Seona then immersed herself in her new Jewish life through joining the synagogue choir, the synagogue Ladies Guild and volunteering at the Morris Feinmann home. She also became a guide at Manchester Jewish Museum.

Seona held an interest in the Jewish faith throughout her life – a curiosity encouraged by several friendships in her formative years. In her forties, Seona became interested in the idea of converting to Judaism. Following an introduction with Rabbi Reuven Silverman, then rabbi the Manchester Reform Synagogue, she began her conversion to Reform Judaism in the 1990s.

Seona pursued a career in hospitality, enrolling at Le Cordon Bleu London Culinary School at the age of 21. But she switched to a career in nursing from 1975. She moved to Manchester in 1983 to begin training as a midwife in Withington and then Wythenshawe hospitals. She would work in this field until retirement in 2010.

Seona Macfarlane was born in Edinburgh, 1950. Three years after Seona was born, the family moved to Elland in Yorkshire where her father opened a GP surgery. The family were Christian, but church attendance was rare.