I practice art as a form of cultural tending, creating experiences where presence can be cultivated and the tender and shadowed parts of life welcomed and held.

I am currently working on ‘ The Ecology of Endings’ , a process-based art and research project that explores how sustained engagement with ecological endings can teach us about presence and help reframe cultural narratives around care in relation to death, grief, and crisis.

I do not separate my work as a death doula from my artistic practice. Both are ways of tending thresholds: practices of deep listening and standing beside what is passing through. As a writer, visual artist, and singer, I work with language, image, and ritual sound as creative containers - vesseling what the world becomes in moments of uncertainty and what moves between the human and more-than-human world.

"Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity, can cause to be set in motion... Mend the part of the world that is within your reach." — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I am deeply committed to providing care at life’s most profound thresholds, offering support through life crises, grief, and end-of-life transitions. I am trained as a grief and death doula in both Belgium and the UK, and I continue to deepen my expertise through ongoing education. I am actively involved in communities of death, grief, and funeral workers, and I have gained experience volunteering in hospice settings and providing palliative home care in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Beyond direct care, I facilitate gatherings where we connect around themes of mental health — such as depression, burnout, anxiety, and high sensitivity — as well as end-of-life topics, including death and dying, funeral planning, the afterlife, paranormal experiences, near-death experiences, and more.

Additionally, I offer immersive ritual experiences. Living funerals to facilitate confrontation with mortality, death anxiety, meaning and belonging. Grief ceremonies for expressing grief and tending to our wounds in a supportive environment.

Through the Art of Spaceholding course, I teach the essential skills needed to create and maintain these vulnerable environments, ensuring that every individual feels welcome and valued while navigating life's complexities.

Together with my dear friend Patricia Vanneste, I am the co-founder of the collective IJLLAND. Since 2023, we have been touring Ode to Darkness, an immersive performance where storytelling, music, and soundscapes create space for being with life’s shadowed and often hidden parts.

Through our work, we question existing social, cultural, and environmental structures particularly in terms of care, connection, and the natural world. Working across diverse mediums and often spanning sectors, we create art as the outcome of extended research, reflection, and collaboration.

More about IJLLAND