Pet Memorial
Altar
learn how to honor your animals at the end of life, and craft them a memorial altar
Join us for this gentle, 2-week journey to honor and remember your animal companions. We’ll explore the unique bond humans and animals share, learn how we can ease their end of life transition and celebrate them through funerals and altars, and create a sacred circle for witness and co-crafting. You’ll speak your pets name in a collective of other grievers and creature-lovers, and walk away with a hand-made altar to keep your pet’s spirit close to home.
Wednesday, October 21 from 5-6pm MT
Wednesday, October 28, from 5-6:30pm MT
Led by Lauren Carroll & Lauren Seeley
Pet Memorial Altars
two evenings of community and co-crafting
Two evenings of community and co-crafting
gathering 01
End of Life & Remembrance
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."
– Anatole France
There are many ways we can honor our beloved animal friends as they transition beyond this life: a living funeral, a loving farewell ceremony, a bed of flowers, gentle ice. We’ll explore the ways humans have loved and honored their animals over time, and ways to show our love through comfort care, ritual, and remembrance present day.
gathering 02
Witness & Altar Crafting
We'll gather in circle to share and be witnessed in our pet grief. We'll light candles together and create space for tears. We’ll acknowledge the ways our pets have changed us. And then, we’ll turn to our hands to create altars to serve as a permanent place of remembrance.
You'll need:
A home for your altar (a small shelf, box, or designated space)
Basic supplies: scissors, glue, tape
Decorative elements that speak to you: their photo, ribbons, tassels, trinkets, sparkly bits, natural elements (flowers, stones, feathers), and any meaningful objects that resonate with your animal
This gathering is for everyone who has lost an animal companion and carries that grief in their bones
It is for families processing a loss, for deathworkers ready to offer their clients meaningful tools, for space-holders who want to hold better space for pet loss. You don't need experience with grief or death work, or an artistic background, to join.
Pay-What-You-Can
Your guides
Lauren Seeley
Lauren Seeley is an artist, death and grief doula, and death educator whose work weaves together death literacy, spiritual practice, and end-of-life care. Her interests and research span the tender edges of both human and pet end-of-life care, LGBTQIA+ and trans-centered deathwork, memory care, ritual and ceremony, and the many ways we honor the dead through funerary and disposition practices. Lauren currently works at a funeral home in Brooklyn, NY, where she holds space for the living and the dead, and facilitates the Silent Book Club of Death, Brooklyn’s quiet little refuge for readers who aren’t afraid to sit with the big questions.
Lauren Carroll
Lauren Carroll, co-founder of La Mort, is a Death Educator & Holistic Funeral Director who is passionate about weaving community and family back into the death space. Her work centers around re-aligning our culture with Mother Earth and helping humans remember how to love one another. She is a former board member for the National Home Funeral Alliance and co-founded The Deathwives. She lives on an urban farm at the base of a mountain where she tends to her animals, raises her two children, and dances around bonfires on the full moon with friends while listening to Nick Cave.
Our Teaching / Learning / Creating Style at La Mort
We leave behind the polished, gate-keepy approach to education. We teach in ways that carry story and experience. We listen. We laugh (a lot). We go off-script sometimes. We cry (with you)(for those you’ve loved)(for those we’ve loved). We like science and studies and logical frameworks, but also mysticism and poetry and all that stuff. We really love to honor history and those who came before. We move through some serious curricula, but don’t take anything too seriously. We dedicate ourselves to seeing you, and want you to feel seen. We deeply honor our intuition and yours. We lead with integrity (always). And we welcome the odd-balls and misfits, because it takes one to know one.