About Marcella - Marcella Joy Fox, Ceremony Officiant & Grief Support Specialist

Many parts of my life have come together to become the basis for my helping practice...
~ an interest in personal healing using ceremony,
~ work with grieving families
~ an understanding of mythologies and religions around the world and through time
~ my deep love for my cats and dogs, and
~ singing jazz.

Life Change Ceremonies
I began studying ceremony and ritual in the late '80s through reading plus experience with a group which broke down the elements of ceremony so we could each practice them. A friend and I created our first ritual, based on a rebirth myth, for about a dozen people. We used a small tent, pillows, and red sheets to create a womb where each person was symbolically gestated and then born into the waiting arms of their cohort.

In 1989, just months after my move to Oregon, I convened a group that met regularly for over five years to explore our inner landscapes through various means. Ceremony — both planned and spontaneous — was a significant portion of that exploration. My work with this group became the foundation of my current Life Change Ceremonies work.

I find it deeply satisfying to work with metaphor and symbols to create ceremonies to explore our individual milestones, dreams, and intentions.
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Community Ceremonies
In the early '80s, I got over my fear of public speaking by giving monthly presentations as board member of a community organization — to an audience of two hundred people!

For several years in the early '90s, I organized and co-led participatory public celebrations of the four seasons, as well as monthly "Awaken Your Heart" gatherings, where participants shared readings, chants, songs, and moving mediations on a monthly topic. The spontaneity of these events was another learning experience, and quite enlivening.

I've helped create and conduct community memorial ceremonies for hospice, as well as presentations on grief, and on children and grief. At last year's Donor Recognition Ceremony, sponsored by three Pacific Northwest an donation programs, I was keynote speaker.
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Remembrance Ceremonies
In the last several years, I have begun to create ceremonies honoring people who have died. It's important to acknowledge our losses — and a ceremony can be a very helpful way to do that.

I am proud to be a Certified Funeral Celebrant (CFC). This designation is earned by passing In-Sight Institute's intensive 16-hour training, taught by bereavement specialist and author Doug Manning and instructor Glenda Stansbury. I am a member of the Celebrant Community, which offers ongoing support and education to Certified Funeral Celebrants.

I've facilitated hospice grief support groups for children, teens, and adults. I've also taken multiple hospice volunteer training courses and have been a counselor at a weekend children's grief camp.

Combining my knowledge and experience of grief support with my abilities as a Ceremony Officiant makes me an unusually skilled Funeral Celebrant.

It's an honor to sit with a family for an hour or more and learn about the life of their loved one, then create a personalized, comforting Remembrance Ceremony.
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Grief Support
My understanding of grief goes far beyond personal experiences of the deaths of family members, friends, and animal companions. Through years of working with grieving children and adults — as well as taking seminars, workshops, college courses, and continuing education — I have learned how to "walk beside" people who are dealing with a death.

I was originally trained by The Dougy Center — the premier support group model for grieving children and their families — at their 1996, 40-hour Summer Institute. Because of that training, I was hired to oversee a hospice grief support program for children, teens, and adults and facilitate the groups. I've also volunteered as a counselor for a three-day children's summer bereavement camp.

I've taken comprehensive hospice volunteer trainings for patient/family visits and for children's grief support at two different hospices. I've worked directly with hospice patients and their families, focusing on practical support and anticipatory grief.

I've earned a BA in psychology. I took classes in death and dying, change and loss, and grief. As part of my coursework, I researched the grief effects of the "9/11" disasters. My practicum was at Willamette Valley Hospice, where my work was supervised by Trey Malicoat, the founder of Mother Oaks Child children's bereavement program.

Add to that my attendance at a three-day World Gathering on Bereavement, and I've had much more training in grief support than most counselors, therapists, and social workers have.

My work with many, many grieving individuals and families has shown me that we each take our own route through grief. In the depths, it may seem overwhelming, yet time and time again I've seen people's inner strengths come forth.
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Companion Animals (Pets)
What can I say. I've had pets since I was in 1st or 2nd grade: cats, dogs, fish, mice, chameleons. I've fostered dogs. I've pet-sat: dogs, cats, birds, rabbits. There have been times my pets saved my sanity.

I've been responsible for euthanasia decisions for my pets and held them while they died. I've buried my pets and I've reverently flushed them down the toilet. I've driven their bodies to the crematory and I've seen their warm bones in the cremation unit. (I used to fire pottery, so that doesn't bother me at all.)

And I've offered grief support and created ceremony for people and their animals. I've sat with families during euthanasia and helped them bury their pets.

While earning my BA in psychology, I created a study on people's perception of grievers by comparing the death of a human to the death of a pet. I also spent a year as a Research Assistant working on a study about the ways mental health professionals treat clients who are grieving the death of a pet. My faculty advisor for that project, Dr Tamina Toray, was a co-founder of one of the first pet loss support programs established at a veterinary teaching hospital, Colorado State University.

I choose to work with people and their pets because I know how important our companion animals are to us, and I know how difficult the end of life can be for both us and our pets. I'm grateful I have the training, education, and experience to be able to do this work and do it well.
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Religion, Spirituality, and Worldviews
I have great respect for all religions, spiritual paths, and worldviews — including agnosticism and atheism. I believe that each one springs from wisdom and holds important truths and comforting understandings.

At college, in the late '90s, I was able to learn from Fulbright Scholar DR Hugh Malafry. In his classes on mythology and major world religions, I saw for myself the similar mythological patterns in many varied worldviews (as Joseph Campbell had written and spoken about). Whether we are using religious or secular (non-religious) language, we are simply using different sets of words to describe human concerns and experiences common to most people in most eras.

Because no one is comfortable attending, and no one can truly participate in, a ceremony where their worldview is excluded, I make a point to be attentive to the worldviews of everyone concerned. And, because ceremony which criticizes someone's worldview is actively harmful, I prefer not to be part of ceremonies in which any religion is spoken of as the only correct way to live.
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(If you're wondering about how singing relates to all of this: Learning to sing helped me find my true voice, and singing jazz in public helped me learn to connect with people in any "audience" I speak to or with. Thank you, Chris Rosman!)
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Whether we are guided by a formal religion — an indescribable sense of the great mysteries of life — our own rational mind — or some combination — we can all be well served by acknowledging the changes that come to us in life, honoring our growth and wisdom, grieving our losses, and helping celebrate the paths of those we care about.