Colleen Jantzen – Life Celebrant – Coming alongside to create meaningful Celebrations of Life

Creating meaningful Celebrations of Life

Serving High River, Calgary and the Foothills

I am committed to coming alongside you to plan a meaningful experience to remember, honour, and celebrate your loved one in the way that best serves you, your family, and community.

The Role of a Life Celebrant

The death of a loved one, expected or not, is one of life’s most challenging circumstances. The process of planning and holding a celebration of life is crucial in helping us navigate this difficult time. My name is Colleen Jantzen and I live in High River, Alberta. My own experiences with death have brought home to me the importance of having an event that is personal and meaningful, one that both honours the person who died and helps us come to terms with our loss. At my core, I am a caregiver, and I would be honored to come alongside you and your family in the difficult journey of grief. I am a certified Life Celebrant with Life Celebrants International and hold a Master of Christian Studies degree from Ambrose Seminary in Calgary, Alberta. I have wide experience in public speaking and am comfortable working with people from all walks of life, including both religious and non-religious backgrounds.

Services

Celebration of Life

My goal is to support and guide you in preparing and facilitating a service that will be meaningful to your family and community. I am comfortable serving in faith and non-faith traditions alike.

Private Ceremony

If something small and intimate would serve you best, I would welcome the opportunity to prepare and facilitate this with you.

Graveside Service

I would be honored to work with you to prepare and facilitate a meaningful graveside service.

Care giving

I would welcome the opportunity to support you in your personal journey with grief.

What people are saying

Gina

“I attended a service that Colleen facilitated. She conducted it with grace and sensitivity. Colleen led the service with warmth and made it very personal. She had a lot to balance and did it all while taking care of all the family’s requests. I highly recommend Colleen to help create the service your family desires to honor your loved one.”

Fay

Colleen came alongside our family at the death of our Mom. With her calm, competent manner, Colleen helped our family navigate this time with grace and a sense of common purpose. She helped us create a graveside and funeral service that provided meaningful comfort to every member of our large diverse family, honoring Mom’s beliefs, but also her legacy of love and inclusivity.

Christa

I am so very grateful for the caring, insightful and inclusive care Colleen offered our family. At a time when differing beliefs might have created conflict, left some feeling alone or worse yet, even excluded, Colleen wove our differences into a collective honouring of someone we shared a deep love for.

Blog Posts

A Hole

I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘that time’ (you know that long and difficult time that everyone on the planet went through) and how so many families that had loved ones die during that time were unable to have an event (a ceremony, a service, a celebration) that served them and their beloved. This lack…
Catching glimpses

My sister’s been dead for five years now and it’s gradually getting easier (but not easy). As I go about my day to day life, I sometimes catch glimpses of her (it’s not, really, but for a second it looks like it might be her). This is normal. It used to undo me. At times…
Ceremony matters

For many of us, traditional expressions of faith were never (or are no longer) a part of our lives so it’s hard at times to know how to mark–or even if it’s necessary to mark–the important events in our lives. One of the things that traditional expressions of faith tend to be good at is…