundy tidal rhythms, and the movement of breath, my approach is informed by nature-based and transpersonal perspectives. As much as these shared explorations can be therapeutic, I am neither a psychologist nor psychotherapist.
Grounded in creativity, playful curiosity, and compassion for our human predicament, my work is inspired by these ideas:
Contemplating dying and post-mortem processes helps us understand the timelines and decisions involved. This offers an opportunity to align actions with core values and move at a pace more in tune with subtle needs.
Much like a birth plan, we can consider what is important, have key conversations, and make arrangements to help support certain outcomes. This process can also illuminate areas of our life in need of greater tending.
Intentionally engaging with cycles of dying, death, and rebirth exercises our muscles of surrender. This increases our capacity to stay present with the fundamental nature of change, uncertainty, and suffering.
Get in Touch
In order to remain fully present, I work with one or two people at a time. Please reach out and we’ll arrange a call to discuss your circumstances. If your needs are outside my scope or capacity, I can offer a referral to a trusted practitioner.
I’m also available to answer questions and share resources via email. Please do not hesitate to get in touch, especially if you do not know where to begin.
Thank you!
“This (being with dying) is the work of a village, the work everyone should know how to do. We need to develop the skills of non-dual caregiving, we need to develop skills of healing as non-professional healers.”
Roshi Joan Halifax
Course of Life
After early encounters with loss and grief, Stephen Levine’s A Year to Live experiment found me in 2009 and introduced a daily rhythm of death contemplation, a practice I have maintained ever since. In the years that followed, I pursued self-directed learning from pioneers in the field of conscious dying and family-led deathcare. This path led me to certification in 2016 through Donna Belk’s Beyond Hospice End-of-Life & Home Funeral Guide program.
My subsequent experiences in caregiving continued to deepen and broaden my understanding. Working as a health care aide in long-term care and hospice offered me a practical understanding of the physical realities of caregiving. Meanwhile, training with The Centre for Sacred Deathcare expanded my awareness of subtle energy practices for grief and healing. Later, The Living/Dying Project’s Conscious Living, Conscious Dying program brought things full circle, strengthening my initial draw to “caregiving as non-dual practice”.
Since 2019, I’ve supported Community Deathcare Ottawa with communications and event planning. Through this work, I continue to build relationships with local practitioners and participate in educational discussions around death preparation and family-led deathcare. These connections have further informed my understanding of the ways individuals, families, and communities can approach death with greater awareness and intention.
My work as a death doula brings together all of these experiences, alongside skills honed through careers in customer service, event coordination, and university academic counselling. In addition, my lived experience with parental caregiving and supporting my partner through a career in funeral services has shaped my understanding of the practical and personal dimensions of care. Nearly two decades of meditation and transpersonal exploration have also provided a strong foundation for my work – one that I continue to deepen as an ongoing source of insight and support.
Throughout all this, I’ve come to appreciate the many ways we can draw from the well in times of grief, joy, and everything in between. The practices that have shaped my own path of remembering are thoughtfully woven into my offerings, always guided by each person’s needs, preferences, and openness.
At the heart of this work is the belief that one of the most compassionate things we can do for ourselves and each other is to face our mortality and make space for death in everyday life.
“There is probably nothing more direct that you and I can do to bring our planet and our society back into balance than deal with our fundamental, unexamined, collective fear of death.”
RamDev Dale Borglum