A Year to Live – A Journey Toward Freedom, Hope & Spiritual Awakening
What if you had just one year to live?
A Year to Live is a powerful and transformative year-long program that offers sacred space for inner renewal, life review, and spiritual awakening. Whether you’re navigating grief, a life transition, or simply feeling called to live with more clarity and depth, this immersive journey invites you to consciously face your mortality and live with greater freedom, presence, and purpose.
Guided by facilitators John F. Doherty and Martina Breen, and drawing on ancient wisdom traditions and modern contemplative practices, this program supports you to let go of what no longer serves and awaken to what truly matters. Through reflection, meditation, teachings, and community, you will explore your relationship with impermanence and discover the liberating gift of living as if each day truly counts.
What the Program Includes
12-Month facilitated Journey (March 2027 – February 2028)
Based on the Celtic Wheel of Life, Death and Rebirth
2 In-Person Retreats
• Opening Retreat in Spain (March 2027)
• Closing Retreat in Wicklow, Ireland (February 2028)
10 Monthly Online Teachings via Zoom
• 2-hour sessions with guided reflection and spiritual teachings
Monthly Peer Buddy group Check-Ins
• Deepen your integration through shared reflection and mutual support
Supportive Online Community
What You Will Explore
Your relationship with death and impermanence
Releasing fear and limiting beliefs
Cultivating forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude
Life review and legacy work
Clarifying your values and what truly matters
Deepening connection to spirit, self, and others
This is not a course in dying— it is an invitation to live with nothing left unsaid, unloved, or undone.
Who Is This Program For?
Spiritual seekers yearning for deeper meaning and presence
Those navigating illness, grief, or major life transitions
Caregivers, chaplains, and hospice professionals
Anyone carrying unspoken fear around death or dying
Individuals who simply sense there is more to life—and are ready to live it fully
You do not need to be facing death to benefit from this journey. All you need is an open heart, a curious spirit, and the courage to live with intention.
Booking Information
Spaces are limited. Early registration is encouraged.
Dates:
Opening Weekend (In Person – Alicante, Spain)
[TBA February 2027]
Monthly Zoom Gatherings:
[4th Tuesday of the Month – 6.30pm-8.15pm)]
Closing Weekend (In Person – Wicklow):
[TBA February 2027]
Cost:
Full Program Fee: €1500 (In Person weekends and Online)
Deposit of €300 to secure place.
Includes two in-person retreats (or online), ten online sessions (once a month), and program materials
Payment Plans Available (x3 and x10)
Scholarships considered upon request
To Apply:
Fill in the form below and click on the payment link to secure your place. Once registered, you will receive a welcome packet with full program details, logistics, and preparation materials.
A Year to Live Application Form
Pick the First payment button if you are attending the retreats in January and December in-person, otherwise the second button for the fully online option!
If you knew you had one year left to live… how would you live?
A Year to Live is a year-long spiritual journey through the Celtic wheel of the seasons.
Beginning in March 2027, participants enter the programme through a powerful contemplation:
You receive a prognosis that you have one year left to live.
From that moment, everything changes.
Across twelve months we walk together through the natural cycle of:
living
loving
releasing
dying
resting
returning
Guided by the ancient Celtic festivals, mindfulness practice, spiritual reflection, ritual and community, the year becomes an invitation to meet life more honestly and more fully.
Not as an abstract idea.
But as lived practice.
This is not about preparing to die.
It is about becoming fully alive before you do.
The 12-month wheel
March — Receiving the Prognosis
Threshold / Beginning
You are told:
“You have one year to live.”
How do you respond?
What rises immediately?
Fear?
Relief?
Grief?
Urgency?
Clarity?
This opening month becomes the threshold crossing into the journey.
April – May
Spring – Awakening to Life
- clarifying what matters most
- unfinished conversations
- relationships
- values
- what wants to be lived before death comes
June – July – August
Summer – Fullness & Aliveness
- joy
- embodiment
- vitality
- creativity
- pleasure
- beauty
- love
- giving yourself fully to life while you can
September – October
Harvest Season
- life review
- legacy
- gratitude
- forgiveness
- completion
- what you are leaving behind
November – Samhain
Death Gate
The symbolic death point of the journey.
Samhain is the ancient Celtic threshold between worlds.
Here we enter:
- death meditation
- grief ritual
- ancestral connection
- surrender
- release of identity
- letting go of control
- meeting the mystery
This becomes the deepest spiritual turning point of the year.
December – January
Winter – The Great Stillness
After death comes silence.
Winter invites:
- emptiness
- rest
- waiting
- not knowing
- darkness as teacher
- spiritual spaciousness
- listening beyond the self
February – Imbolc
Rebirth
The wheel turns.
Light begins returning.
Something new awakens.
Not the old self returned unchanged—
but a life re-entered with greater tenderness, depth and presence.
Imbolc becomes:
- rebirth
- blessing
- renewal
- re-entry into life
- carrying wisdom forward
The year closes.
And begins again.
To walk consciously with death is not to turn away from life—
it is to turn toward it completely.
Through one full turning of the Celtic wheel,
we meet the seasons within ourselves:the moments of blossoming,
the times of harvest,
the necessary dying,
and the mystery of returning again.A Year to Live is an invitation to live with courage,
love deeply,
let go honestly,
and begin again.