Healing Arts

Celebrating Animals in a Sacred Sendoffs Workshop

Join Animal Chaplain Sarah Bowen for a multi-arts workshop to honor animals who have lost their lives this year.

We'll first look at inspiring examples of how animals have been honored around the world. Then we'll engage in two creative rituals for loss—one for beings you personally knew and another to pay tribute to animals whose lives are deemed as ‘ungrieve-able,’ disposable, or forgotten.

Finally, we'll talk about how to deal with our own suffering and explore creative ideas for enlivening our advocacy through the spiritual arts.

Sarah A. Bowen Sacred Sendoffs (Pg 178)

About Sarah Bowen

Sarah A. Bowen is an award-winning author, animal chaplain, and educator, who teaches interspecies mindfulness practices, helps humans survive the pain of animal loss, and advocates for exploited and endangered species. She is cofounder of Compassion Consortium, the first interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies community for people who care about and advocate for animals and the planet, where she leads the Animal Chaplaincy Training program. Sarah also companions animals through death, creates sacred memorial rituals, counsels humans grieving animal loss, and advocates for exploited and endangered species in both religious and secular contexts. You can often find her huddled over wildlife struck by cars, giving them a sacred sendoff.

An award-winning author, Sarah’s latest book is Sacred Sendoffs: An Animal Chaplain’s Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful & Trying to Heal the Planet. A columnist on animal/human relationships for Spirituality & Health magazine, her work has also appeared in Parabola, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Psychology Today, and Animal Culture Magazine.