Nyx Funerals

22/10/2025

Nyx Spring Newsletter coming out tonight. Discussing ceremonies I’ve loved, death positive events coming up and my ever growing reading list. Sign up to my newsletter via link in my bio. 📸 Untitled by Noelle

25/09/2025

Observing ritual. Ritual is how we as humans connect and make rites of passage and moments in time important and meaningful. We in secular settler communities have often lost connection to ways we use to honor, celebrate and mourn collectively in community. That’s why in a funeral ceremony it’s the ritual element that I so dearly love. The liminal space that is opened up through a series of simple sequence of actions. This photo is from the ‘love letters to my broken heart exhibition’ as part of the Melbourne writers festival. Where 300 letters to broken hearts were written, folded and contained before being burnt.

20/09/2025

Yesterday we bid farewell to C. An adventurer, musician and a dearly loved human. A beautiful ceremony of story, song, tributes and a tree planting ritual was held . His cremains were planted in with a flowering gum now his forever shade. What I loved most was the sacred and the profane. The Italian opera as the ashes were gently placed in the hole alongside the mechanics of dirt and shovels and a ride on mower driving in with plastic tubs. The human always has an important place in ceremony. Rest in peace. I’ve absolutely loved getting to know you through your loved ones, your music and your values.

09/09/2025

Last Monday I was the celebrant for a baby. The first time I’ve written a ceremony for a young child. It was very tender and memorable. I found the hardest part was finding the words. Beyond the generic yet ultimately true sentiment of life being inherently unfair and the utter heart break of a death out of order, what more was there to say? How to honor a life so brief and in this case medically painful? Was it merely holding a silence and space for the unfulfilled promises and rites of passages? But what were the words? I spoke with fellow death worker deatheducation for guidance. She assisted my mind to shift to how we as a community could meet this beautiful soul through ceremony. Celebrate and mourn her short life through words, story, poetry and ritual. Welcome her here with us before we bid her a goodbye. It’s a death and funeral I will keep with me. A baby of the butterfly ward that taught us all so much.

31/08/2025

This image is titled ‘blooms of the abyss’ by . To me it speaks of the abyss like feeling of grief. The enormity and often loneliness accompanying such a universally experience……. I also see within the image the connection between flowers and death which is so long standing and seen across cultures and generations. The connection between flowers as symbols of acknowledging and bearing witness to loss and grief.

13/08/2025

I wrote a Blog post on creative funeral rites and the rituals we performed to honor my late brother Jimi. Written for the wonderful link in my bio

07/08/2025

Nyx quarterly newsletter just released. Sign up in bio for musings on death, dying and events in Naarm.

02/06/2025

Here lies a community grief ritual. We wrote letters and folded them into stars. We danced under the stars and then burnt them to the great unknown. The importance of grief rituals. Grief rituals in all their forms allow for a container for our big emotions of sadness and sorrow. It allows for our internal landscapes to be seen and reverently felt. It also brings a community together in honoring someone or something sacred.

12/05/2025

Mother’s Day brings a multitude of emotions. The complexities are felt by numerous people who have grief intertwined with love on a day celebrating mothers. My mum Faye (aka Bucket) was the definition of a wonderful mother. Generous, kind, supportive and one to let us fail. Not always gracefully. A true proponent of kids being themselves not an extension of their parents and one who allowed her wayward daughter to trapes around the green leafy suburb of Malvern barefoot, staunch Vegan with shells adorning my hair and frequently wagging school if I saw a more worthier cause. Faye died when my daughter was only 1 years old, from an aggressive pancreatic cancer. 8 weeks from diagnosis to death. I was thrust into being a motherless mother so early on. It felt unfair at the time. But over the last twelve years of mother’s days. I have begun reflecting how brilliantly I had been set up by Faye to mother with the tools, imprints and lessons she bestowed. I still enact her voice when I’m with my kids. I hope in whatever way this day finds you it reminds you of the diversity of ways we mother each other, the next generation and often times our shelves ### with love. J

08/05/2025

I have had the honor to sit with many people over the last year who are grieving. Often in their homes discussing their loss, educating on grief and offering an empathetic and lived experience ear. I integrate somatic exercises and referrals to external agencies where needed. If you’d like me to come sit with you in your grief please reach out.

23/04/2025

Why we need ritual? Ritual is a powerful tool of connection and making our inner landscape visible. Taking time and reverence in honoring a moment, loved one or simply sitting in ‘the glimmers’ of what we hold dear. As a ritual artist in grief and loss I see the power and presence a ritual can imbue for participants and viewers. The healing properties and the way our nervous system is allowed to drop into rest and digest.

30/03/2025