Episode 1 - Terri Shanks Terri is a Funeral Celebrant based in Worthing, Sussex, England. As well as her work as a celebrant, she also trains Funeral Celebrants for the Fellowship of Professional Celebrants. To find out more about Terri, visit her website or see her listing on Funeral Celebrants UK. Transcript Tony Piper: Welcome to Meet Your Funeral Celebrant. My name is Tony Piper, and in each episode of this podcast I'll be talking with a funeral celebrant. As well as getting to know them and exploring their approach to funerals, each guest will also share some useful tips. I hope this helps you find the right celebrant for you so you can create a good send off. Let's begin. This episode I'm delighted to be talking to Terri Shanks. Terri is a funeral celebrant based in Worthing, on the south coast of England. As well as her work as a celebrant, she also trains funeral celebrants for the Fellowship of Professional Celebrants. Hi, Terri. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here. Terri Shanks: Thank you, Tony. Lovely to be here and to talk to you. Tony Piper: Wonderful. Now look, why don't you fill in some of the gaps and tell us a little bit about yourself. Terri Shanks: As you've already mentioned, I live in Worthing in West Sussex. I live down here. This is my hometown where I'm born and bred. I live down here with my two children. I have Georgia, who is 19 now, and Cameron who is 5. Tony Piper: Aww. That's a nice part of the world to live in. Terri Shanks: It's a lovely part of the world to live in. I always think we have the best of both. We have the South Downs, the sea. It's lovely, lovely place to live. Tony Piper: What a dream. Now look, Terri, how did you end yup becoming a funeral celebrant? It's an unusual profession, isn't it? Terri Shanks: It is an unusual profession. To be honest, it was a sort of a series of lots of things which would probably take me all day to explain, but I used to work as, I suppose, and [amateurist 00:01:35] singer, a cast call singer. But I was always asked to sing at a lot of funerals, both in churches and crematoriums. I sat through a lot of funerals where, to be honest with you, you could have at anybody's funeral because it was very much one size fits all. I felt the people were there, but not necessarily present, and not healed and not touched and not moved. For me, that was really important. It was actually after several years of doing this that I met actually with a humanist celebrant at a wedding and just got into discussions with her. I thought, "Wow, I could actually do this as a profession," but it took some further investigation. For me, I was actually raised as a Roman Catholic. Whilst I don't attend church and to be honest haven't done for many years, I would still class myself as spiritual person. That led me into the path of becoming an independent celebrant where I knew I could offer funerals for people that were very personalised, very meaningful, but didn't completely eradicate religion or spirituality, that actually we could have a blending of both. That, for me, was very important as I know it is for a lot of people. There are many, many people out there who don't necessarily have an affiliation with any organised religion but also wouldn't class themselves as atheists either, and therefore like to have a light element of religion or spirituality included at a time of a funeral, which obviously is hugely important. Tony Piper: Sure. Yes, there's a big group of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. Terri Shanks: Yeah, absolutely. Tony Piper: It's very important. What do you love most about the job? Terri Shanks: Oh, I love all of it. I truly do. People always comment about how much passion that I have for my work. I think that's true. I love the families that I work with. I feel that it's an honour that people welcome me and take me into their homes and their hearts at such a diffic
