End of Life
2025 dates moved to 2026
residential course - January to November 2026
apply here or read course description.
Booking deadline: October 15th 2025
End of Life Choices: What do I want?
A series of 3 End of Life Planning workshops in Bovey Tracey, Autumn 2024.
Anne is one of the three end of life doulas working together as a Community Interest Company started in 2023 by Sarah Parker (Director). For details of what Sarah, Ruth and Anne offer please visit the Dying with Grace website : www.dyingwithgrace.co.uk
End of Life Choices: What do I want?
Facilitated by Sarah Parker and Anne Overzee
A series of 3 End of Life Planning workshops in Bovey Tracey. The first one is an introduction to the topic, and will be followed by a deeper look at the choices available for end of life in sessions 2 and 3. We will cover topics such a lasting power of attorney, personal wishes for end of life and funeral choices.
Introduction session: October 15th 2:30pm-3:30pm, Cafe3Sixty - Suggested donation £5
CANCELLED - Session 2: October 26th 10:30am-12:30pm, Phoenix Hall, Bovey Tracey TQ13 9FF - Suggested donation £10
Session 3: November 23rd 10:30am-12:30pm, Phoenix Hall, Bovey Tracey TQ13 9FF - Suggested donation £10
Death Cafes
This is an opportunity to get together informally over a cup of tea and a piece of cake to talk about death and dying. It is a chance to share and listen; there is no agenda, and everyone is very welcome!
Bovey Tracey, Devon
Upcoming dates:
Please put these dates in your diary, location to be confirmed!
January 21
February 18
March 25
Location: TBC
Booking is essential on 07717 221504
Ashburton, Devon
We meet monthly on Sundays from 2:15pm to 3:15pm.
Upcoming dates:
September 8
October 6
November 10
Location: Rafikis, 2a, St Lawrence Lane, Ashburton, Newton Abbot TQ13 7DD.
Booking is essential on 07834 978560
You are invited to make a donation towards the cost of the refreshments.
Letting go in love;
cultivating a relationship with my own death
January to November 2026
Course facilitator: Anne Overzee
Booking deadline: October 15th 2025
Slowly she celebrated the sacrament of letting go…
Shedding her last leaf
She stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the sky, she began her vigil of trust…
Her emptiness…giving her a new kind of beauty.
(from Macrina Wiederkehr’s poem, ‘The Sacrament of Letting Go’)
To apply please click the button below and fill in the form. On receipt you will be sent information about how to make your deposit so your place can be confirmed.
This course comprises a series of four integrated retreat-workshops, and is designed to support our personal explorations of the theme of our own death. We can never know how or when we will die, but those who work with the dying often share the view that for some it can be a time of healing and spiritual transformation.
We shall use creativity, ritual and meditation to explore our views and understandings of death; and listen to ourselves to discern what might best support us going forward as we continue to cultivate a relationship with our own death in a way that that enables us to live our lives more fully, and with a deeper sense of meaning. A key emphasis will be on co--creating a holding field of heart to sustain us through our individual and shared enquiry amidst the wild beauty of Dartmoor.
The approach will be contemplative, and as well as having time for silent meditation, we will explore together how the bardos, as described in the Tibetan text, Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo (commonly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead), can support us in recognizing our intrinsic radiant nature.
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2026
January 16-18
March 13-15
June 12-14
September 4-6
November 27-29
Location:
The High Heathercombe Centre, Heathercombe Brake, Manaton, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ13 9XE
Accommodation:
Accommodation is basic but comfortable with shared rooms, and a stunning environment on Dartmoor. Participants will be expected to share in certain daily tasks to support the cook and keep our environment warm and clean.
Times:
2.30pm on Fridays to 6.00pm on Sundays
Cost:
£1000 per person for the whole course, which is payable as £100 deposit followed by 4 instalments of £225. This covers accommodation, meals and expenses, and if you wish you can also offer dana to Anne.
Contact:
If you would like to talk with Anne about the course please email her at sarana@posteo.com or ring her on 0044-771-7221504.
To apply:
Booking
NB early booking is essential, especially for applicants outside the U.K. in order for the translators to be confirmed and travel arrangements made.
Booking deadline: October 15th 2025
Dying Matters week (UK)
May 6th-12th 2024
Here are a number of wonderful South Devon creative workshops for Dying Matters Week (UK) in May, to help us explore death and dying through these various creative activities.
These are the ones freely offered in Bovey Tracey, sponsored by Dying with Grace, through funding received from Awards for All.
Please see below for further information about each workshop.
More details about events
+ A creative introduction to choices at end of life: Workshop with Anne and Sarah of Dying with Grace
Details to follow
+ Creative Writing workshop with Jackie Juno - Treasures of the Deep
Jackie will share tips and techniques to write about the Big Stuff of life and death, using strong imagery & concrete form, avoiding cliche and predictability. There will be guidance and time to write, and a chance to share work if desired (no obligation).
Jackie is a multiple poetry slam winner, including Glastonbury Festival Slam 2017 and was a contender in the National Poetry Slam finals at the Albert Hall in 2018. She has been a finalist in many international competitions for her short stories, flash fiction and poetry, including Arvon, Writing Magazine and Mslexia.
She has performed her poetry at two TEDx Talks. She held the title Bard of Exeter 2011-2012 and Grand Bard of Exeter 2012-2019. She has five poetry collections published, the most recent being Priestess of the Powder Puff Experiment with Burning Eye Books.
She is planning a national tour of her latest multi-media one-woman show Cancer Dancer - My Quirky Quest for a Cure.
+ Weaving workshop with Jaini Hadley
Initially an Art teacher for many years, I then re-trained as an Art Psychotherapist and worked for six years at St Mary’s Hospice , Ulverston, Cumbria, helping patients and their families through Art Therapy and creative arts. Our projects included participatory arts ( a large communal weaving); a collaboration involving local school pupils making art with hospice patients; environmental art; and seasonal thematic workshops, eg berries in autumn, and journal making. I also organised many exhibitions of patients’ work including our largest at Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin at Coniston.
Since leaving the hospice I have been able to concentrate on my own weaving, writing (art therapy articles published by Jessica Kingsley and a Lake District magazine) and teaching ( journaling workshops).
In 2015/6 I was artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, donating two large wall hangings to the Park.
I have also exhibited widely, in the Lake District (Keswick and Ulverston), Arizona ( Petrified Forest and Winslow), and most recently in Lancaster and Hastings.
+ Mandala painting with Anne Overzee - enwholing my living and dying through mandala painting
details to follow+ Flat Needle Felting with Yuli Somme
Drawing out; exploring meaning and intention through wool fibre.
The tenderness of wool invites us to touch, to connect and to make. Learning the easy immediacy of flat needle felting we "draw out" the coloured fibres to explore shapes and symbols that hold meaning.
Yuli has worked with wool all her life. Her father died when she was 5 years old and she found the warmth, smell and texture of her parents Norwegian hand-knitted garments comforting, often enveloping herself within their folds.
This feeling has been with her ever since and she has taken much of her inspiration from the traditions of her Norwegian roots.
She trained and worked as a dyer and weaver, switching to felt making in 1987. Over the last 25 years she has found herself working in the funeral sector, developing an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional coffins, called the Leafcocoon.
The thickness and layers of felt cocoons the body, perhaps a legacy of the comfort she found in wool in her childhood.
Her Chagford workshop is where she makes the Leafcocoons, working either direct with the bereaved or through funeral directors.
The covers for the Leafcocoons can be decorated using simple needle felting techniques and her workshops are run from her beautiful Chagford studio.
Bellacouche Ltd.
Stableyard, Chagford, Devon, TQ13 8BW
Tel: 01647 433929 / Mob: 07763 935897