Workshops

Living Legacies offers practical personalised workshops about living, dying and funerals.
These can help you plan your funeral, or someone else’s, make your wishes known to your family and friends, and/or explore your feelings and any fears you may have about your death or the death of someone you love. 

Coming up soon, as part of the Nelson Tasman Climate Forum’s
Climate Action Festival 2026
Natural Burials – What are they?

Join Living Legacies Founder Lynda Hannah at the Motueka Natural Burial Park to talk about natural funerals, natural burials, and why they are an environmentally responsible end-of-life choice.

2-4pm on Tuesday 22nd September,
Motueka Natural Burial Park, Motueka Cemetery

Some questions that may come up:

1. What is a natural burial? What makes a burial “natural” or unnatural?
2. What are the environmental costs of funerals? What are the environmentally responsible options for funerals?
3. What you need to know to organise a natural burial for yourself or a loved one.

What to bring: A folding chair if you’d like to sit. An umbrella and wet weather gear if it’s damp as we’ll be outdoors. A notebook if you’d like to make notes. An open mind and heart.

Koha welcome
To secure your place please email: Lynda@livinglegacies.nz

Living Legacies’ “Natural Funeral Workshops for Mortals” include:

How and why to plan your own funeral
How to arrange a funeral for someone you love
The environmental implications of the funeral industry and the effect on those left behind
How to save $1000s in funeral expenses
The value of a meaningful celebration of life
Grieving, and how to support someone who is bereaved
Natural burial parks
Communicating your feelings about death with your loved ones
Grief and family dynamics

If you’d like to learn what you need to know about family-directed, natural funerals before you need to know it you can organise a workshop for your own whanau, staff, friends, work colleagues, or neighbours.

A funeral can be a time of huge conflict if the deceased’s wishes are not fully communicated, understood, and accepted by all. Grieving can be prolonged if it’s complicated by regrets such as “We should have done…”, and “I wish I had said something”, and “Now it’s too late.” Conversely, it can also be a time of celebration, understanding and love. While funerals are seldom enjoyable, groups who have participated in a Living Legacies workshop and discussed the matter in depth before someone dies usually manage the event much more gracefully than those who are emotionally unprepared.

We offer workshops to family* groups. These workshops are helpful whether someone has been diagnosed with a terminal illness or not (because, let’s face it, we are all mortal), and as an opportunity to build on your relationships and communicate your feelings, plans, worries, and hopes around loss and death with one another.

We can also offer remote workshops via Zoom, for those who live elsewhere in the world.

Our workshops cater for the needs of groups of 3 to 40 people, can be designed and varied according to participants wishes, and held anywhere in New Zealand. So please let us know what your requirements are.
For information about arranging a workshop in your town, please email: Lynda@livinglegacies.nz.

*Living Legacies uses the word “family” to describe any group of people bound together by choice or any common thread.