Online Zoom Conference: Watching With The Dying: Love in a Time of Transition.
Date: Sunday 13 September 2026.
Time: 5pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be six talks, each of 25 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
FiléDia (Phyllida Anam Aire):
Bio: Phyllida Anam-Áire is a grandmother, a former Irish nun, author, poet and therapist.
She has worked extensively with the sick and dying and has just finished her 5th book.
Now at 82 years of age, she is truly in love with her beautiful life and grateful for it too.
Phyllida lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Speakers:
Laura Shreenan:
Title: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying: A Vision Whose Time Has Come.
Description: Death is the one appointment none of us will miss. Yet most of us will arrive at it unprepared, afraid, and alone in our fear and as a society, we do almost everything in our power to avoid thinking about it, planning for it, or speaking honestly about it until we have no choice. The cost of that avoidance is enormous, and we pay it not only at the end of life, but throughout it.
Laura Shreenan has spent decades walking alongside people in the most significant moments of their lives and their deaths. Drawing on experience across ministry, social care, community development, and end-of-life work, and on a personal journey that has taken her from fierce opposition to becoming an advocate for assisted dying and the right to self-deliverance as an ethical and deeply human right, she brings to this session both hard-won wisdom and an unapologetic sense of hope that a good death is possible for all who would embrace it.
Bio: Laura Shreenan (nee Gobbett) was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and now makes her home in the north-east of Scotland. Married to Colin, a Glaswegian, she is a mother of three biological sons and an informally adopted Zimbabwean son, and a proud grandmother. Colin is her second husband and so she also has 3 stepchildren and 3 step-grandchildren.
Her professional life has taken her across an unusually wide terrain: general office administration, church ministry, midwifery, counselling, social care, health coordination, community development, funeral work, advocacy and end-of-life planning. She now works as one of 3 hands on self-employed directors of a Scottish Community Interest Company called Community Connectors (www.communityconnectors.uk) based in Forres, Morayshire and as a freelance end-of-life coordinator, programme provider, with a deep conviction that we need the restoration of elderhood to its rightful place as a valued and meaningful season of human life - and to giving voice to those at the end of it. She is pro-life, pro-choice, pro-human and pro-freedom!
Laura currently holds a central belief around death which is that how we relate to death shapes how fully we are able to live our life - and that our society urgently needs spaces where both can be done well. It is out of that belief that her most ambitious vision and work is now emerging alongside her husband, and friend and colleague Susie Kemp.
Alannu-Doris Hogger:
Title: Watching with the Dying – Love in Time of Transition.
Description: Being with others in times of transition requires self care and unconditional love.
Bio: I am a healer, bereavement counselor and alternative practitioner (psychotherapy). I have attended various retreats, courses and trainings given by Phyllida Anam-Áire since 2008, both in Germany and Scotland, to include “Teachings from the Cauldron,“ The Biology of Dying“ and Expressive therapy. I also trained at the Center for Psychotraumatology and Traumatherapy Lower Saxony (ZTPN), at the Forum Gilching e.V. and Annabrunn Hospice Association in Germany.
I now accompany dying people in their transition time as a volunteer hospice worker – and I am aware of how important it is to care for myself in this deep soul work. I will share some personal experiences with dying people that have graced my own life deeply.
Anáire:
Title: Naturally Soul: Holding Space at the Sacred Threshold.
Description: Spiritual Integrity is such an important part of end of life care (a term that is currently used within the Health Care system to describe the sacred transition from life to death).
How do we know our loved ones are being cared for in a way that supports their own spiritual needs? And why is this so important?
Who will step up and be Agents of Change? And What does “Love” look and feel like when one is standing at the Threshold of Death?
These are all questions that many have asked over the decades. Yet the systems remain static in the way we hold space for the dying.
Now is a perfect time to open up to the possibilities of change. Let us hold space for the emergence of the new.
Bio: With over 30 years of experience as a Specialist Nurse and Therapist working with the dying, Anáire has watched with the dying as an Anam Áire, and a Celtic Soul Midwife and Doula. She believes her deepest teachings were from her own experiences from a very young age, transitioning her into the role of Midwife and Doula. She honours the life and death experience and is devoted to the path of SOULFUL living.
Susan Roslyn Kemp:
Title: Love Will Take Us All The Way: Being the Bridge at the Time of Transition.
Description: I'll explore being the bridge of love, grace, and consciousness for the people I have loved while together we lived through the sacred time of embracing the spiral journey and the letting go and dropping of the body. There is being the bridge to others such as carers, nurses, doctors, friends and also a bridge to the more sensitive realms, as my loved ones moved towards passing from this plane to another. When we love someone we respect them and I'll talk about the fine balancing of being an advocate/bridge and taking practical action or non-action for them and for myself.
Bio: Susan is in the process of finding coherence through integration and acceptance of what is. She is in a state of becoming and strives for a return to compassion, grace, simplicity, and love over and over again, trusting in the beauty of transmutation. She is currently working with Consciousness of the Waters and playing with sound and frequency healing.
Born and brought up in South Africa, Susan has lived and worked and loved in the Findhorn and Forres area since 1997. The land of Scotland, particularly Moray, the Findhorn peninsula, beach and the Findhorn River has given her many gifts and insights. Susan has in the past attended the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, and still gains much from that experience. Susan is an explorer in consciousness, a wordsmith, communicator, writer, book editor, community worker, helping to build a parallel society, and has worked in various healing modalities such as kinesiology, massage, Tibetan energy healing, etc. The rising of Celtic consciousness and the awakening of the Shining Ones in the Sacred Land and Waters of Scotland is close to her heart.
Nancy MacMillan:
Title: The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones Through Dying, Death and Beyond.
Description: Through stories of being up close to dying and death, Canadian author Nancy MacMillan writes and speaks of following the ancient wisdom of “learning to die before you die,” finding a seaworthy passage to the otherworld. She’s discovered that when we work with our fears, we open the door to where nature, myth, dreams, ancestors, and those yet to be born whisper from the far shore, a place beyond our last breath. Caring for our dying can be a transformative act, radical even, restoring meaning to our place and purpose in the universe. Nancy speaks about how the practice of caring for the dead can help both those grieving and the newly crossed over. Healing and closure can be brought about through the process of washing and preparing a body for a home vigil or funeral—a ritual she provided for her own mother. In tending her mother’s long dying time, she awakened to the ever-present help of her ancestors. And through dreams and synchronicities she was led to discovering her rich Celtic/Scottish ancestral roots, and a place of belonging.
Bio: Nancy MacMillan is a grandmother, a registered psychotherapist and former multi-faith Chaplain with Master’s degrees in education and theology, plus experience working in palliative care, intensive care, geriatrics, and bereavement. She lives amongst the woods and lakes of Ontario, Canada. Her great-great-great-grandmother was Lady Mary Cameron, the subject of the new book The Glen Nevis Rose: Lady Mary Cameron of Glen Nevis and the Rose She Took to the New World by Ewen Cameron and Vee Walker. Nancy’s own book “The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones through Dying, Death, and Beyond,” with a Forward by Robert Sardello, is now available through all major booksellers.
Her writing can be followed on: nancymacmillan.substack.com
Sólasan IoB Elina von Herzklang:
Title: Love in a Time of Transition.
Description: Love in a time of Transition - invites me always to a deeper experience and exploration of „What do people mean, when mentioning love. And what do I really mean. And how do I live in this love.“ With curiosity and the willingness to learn, with an open mind and a spirit of gratitude meet the deathing one in the field between right and wrong.
With Rituals and with Sound, I support myself and invite the deathing one to integrate their individual experiences in Earth this lifetime and find yet more reasons to love theirself, to forgive, to celebrate, to honour themselves.
Bio: Sólasan Initiate of Brigid (born Elina Krüger), a grandmother, birthing and deathing doula. A researcher into natural ways of living in harmony with herself, others and our cosmic clan, the 13 signs of the zodiac, including the ‘Shake Bearer’. As a singer-songwriter, poet and storyteller, she is curious about life in all its forms. Sólasan is a priestess and initiate of the Irish goddess Brigid. Her devotion is to be a guardian and teacher of the Gutha (Celtic mantras) and to integrate the lost parts of herself hidden in her own shadow, to BE peace and choose every action out of freedom and love. As a NDE experiencer she values her incarnation as a precious gift.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Booking: By Paypal or Bank Transfer.
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
If you are having a difficulty paying by Paypal, then you can pay by bank transfer instead.
NB: you must also email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so we can send you the Zoom sign-in details.
Here are the bank transfer details:
Account Name: Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace
Bank: Bank of Scotland
Bank Address: Edinburgh Royal Mile Branch
Account Number: 06131159
Sort Code: 802000
Some international transfers also ask for an IBAN number:
The IBAN number:
GB70 BOFS 8020 0006 1311 59
BIC:
BOFSGB21168