Welcome to my dictionary of the soul, where I inhabit the quiet, beautiful words that shape my everyday world. Read more
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Domestic rituals are the anchors that hold us steady when the world outside feels loud and fast. Read more
Book now to secure your place on our next group training via Zoom.
Celebrant Training Dates 2026
Celebrant Training with Veronika and Paul Robinson
Certificate in Celebrancy: Weddings & Namings
WHEN: Monday June 1st to Wednesday June 3rd, 9am to 5pm.
WHERE: Heart-led Zoom Room
Book now to secure your place on our next group training via Zoom.
This training will certify you to officiate all types of bonding ceremonies, such as alternative, contemporary and traditional weddings, Pagan handfasting ceremonies, micro-weddings, elopements and vow renewals, as well as baby blessings and naming ceremonies for all ages.
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Certificate in Celebrancy: Weddings and Namings
WHEN: Friday 7th August to Sunday 9th August 9am to 5pm.
WHERE: Heart-led Zoom Room
Book now, if you’d like to be part of our next group training via Zoom.
This training will certify you to officiate all types of bonding ceremonies, such as alternative, contemporary and traditional weddings, Pagan handfasting ceremonies, micro-weddings, elopements and vow renewals, as well as baby blessings and naming ceremonies for all ages.
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Certificate in Celebrancy: Bereavement Ceremonies
WHEN: Friday 11th September to Sunday 13th September, 9am to 5pm.
WHERE: Heart-led Zoom Room
Book now to secure your place on our next group training via Zoom. This training will certify you to officiate beautiful bereavement ceremonies: cremation, burial, eco-burial, interment or scattering of ashes, botanical ash scattering, mandala funerals, This-Is-Your-Life living funerals, advanced funeral planning, child funerals, suicide bereavement.
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Certificate in Celebrancy: Bereavement Ceremonies
WHEN: Wednesday 2nd December to Friday 4th December,
9am to 5pm.
WHERE: Heart-led Zoom Room
Book now to secure your place on our next group training via Zoom. Read more
Celebrant Training: Weddings and Namings
When: Friday 7th August to Sunday 9th August 9am to 5pm
(includes refreshment breaks)
Where: In our Zoom room classroom
Tutors: Veronika and Paul Robinson
Fee: £1550
(may be paid in two instalments, with balance due no later than one month before training)
Learn from the comfort of your own home, with live online training by expert tutors. Your tutor, Veronika Robinson, has more than thirty years of experience as a wedding celebrant (internationally) and will guide you, step by step, to becoming the best celebrant you can be. Co-tutor, Paul Robinson, will work with you on vocal and presentation communication.
Book now, if you’d like to be part of our next group training via Zoom. We keep our classes small for optimal learning.
This training will certify you to officiate all types of bonding ceremonies, such as alternative, contemporary and traditional weddings, Pagan handfasting ceremonies, micro-weddings and vow renewals, as well as baby blessings and naming ceremonies for all ages.
Emily and Ben’s handtying ritual in their woodland ceremony
Outdoor wedding ceremony
After the initial training on Zoom, you will have twelve weeks of portfolio work to create on the path to certification, as well as at least five sessions of one-to-one vocal coaching. You’ll be free to join our monthly CPD sessions, too.
Tuition in celebrancy with Veronika Robinson
Detailed tutor feedback on your weekly practical portfolios
One-to-one voice and presentation coaching with Paul Robinson
Detailed notes, specific to your vocal and presentation style, after each voice coaching session
Heart-led Ceremonies (book)
Guardians of the Threshold Study Guide
Workbook
Comprehensive library of training materials
1 year of back issues of The Celebrant magazine
FREE listing on the exclusive Heart-led Celebrants Directory
Monthly group CPD (various aspects of celebrancy)
Ongoing support and script appraisal
Weddings, Pagan Handfastings and Vow Renewals
Create beautiful bespoke wedding and vow renewal ceremonies
Learn the difference between handfasting ceremonies and handtying rituals
Understand the legalities of marriage law in your country
Create ceremonies ranging from traditional to alternative, religious to spiritual to humanist, to mixed faith
Write fabulous love stories!
Learn the essential elements and structure of bonding ceremonies
Narrate and choreograph beautiful bonding rituals including bespoke
Relationships with other wedding suppliers, such as wedding planners and photographers
Information-gathering techniques
Naming Ceremonies
Create, write and officiate bespoke naming ceremonies for babies, children, adults, and transgender people who wish to have their new identity formally honoured
Officiate in beautiful venues
During your training, you will learn:
How to officiate indoor and outdoor ceremonies
Create sacred space no matter what environment you’re in
The value of intention setting
Script Writing
Rituals: narrative and choreography
Presencing
Working with the Six Elements, such as Calling in the Directions
Celebrant Well-being
Understanding the role of the Community Celebrant
Voice development and coaching
The use of amplification in ceremony
Learning to be of service
The responsibilities of being a celebrant
Building your celebrant business
Establishing your celebrant business in the community
Marketing (metaphysical and mainstream)
How to be self-employed
Carrying out Health and Safety Assessments for Ceremonies
Defining what is your responsibility and what is that of your client/venue
What you’ll need for creating a website to showcase your business
For fees and further information, visit www.heartledcelebrants.com
In a world where we can feel powerless against the ruling ‘elite’ or idiot men bombing each other’s countries and displacing millions of people, we might wonder what we can do when the ground beneath our feet feels so unsteady.
Someone posed the question recently about what do you do when all around the world is going crazy?
My answer is not one of denial, but recognising where my true power lies: to keep my own corner of the world cosy. This doesn’t denote lack of care for others but honours the truth that, unless I’m at the front line or making legal choices or supporting charities who are making a logistical difference, and so on, my humanitarian efforts need to find a different way of expressing.
We are all connected; all drops of water in a large ocean. One person’s words and actions impact another, for better or worse. What is in my power is to create images of a world where all sentient beings are free from suffering. A world where kindness is always the first choice. This constant vision creates a ripple in the quantum field. When enough of us choose to engage in this level of thinking and being, the tide turns. The tipping effect comes into play. Rather than feel helpless, look at what you can do. Choose to elevate your feelings. Show kindness to strangers as well as loved ones. Rather than let flares off if someone has wronged you or you disagree (personally or professionally), breathe into your centre and allow calmness to shift the energy. We don’t have to engage in war, whether that’s home-made human dramas or on a global scale. Power comes from self control. The one thing we always have control over is how we choose to react.
It’s important to ‘fight’ for what you believe in, but you can use a gentle candle flame to illuminate rather than a gas torch which razes everything in sight.
True leadership is not oppressive or controlling but is a wayshower, a holder of the light.
I’ve long held the view that it’s not survival of the fittest but of those who can adapt. So when the world around you feels like a dystopian nightmare, bend like a willow towards utopian values of peace, equality, harmony, cooperation, fairness, sustainability, knowledge. You can let those values lead you, and others, to a kinder world.
Morning sky as viewed from my bedroom
There’s a saying that ‘charity begins at home’. I would say that so too does world peace. We don’t have to be like the so-called ‘leaders’ of this world who think it is ‘fun’ to bomb another. Why is hurting another individual (or country) considered a pleasure? How do we shift the pendulum from war to peace? By making choices that come from that place of loving kindness. That, my friend, is true leadership.
Today’s the one-year anniversary since my beautiful mother slipped from this earthly life. A year that feels like a day while also feeling like a hundred years have passed. How is that? What delusion does grief spin? I’ve just been on a video call with two of my brothers, and shared the disbelief that a whole year has passed by with such speed.
If you like, you can read about my mother’s life here:
https://veronikarobinson.com/memories-of-my-magnificent-mum/
This photo is from the last time mum came to England and stayed with us for a few months. I keep it on my fridge. And when I think that beautiful woman is now ‘dust’, it shocks me every single time.
Grief steals many things. Most of them are quite obvious, but the one we don’t talk about is the poaching of time. I’m in a time warp, and more conscious of my own mortality than I’ve ever been. Time is slipping away. With my 60th birthday next year, already I’m thinking ‘why bother’ about so many things from the mundane ‘necessary’ dental work to life-enhancing dreams. What’s the point, I wonder. I’ll be dead soon enough anyway. I feel as if I’m already slipping away from this life.
Mum with me on my wedding day
Not everyone loves their mother or holds her in such high regard as I do mine, I know that. Not everyone whose mother has died will relate to what I’m sharing. What I do know, though, and what is true for me, is that even a year later this grief feels so hard. When I walk by my mother’s photos, it stops me. That beautiful smile. My mama. The woman who held me, bathed me, dressed me, played games with me, made (and still makes) me laugh with her sense of mischief. The woman who inspired me like no other. And then I think of the reality: her physical body, the one that loved me so much, is nothing more than cremains (cremated remains). How it that possible? And with that question lurks the one that plays on my mind every single day now. What is the point of anything?
I often think of my mother’s life, and all her joys and sorrows, creativity and obstacles, loves and losses. All the hard work, all the years raising eight children, all the… And now she’s gone. I know this applies to every human who’s ever come to this Earth, but this high-definition imagery of my mother living her life, and then gone, just ‘gets’ me in a way nothing else in my life ever has. I grew in her womb. I was one with her. If she’s ‘gone’, then where and who am I?
Mum outside the little hut she built on Mt. Arthur in Tasmania.
Everything I’ve believed in for so long, different spiritual ‘ideas’ and practices, are now almost meaningless. I beg the Universe to answer me: do I have free will or am I just a puppet on a string? I don’t want to be a puppet on a string, I yell. I’m not your toy! Of course, I don’t know the answer. What I do know, is that I’m questioning things that have long been my mainstay, my inner truth. Sometimes I look at all the books on my shelves, those portals into knowledge and wisdom, that I’ve valued for deep esoteric teachings and as each day passes, I’m tempted to burn everything. Nothing gives me any answer as to human suffering. Mine or that of other people.
With my mum when I was about 21.
The first time I ever saw my mother cry was when I was about ten, and she’d found out her mother had died. My grandmother lived in Germany, and I never had the privilege of meeting her though I loved to write and receive letters from her. But those tears my mother shed? I only wish I could have held her in the way I’ve needed holding. The grief she’ll have felt, not to mention regret at living overseas far away from her for a couple of decades, will have been unbearable. And I’ve no doubt that she, like me, will have also felt grief for the losses in her mother’s life.
My mother’s mother
The mother-daughter bond (for better or for worse) is unlike any other relationship. Sometimes daughters think that difficult relationships with mothers are better served by estrangement. This is not true, and death will wallop just as hard, if not harder, than for those whose relationship was less complicated.
My mother’s eight children, in age order. Left to right: Wolf, Heidi, Horst, Veronika, Ramona, Cam, Rene and Albert reunited for our father’s funeral.
The death of a loved one changes us. I mean, it has to, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of going through that emotional torture? Perhaps my torture has been amplified by the nature of the work I do as a funeral celebrant whereby I walk alongside people in their grief. The weeks leading up to and after my mother’s death were unlike anything I’d experienced before as a funeral celebrant (even though I’ve had extremely difficult funerals, such as child funerals and officiating my best friend’s cremation service and later, her memorial). What made them so hard was that each time I said the words of committal for someone’s mother, or read a tribute that said “I love you Mum. You’re my best friend,” or had to listen to music with the lyrics “You gave me my name and the colour of my eyes,”, I would just die inside. My mourners had no idea what was happening in my private life. The day my Mum died, I had to work. Several months earlier, I’d organised to host and facilitate a retreat for funeral celebrants on creating beautiful bereavement ceremonies. The irony! There was no calling it off. Not only had I been officiating funerals all the way up to my mother’s death, I then had four days of intense focus on teaching about grief. And then straight back to funeral work. I don’t share this for pity (that never helped anyone anyway), but because the reality is this year has challenged me on many levels, personally and professionally.
My role as a funeral celebrant has never felt so difficult as it has in this last year.
Maybe I’ve just not had enough space to step into ‘grief-free’ happy spaces for long enough to enable some recalibration. Apart from my mother’s death last year, the only other thing I remember with any clarity was a week away in the Scottish Highlands walking the Great Glen Way with my friend Angela. When I replay some of the videos we made, it makes me smile to see how much laughter we shared. I yearn for my life to be filled with that sort of belly-aching laughter and joy all the time. Everything else about 2025 is a blank. This past year has been like walking through the thickest fog I’ve ever known. What are you meant to do in fog? The high beam doesn’t work. The low beam doesn’t work. How am I supposed to see my way forward? Despite my spiritual beliefs, this grief has been unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. There are still so many moments where I see a lovely card somewhere and think “Oh, I’ll get that for mum.” And then that realisation a few seconds later… Or when her birthday and Christmas came around, and ‘reminder’ emails from the florist I used to use to send her flowers land in my inbox asking me if I’d like to order a bouquet. A horrible reminder that I’ll never, ever, ever, ever again have the pleasure and privilege of brightening her day with flowers. That hurts.
Me and my mum
I’ve known grief a number of times now, but the most significant ones have been those of my parents and best friend Pam. This coming Christmas Day will mark ten years since Pam chose to end her life. At no level of my being is it possible to believe that a decade has gone by. I’m past that stage of thinking “I must tell Pam…” but I do have times where I see someone in the street who maybe had the same hair cut or dress style, and I think “Oh, there’s Pam!” Those moments are akin to being hit by a truck. I gather myself before the tears start. And then there are the funerals I officiate where they have one of the pieces of music we had at her funeral. I walk up the aisle of the crematorium just wanting to curl into foetal position.
Next month, on the equinox, it will be fourteen years since my father was killed in a car crash in Australia. My father’s death has integrated a bit more, finally, but I can still have tears turn up from nowhere. That he died aged 77, the age my husband is now, nags at me.
For the uninitiated into grief, anticipatory grief can be harder than when we experience a sudden death. Yes, sure, we get a chance to say goodbye but we’re also grieving twice. Before and after. While we’re waiting around for them to die, we’re grieving for tomorrow. The tomorrows where they won’t be there. And even when you’re expecting it, somehow nothing prepares you for the moment. The moment when… For me, just knowing my mum was still alive, her heart beating strong as an ox, even when deep in coma, right to the last beat somehow lulled me into a sense of hope. Where there’s life there’s hope, right? I was wrong. Despite the ridiculous amount of crying I’d done in the previous two months, when my brother phoned me during the night, UK time, to say she’d died, it hit me hard. She’s gone.
Hopefully she’s dancing with my father again
I’ve spoken sternly to the Universe and have made it quite clear that I’m in no shape to receive any more grief, thanks. And yet, I look at my family (I’m one of eight children) and friends and think “fuck, unless I go first, I’ll be saying goodbye to you too”. With that, I’m flicking pesky tears off my cheeks. “No,” my heart says. “Just NO!” I think of their beautiful faces and loving hearts, and I just can’t imagine them not being here in that form anymore. And yet, despite that, I know that death is a change of form. Nothing ever really dies. But grief doesn’t want me to know that. Grief says “How many ways can I pull at that heart of yours or bring up memories you’d long forgotten?”
I realise that it might seem I’m indulging and wallowing in self pity. Maybe I am. Or maybe it’s because, dear reader, that we live in a grief-illiterate culture and people just want the bereaved to crawl under a rock and shut the fuck up so that they don’t darken anyone else’s day. That’s how it feels. I know that, apart from work, I’ve become even more of a hermit than ever before. Life feels kinder that way. There’s no risk of someone saying something which stings, like “I don’t need to offer you condolences because of your strong spiritual beliefs.” Or, “Are you over your mother’s death yet?” I WILL NEVER BE OVER MY MOTHER’S DEATH! And, as I say that, I’m also happy that she is out there, as stardust, at one with the Universe. She’s exactly where she wanted to be: in her light body.
The children’s book my mother wrote and illustrated.
Grief the gift-giver
Perhaps if you don’t know me well or at all, it might be hard to believe that I am, by nature, an optimist and grateful about my life, even though I’ve felt like a shadow of my former self this past year. What hasn’t changed is the way I start each day where I give thanks for my beautiful life. I’m grateful that practice hasn’t changed. When I take myself off for walks in the woods, I give thanks that I live in such a beautiful part of the world and have a working life that affords me freedom to walk in between pockets of writing time. This is one of my liminal spaces. Perhaps grief, too, is a liminal space and that I will emerge. I wonder who that person will be because she certainly won’t be the one who entered.
No matter what Life brings our way, everything has to have an upside or positive learning that can be taken from it, otherwise, what is the point of any of this?
Grief has brought gifts. Strange, but true. I’ve always been grateful for my upbringing even if I wasn’t always grateful for my parents at certain times. Truth is, when we’re kids, our parents can be annoying or authoritative. We become teens and they’re downright embarrassing. We become adults and think we know more than them and see their flaws as if they’re emblazoned on their forehead.
And.
Then.
They.
DIE.
And we become an orphan. I’m not only speaking for myself, now, but all the mourners I’ve worked with of various ages who are hit hard by this reality. Even at 70, it’s like the Universe just pulled the rug out from under them. The idea, the reality, that our parents are gone is inconceivable.
We always hope our own children will understand the fragility of life and that their parents won’t always be around. That maybe, just being that bit kinder wouldn’t hurt them. That accepting their parents are human, is part of growing up. Because all those things we bitch about in relation to our parents, become utterly meaningless when we can no longer phone them and hear their voices.
Tucked into an alcove in my bedroom are photos of my mum, in the prime of her life, sitting on the swing in our garden and smiling; and my dad, as a young man, playing his piano accordion. No matter how many times I walk into my bedroom during the day or night, I pause at that altar and say ‘thank you’. I blow them kisses and say “Thank you for giving me the most incredible childhood. Thank you for the sacrifices you made. Thank you for modelling creativity, strength, resilience and adaptability. Thank you for being my parents.”
I wish I hadn’t needed grief to reach this level of gratitude.
My mother passed away at the New Moon in Pisces, releasing her last breath at 11.11a.m. on February 28th 2025 in Queensland, Australia, with her first-born child by her side. There was a lovely planetary line up.
This photo of the sky was taken on the day my Mum died by my brother Cam. Each time I look at it I can see my mother skipping up those planets, like a ladder to eternal bliss. Perfect.
I’m grateful that today there’s also a rare planetary line up. The timing is perfect.
I grieve that I wasn’t with her in those last months and years. I am grateful, however, for having known my mother’s love. A love like no other and completely irreplaceable.