Karen West | Family & Funeral Celebrant

If I had to describe myself it would be a worker!  Like many women I have had a myriad of roles in life but I have been employed as a secretary, a nurse, a trainer, a teacher and most recently a school matron.  My unemployed activities include being a Mum, wife, daughter and all round ‘helper outer’. I am also a lifelong learner and relish gathering knowledge and developing new skills. So how can my past help me to be a good Celebrant?  Being a secretary helped me to become organised.  Nursing made me a professional and gave me my non-judgemental values.  Teaching and training enabled me to get excited about other people’s growth and development.  

Motherhood helps with patience and (considering my children are now teenagers) the honing of negotiation skills.  Being a wife means I can take charge at any given moment without letting my husband know that this is what has happened.  I am close to my Mum and hope that I can enjoy an equally good relationship with my own daughter.  I believe that I am able to build a good rapport with people fairly quickly because of my people focused background. I suppose that caring is the one thing that links all my life roles.  I would like to think I have helped people to achieve their goals wherever I have found myself.  

Sometimes those goals have seemed simple “Karen, I want to be able to walk across the room by myself” and other times they have seemed difficult “I need to pass my course with distinction Karen, is that possible?” as soon as I know what it is people want then we can get on with the task in hand.  With lots of discussion and negotiation, some hard work and good humoured determination a goal can become a reality. When I am not working I enjoy reading, cinema and theatre.  I have been known to appear in local dramatic productions and I sing in the school choir which includes adults and children.  

I am a frequent (if sometimes unwilling) taxi service for my son (Jack) and daughter (Kate) who sometimes appear to have a better social life than I do.  My husband Gary is a very keen sportsman who works as a Squash Coach in the local area and plays the sport himself.  Sadly, if I get on a squash court you wouldn’t recognise what I do as a game of squash - they say opposites attract!

 

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