Julie Keon

Julie brings a wealth of experience to her practice as a therapist with a focus on caregiving, dying, death, grief and loss. For the past 28 years, she has supported people through life’s most profound transitions and milestones from birth to end-of-life and everything in between as a labour, birth and postpartum doula, Life-Cycle Celebrant (rituals and ceremony for end-of-life), death doula, death educator, workshop facilitator, speaker and presenter. 

Meeting clients on a foundation of presence and compassion comes from her vast experience in holding space for people in life’s greatest and most devastating moments. Her role is not to minimize, change, fix or find solutions to grief. Instead, Julie offers something radical and unconventional: she creates a space of safety and connection so that her clients can give voice and expression to their deepest, primal grief without stifling, avoiding or numbing it. 

Clients can bravely dig deep to discover their best course of action while learning to tolerate the challenging emotions that come with caregiving, dying and loss. Julie deeply trusts in each person’s ability to grieve fully in their own unique way.  She does not pathologize a client’s grief experience or grief expression and instead, provides non-judgmental support and guidance to make the necessary journey of mourning bearable. 

As the Grief & Bereavement Counsellor at a 6-bed, rural hospice from 2020-2024 and through her community work, Julie has supported hundreds of dying and grieving people. Her private practice, therefore, focusses solely on end-of-life matters including but not limited to:

• Terminal diagnosis of self or a loved one

• Grief and loss (anticipatory, disenfranchised, death and non-death loss)

• Traumatic loss

• Preparing for the dying and after death care of a loved one including medically fragile children

• Navigating the decision to access MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying)

• Coping with the unique grief that follows a MAiD death

• Struggling with witnessing the death of a loved one

• Living with the grief of living losses that comes from caring for and loving a child with medical fragility, disabilities and/or short life expectancies

• Life transitions that involve loss (i.e. menopause, retirement, divorce)

In addition, Julie brings lived experience to the mental health support she provides to professionals who work at end-of-life and in the bereavement sector including Last Responders (i.e. licensed funeral directors), hospice/ palliative care staff, and death doulas.

Julie has received additional training in Compassionate Bereavement Care ® (Dr. Joanne Cacciatore) and as a Last Responder Mental Health Provider ™. She is continually honing her skills as a therapist through ongoing professional development; participating in the most up-to-date, researched and evidence-based trainings available and specific to the counselling she provides.

Julie supports her clients virtually.

Learn more about Julie and additional offerings here:

Julie’s book “What I Would Tell You~ One Mother’s Adventure with Medical Fragility”