Carole L. Trepanier

01/01/2026

Psst...

As we close out 2025, I want to extend my deepest Love and appreciation for those of you who walked with me in person and virtually this year. 2025 was wild, (Just me? lol) and it’s good to be with you to witness its ending. Deep bow to 2025!

I’m proud of the work done with “The Death of Me” this year. I’ve been deep in healing ceremony for most of 2025—with clients, and with myself. It was good to meet, heal and engage so many Ancestral lineages with you, to be in circle with the beautiful Shelter Together group, to deepen connections and nurture relationship with non-human kin and Helper Spirits, to witness your courage as you dove into your wounds and worked toward healed outcomes in ceremony. Some of you came to me for community deathcare support as you tended your loved ones, attended to their deaths, and honoured their lives. Thank you for trusting me with your hearts and the spiritual work.

This year also saw new collaborations and invitations. My heart is still bursting from my experience singing and holding space for children at Ottawa’s Roger Neilson Children’s Hospice with Arif Jinha. I was invited to hold ceremony and speak about the benefits of Ancestral Lineage Healing with the Emissaries of Light initiation group, was invited to collaborate with Ottawa’s Soul Space organization to bring healing opportunities to Ottawa’s frontline workers, and taught about the role of spiritual preparation/ceremony in deathcare with Kelly Butler’s AP Doula training program. I was also happy to support the work of peers tearing down structures of oppression and building healed outcomes.

Of course, deepening into my own training and lifelong personal spiritual healing journey brought even more spice. This year offered further lessons re: limitation as I spent 5 months of this year sick in bed. My eyes struggled to see most of this year, so I rarely went into the world. There was a cancer scare, surgery and good news. (Most of my big spiritual teachings center around the death experience.) There were more losses of loved ones, endings of many a sort, and moments of great silence and solitude. Letting go, and letting go some more…holding the healed outcome in my mind’s eye, and choosing to allow it, again and again. I am happy to be healthy and in good spirits. Sometimes, when cooking, the most potent flavours are found after we boil things down to their fundamental essence. I figure I’m delicious. 😊

Moving into early 2026, here are some of the offerings in the mix:

New Year Stone Reading / 1.5hr Stone Divination and Healing Course-Correction
https://thedeathofme.as.me/

Starting Jan. 22nd! The Death of Me – Spiritual Death Planning Series (6 sessions)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1337022977607429/1337026387607088/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22surface%22%3A%22home%22%7D%2C%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22search_results%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22search%22%7D]%2C%22ref_notif_type%22%3Anull%7D

10-Session Healing Package: Is this the year you face the things? For those looking to initiate Big Transformative Work, this is an opportunity to do so at a significantly reduced rate. Session types can be any of the following: Ritual Healing, private Spiritual Counsel, Ritual Training, Mentorship sessions. (Yes, you can mix and match as you see fit.) What would you like your life to look like after 10 sessions with me?
Book here: https://thedeathofme.as.me/TenSessions

Thank you, family, friends, clients, peers, Teachers and sweet-hearted lurkers! :) You are seen, valued, and precious to me!

Wishing you a GLORIOUS 2026! x
Carole

12/17/2025

If you like to cozy up with a good book...

12/16/2025

I've opened up my calendar for “New Year Stone Reading/Healing” bookings, starting now! :)

This 90min ceremony is an opportunity to peer into what 2026 holds for you, but it doesn’t end there. This is a healing—a blend of predictive Divination using sacred bundle stones, Spirit communication, healing work and time/space shifting. Together we get to see the Big Picture, work the stones to heal the relevant past/present/future wounds in play on your timeline, and bring about the needed course-correction toward a Healed Outcome for your 2026. (No small thing!) You can choose a theme for your New Year Stone Reading (health, purpose, relationships, work, home, growth, etc.), or see what life theme arises in the stones.

This ceremony is one of my favorites to facilitate, as it's such sweet time together with clients, the stones and other supportive Spirits, and it always ends with powerful healed outcomes, lightness and joy. Such a beautiful way to start 2026!

12/12/2025

No, MAID isn't a secret organ-harvesting operation. Consent to donate is separate from the decision to choose MAID. Also, underlying health conditions often disqualify MAID recipients from donation. There is a strong misinformation campaign spreading across Canada about medical assistance in dying.

For accurate information about MAID in Canada, please consult the Dying With Dignity Canada website here: https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/

Organ donation is not required to receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada. Despite conspiratorial social media posts alluding to an organ-harvesting operation, whether to donate organs remains a personal choice — no one can be forced to do it.

Visit our Media Centre at the link below to get the real facts from AFP Fact Check.

Read more. https://ow.ly/pxN850XIumU

12/07/2025

My "The Death of Me -- Spiritual Death Planning" series is for you if you shudder at the specter of Death, dodge/distract/hide from your own mortality, are a caregiver/healer, attend to the dying, tend to vulnerable populations on the frontline, or long to touch that which is deeply human...that you may remember how to fully LIVE. Get in.

Registration: https://thedeathofme.as.me/spiritualdeathplanning

Meaning in life leads to less anxiety around dying

12/03/2025

As the light wanes and the nights grow long, the Cailleach awakens. She is the ancient winter hag of the Highlands, the old woman of storms and stone, the keeper of frost and the quiet turning of the year. In Scottish tradition, her presence is not abstract—she is woven into the very landscape. With her staff she shapes mountains, summons blizzards, and freezes rivers into stillness. Her arrival is felt in the first hard frost, the bare trees, the wind that seems to carry an older voice through empty fields.

The Cailleach embodies endurance, sovereignty, and the sacredness of endings. She is the crone who knows that decay feeds new life, that the death of the year’s light is not a loss but a necessary pause. Folklore describes her as veiled and formidable, her hair white as spindrift, her eyes keen as ice. Sometimes she strides through the storm; other times she moves silently through frost-blackened forests, leaving the world transformed in her wake. To encounter her is to understand winter’s truth: stillness is not emptiness, but a deep, generative quiet.

Her stories are older than memory. In some traditions she rules the dark half of the year, handing over her power to Brigid at Imbolc when the first signs of thaw appear. In others, she renews her age each Samhain, drinking from the Well of Youth before stepping into her season of sovereignty. She counts the snows as markers of her rule, and with the planting of her staff she can freeze a loch, bring down a storm, or hush the land beneath a mantle of white. Her magic is elemental—patient, deliberate, and absolute.

The Cailleach is not a figure of fear but a presence to honor. She teaches that winter’s austerity has purpose, that the world—and our inner lives—require this quieting. As she moves across mountains and moors, her touch brings clarity: the stripping away of what cannot endure, the sharpening of what must. Under her watch, the land rests, seeds sleep, and the bones of the world show through. Her lessons are carved in frost—surrender, resilience, and the strength found in stillness.

Imagine her moving through the hills around you: heavy-footed across stone, brushing branches with a cold hand, drawing the hush deeper. Notice what is settling in your own life—what is falling away, what is being cleared, what lies dormant beneath the surface. Let her presence remind you that winter is not absence but preparation, and that the quiet season is holy in its own way.

In her wake, endings are honored. In her silence, wisdom roots. In her frost, the hidden world prepares to bloom again.

11/26/2025

Movies and Earth-honouring deathy musings, anyone?

Conversation on Conservation: Movie and Discussion

Come join Conservation Burial Ottawa at the Sunnyside Public Library for a special movie screening followed by an engaging discussion on conservation. This event is an opportunity to learn more about important environmental issues and connect with like-minded individuals. Get inspired and educated on how we can all make a difference in protecting our planet!
Featured films are Death Out of the Shadows and Steelmantown

This event is free to attend and all are welcome!

11/14/2025

Resource Recommendation: “Becoming Earth” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, for Emergence Magazine (Essay | 15-minute read)

What does it mean to belong to the Earth - not just in life, but in death?

In this powerful essay, botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer invites us to reflect on reciprocity, grief, and what it means to return to the land as kin. With tenderness and clarity, she explores how our end-of-life choices can become acts of belonging... not separations from nature, but reunions.

As End-of-Life Doulas, we are often witness to the ways people seek meaning in their final days. This essay speaks deeply to those longings: for continuity, for connection, for becoming part of something larger than ourselves.

Whether you're supporting others at the end of life, or simply reflecting on your own path, Becoming Earth offers quiet wisdom and poetic guidance.

“To become earth again is not a punishment, but a gift.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer

🔗 URL: https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/becoming-earth/