Qualifications
- End-of-Life Companion & Tender Loving Care (TLC) End-of-Life Care Trainer.
- The NOCN Level 3 Diploma in Funeral Celebrancy.
- Diploma in Clinical Aromatherapy & Essential Oil Science.
- Jing Method – Advanced Clinical Massage Therapy.
- Jing Method – Hot and Cold Stones Massage Therapy.
- Diploma in Oncology Massage.
- Diplomas in: Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Warm Bamboo Massage, Myofascial Release, Natural Lift Facial Massage, Pregnancy Massage.
- Sound Healing Practitioner – Tuning Forks For Muscles.
- Diploma in Gua Sha Facial and Body Massage.
- Diploma in Hopi Ear Candling/Thermo Auricular.
- Usui Reiki Level 1 & 2 & Master / Teacher. Jikiden Reiki Shoden Level 1 & Okuden Level 2.
- End-of-Life Care Level 2.
- Social Work Practitioner DipSW/DipHE, BA(Hons),
- Graduate Diploma in Approved Social Work Practice.
Bio
Dionne is an End-of-Life Companion which is part of the Soul Midwives movement in holistic and spiritual palliative care for those people whose lives are coming to an end. Dionne lovingly assists and accompanies a dying person on their journey, and can provide her services within a home, hospital or hospice. She was a psychiatric social worker for many years and completed her End-of-Life Companion training at the Soul Midwives School in 2018. She then completed an accredited Tender Loving Care (TLC) End of Life Care training course developed by Felicity Warner, the founder of the Soul Midwife Movement.
Prior to this however Dionne also gained a Diploma in Clinical Aromatherapy and Essential Oil Science with Neal’s Yard Remedies Organic School of Natural Health where she has been a mentor for their aromatherapy students for several years. Dionne also practices other complementary therapies.
Being an End-of-Life Practitioner to the dying means being a compassionate companion to support people through the process of dying. This has necessitated the range of knowledge, new skills and experience Dionne had acquired over many years. She came into this role because of a long personal and professional journey, having like many others experienced the death of friends and close relatives and also in her previous profession where many deaths occurred for many reasons.
Dionne passionately believes that anybody who is facing the end of their life can benefit from the services of an End-of-life companion. They regard every dying person as if he, or she, is the most important person in the world. Her role is non-medical and is non-denominational in pastoral support, encouraging deep conversation, with love and dignity. Her work may begin from the point of diagnosis and continue until the final day of life, with encouragement and support for living life fully, until the end. Dionne’s energy lies in helping to transform the personal and collective experiences of dying and living within the community, by helping anyone facing the end of life to experience a tender, peaceful and conscious death. This has been the most cherished and rewarding aspect of her work – which she refers to as a “Sacred Profession.” She is encouraged by the growing awareness in the public domain that is gaining momentum now, that speaking about Death is no longer a taboo subject but on the contrary is a rational and healthy thing to do.
Regarding it as a privilege and an honour to be invited to be alongside people at the end of their life-journey, Dionne recognises that sadly, with the best will in the world, busy clinical staff do not always have the time to spend with the dying person and so the emphasis is also about how she can employ her time supporting those who have little time i.e. other professionals who are involved with the dying person at whatever level.
About Me
I recognise that as I get older and experiencing the menopause, living well will hopefully inform my dying well. It has inevitably become a welcome feature of my awareness. We all die. But there are good deaths, and not such good deaths. Given the choice, most of us hope to die, pain free, at home, with our loved ones around us.
The reality is though that not many of us actually achieve this. Most modern deaths are, at best, efficient but clinical, institutionalised, functional and soul-less. My purpose in being an End -Of-Life companion is to try to ensure that death is a dignified and peaceful experience. As Kahlil Gibran says “you would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?”
I am therefore inspired by those who note the similarities with birth midwives: if a person that we know has given birth, the likelihood is that we or they would never forget the ‘midwife companion’. They are engaged in the art of support during birth – the reassuring professional a person wants to cling to, who knew the answers to questions, and who encourages, guides and comforts the one they are caring for because giving birth and dying is hard work!
As an End-of-Life companion, I acknowledge this in the many ways I offer support. Whilst the job of helping deliver a baby is relatively easy to envisage, trying to keep birth as normal as possible, it’s harder to imagine what might be involved in the labour of the process of dying.
In my role I am reminded that in many traditional cultures around the world, death has always been regarded as an important rite of passage, an initiation, a journey across a spiritual threshold. Being a modern practitioner means myself and others in this work can draw on these ancient skills and traditions, applying them to our modern world and using them to ease the passage of those who are dying.
We may all be End-of-Life companions at heart, but it takes training and dedication to become one. My experience of training was not only to learn in a conventional sense, but it also inspired
and prepared me in a reflective way for the essential work of caring for the dying, which is a deeper process. It also led to my having completed training in the highest qualification in Funeral Celebrancy.
As an Institute of Civil Funeral Celebrant (IoCF) my role involves spending time getting to know a family and finding out about the person who has died. It’s one that is ‘driven by the wishes, beliefs and values of the deceased and their family, not by the beliefs and ideology of the person conducting the funeral’. One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is that I am trained to help pre-prepare ceremonies for the scattering of ashes, for interment and for memorial services. I am very proud of this career milestone at this stage in my life because the training was very demanding! However, it is incredibly rewarding to see how comforting it can be for a family to know that a loved one has planned their funeral ceremony in advance. It means they can be sure of fulfilling their relative’s last wishes. I would do the same. It’s certainly an honour when I am supporting someone to see the person immersed in an opportunity to look back on their life and ensure that the ceremony captures the events and stories that they want remembered.
So far, my personal and working life seem to be merging in a full circle. As I get older, I am of course aware of my own life-journey which will have its inevitable end and this is a reality which has led me to inner exploration on a spiritual level about my life’s ultimate meaning. This personal journey has informed and helped me to employ a range of knowledge, skills and experience as an integrative care practitioner to try to ensure that “quality of death” has the same status as the oft-quoted phrase “quality of life”.
“Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening, nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
