Celebrating Iona Fredenburgh

It is with great sadness that we share the passing of our dearly beloved Iona Fredenburgh, on 11 August 2024.  She is greatly missed and is now buried amongst the trees on the land she loved in north Wales. We feel her radiant and passionate spirit with us.

Iona was a much-loved colleague, friend, teacher, supervisor, faculty member, trainer, family member and generally wise being who changed the lives of those she met and worked with. She held deep in her heart all those in the human and nonhuman realm, in the margins, she was determined to give voice to. While her laughter, joy, sense of magic, presence, intensity, and deep deep love of nature are all things we will remember her for.

She was passionate about Processwork, and once described it as the moss out of which she grew, though she brought a huge amount to the community – her deep interest in subtle energy work, her politics, her work with women’s circles over many years and also her collaboration with those working ceremonially with Spirit and this living earth.

She was gifted at building community. Her warmth and generous heart ran deep, while she sought to build inclusivity into everything she did. She had a deep compassion for the human experience, born in part through her own vulnerability and personal work, but also from her commitment to following through what was emergent in any situation. She had a knack, a kind of instinctive insight into what had yet to be expressed but was needed by the whole for a real experience of deep democracy to emerge.

Iona was a long term Faculty member of ProcessworkUK and from 2015 was Co-Director of ProcessworkUK with Anup Karia for 7 years, She was also on the Faculty Board of IPOP (Institute of Process Work in Czech Republic), and contributed to other trainings periodically internationally.

She was deeply curious and loved the spirit of research, encouraging this in all her students and colleagues. In her day-to-day life she cared for her beloved Ra as he developed and changed with the onset of dementia, always seeking though him to understand what this brought to the world. In 2016 she co created a symposium on trauma and reached out across different trainings and modalities to build bridges around this complex theme.

She loved to write and had many plans for more writing. Her own research for her dissertation was an autoethnographic research project studying personal experiences of process work and ceremonial shamanism. 

More recently she co-authored a chapter in a book recently published by Routledge on: Being a Therapist in a time of Climate Breakdown.

She was also super excited in more recent years to be offering guided journeys out in nature for people to develop their own reciprocal and life changing contact with the living spirit of earth and saw this as part of the contribution she could make at this critical time.

Dearest Iona – we miss you so much. You remain unique to us all, and the strength of your spirit lives through us every day. Our world is forever changed by you being here and knowing you.

Deep gratitude and all our love, always.