Julie Keon’s professional career began in the early 90s in the field of social services. She always had a strong desire to work with people as they navigated through life and its various challenges. As a result, she has worn many hats from birth and postpartum doula (DONA International), licensed marriage officiant, certified Life-Cycle Celebrant, end-of-life doula, death educator, and published author.
Through her business, Ready or Not End-of-Life Services, Julie offers specialised care to individuals, families and communities, including private counselling with a focus on caregiving, dying, death, loss and grief, custom and meaningful ceremonies (funerals/ celebrations-of-life), and a unique, 6-week death preparation course to help healthy mortals confront and prepare for their inevitable demise. Julie also fills a niche in her community as an end-of-life doula. Embodying knowledge and experience (personal and professional), Julie weaves humour and authenticity into all her offerings.
More meaningful and important than all of Julie’s professional endeavours, is mothering her only child, Meredith, who has been her personal guru since her birth in 2003. It was the lessons and hard earned wisdom gained from mothering Meredith that inspired Julie to put pen to paper and write the viral essay “What I Would Tell You” in 2011.
The first edition of her book by the same name (What I Would Tell You~ One Mother’s Adventure with Medical Fragility) suffered an unexpected hypoxic event of its own soon after its launch in May 2015. As a result, Julie created this revised and expanded edition to continue to make the book available to readers.
After a long hiatus, Julie has returned to her love of writing about this extraordinary experience of parenting with the deep insight and reflections on hard lessons learned and breathtaking truths that she is known for.
Her interests include psychology, health, travel, cooking plant based, gourmet dishes, writing, and staying vibrant and resilient while holding on to a sense of humour. She shares her life with her husband of 27 years, Tim, and their exceptional daughter, Meredith.