Rebirth your Story

write your way into a new world

image: Jennifer Parks

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

—Anais Non, from The Diary of Anais Bin, Vol. 4

What happens when you Crack Open a Story? Mother Goose had a basket of eggs for a reason. There are stories to tend, there are stories to tend. Crack one open and discover raw gold. A nesting doll of stories within stories. Your story. Re-write, re-rite, re-right your way into your story. Discover mythopoetic braids of Stories beyond Stories, woven into your personal storylines. Use archetypal and symbolic medicines to amplify the teachings and medicine within your own stories. Follow metaphors and archetypes in and out of dead-ends, wrong turns, underworld caverns and secret closets, and literally and figuratively, move yourself into a new relationship to Story. Turn straw into gold. Repurpose the old storylines and turn them into an orchestra of poetry, prose and beauty. Lighten perceived ‘story baggage’. Wear your story like a crown.

Image: Gwendolyn Kraehenfuss

Stories. We live and breathe stories. Muriel Rukeyser said that The World is Made up of Stories, not Atoms. Story makes the world go round. Story. Every fairytale, every myth is an initiation story.  How can you discover the secrets of initiation embedded in your lost, forgotten, hidden or untold stories?  Maya Angelou says that there is no worse pain than bearing an untold story.  Anais Nin said, And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Writing our way into our stories provides us with an opportunity to reclaim, resurrect and rebirth old stories into new treasures, new blooms. 

 Stories can spin us round and round and they can spin us into a cocoon. Come undone to the Story and set yourself free with new story wings.

I am offering a Three Month VIP deep dive into Writes of Passage and Story Medicine beginning Sundays in May. Think of it as a Story Sanctuary in which we discover the numinous and the personal, the raw and the refined, the sacred and the profane, the real and the true. 

We will meet weekly for 2 hours to dive into new themes and explorations so that we can see the story from many new angles. We will ‘sleep with the story’ and write our way into provocative prompts, themes and explorations, as well as into liminal terrain searching for story elixirs. 

12 weeks total. 13 women. Pen as caduceus. Blank pages. We navigate body, place, memory and imagination. Liminal thresholds and once upon a time multilayered, multi-dimensional story echoes.

We will weave the blessings of sun, moon and stars, earth, fire, water and air into our stories. We will search for and break story curses. We will retrieve lost stories. We will repattern our way of seeing, thinking and feeling about our stories. We will renew our relationship to a poignant theme or story in our own lives. And we will bear witness to one another as we rise up and out of the ashes of stories of the past, sparking new seeds of possibility towards the future. We will develop a body of creative writings in the form of poetry, prose, creative non-fiction and more.  We will practice the art of Story Speaking, from roots, from body, and move the story in somatic and creatively expressive ways.

Image: Jennifer Parks

Crack Open the Story. Each week, we will hear a story and discover where we are in that story. This will facilitate the process of ‘cracking open’ our own story eggs, our own story dolls, to discover new stories, new voices. We will be guided into 5, 7, 10 minute writing prompts. We will also be guided into the power of listening and bearing witness. We will also begin to cultivate more and more deeply, the power of voice as we are guided into the re-telling of our stories, through the integration of body, mind and heart-soul. Outline of themes and archetypes below (still fine tuning! but it gives a clearer picture!)

Week One: Stalking the Story Part One: Little Red Riding (writing) Hood. Following the path of Wildflowers. Place and Childhood Memories. Call to Adventure. Adventuring onto the Path of Story. The power of Red. Maiden and Innocent Archetypes. 

Week Two: Stalking the Story Part Two: Being Swallowed by a Story. The Belly of the Wolf. Stories Lost, Stories Found. Tricks and Tricksters. Ordeal as Initiation. The Path of the Heroine in Story. Echoes of Descent. Swallowing Seeds. Gestation.

Week Three: Swans and Silence Part One. Family patterns. Curses. Inheritance, Karma, & Ancestor Stories. Losing Voice.  Discipline and Discipleship. Weaving stories out of nettles with our bare hands. Martyr Archetype. Witch hunts. Persecution and Betrayal. 

Week Four: Swans and Silence Part Two: Finding Voice. Breaking Silence. Swans, Messengers and Psychopomps. Miracles.

Week Three: Waking Beauty. Constellations and Origin Stories. Adolescence. Protection and Fear of Sharp things. The Thirteenth Fairy wasn’t invited. Sexual and coming of age awakenings.

Week Four: Waking Beauty Part Four. Sleep and Forgetting. Briars, thorns and Roses. Awakenings and Soul Stirrings. The power of Love. Spells and Incantations.

Week Seven: Mystery Huts at The Edge of the Forest:  The Power of Intuition. Trust. Elder Woman Wisdom. Ancient Crone Wisdom. Burning the old story. Bone Truths.

Week Eight: Death and the Water of Life. Inner Masculine. Action. Prayer and Mystery. Firebirds, Friendly Wolves and Transformation.

Week Nine: Rewilding the Story. Shapeshifting Stories. Becoming Fox Woman. Running towards Freedom. Every Step a new Star.

Week Ten: Rewilding the Story. Shapeshifting Stories. Re-creation Stories. Reclamation Stories. 

Week Eleven: Ceremonies, Celebrations and Returning Home: Spider Woman. Leaving the Moon Palace. Tending and telling our Stories in Community.

Week Twelve: Ceremonies, Celebrations and Returning Home. Raven at the End of the World. Weaving new Worlds with Words

Twelve weeks of wild writing in a sacred, intentional community of women. We will cultivate deeper communion with ourselves and one another and experience the healing and transformative power of Story.  This is an immersion into the mystery teachings embedded in fairytales and myths as well as a dynamic writes of passage journey navigating place, body, memory and imagination in which you will return, more whole, with a collection of personal life stories and mythopoetic story vignettes.  You will experience the heroines journey as you write and tell your way through your own personal life story cycles. You will come away, changed with the ELIXIR of your personal and unique collection of life story writings. 

Through guided expressive arts processes, you will strengthen and amplify the capacity to express the true power of your story, retrieving your stories, and rebirthing your voice, and reclaiming your story elixir as a radical act of personal revolution and creative self care.  This process with surprise you, as the power of story is a mysterious pathway into liminality, thresholds and imaginal terrain.  You will integrate more fully, the medicine teachings of your stories, –whether it is integrating a coming of age identity, returning from a call to adventure that you never fully returned from because you never fully told the tale, a childhood rewilding, reclaiming the power of your intuition or girltruth, discovering a hidden fountain of ever-renewing elder wisdom, or making sacred, a personal life story by rewriting your way into its sacred prayer at the very center of your knowing.

You will witness the mysteries of your own personal life stories being revealed to you through your own spell of wild and woven words. Come home to yourself and claim your Authority as She Who Changes her Fate and Writes Herself into a New Story

This course includes:

• 12 weekly zoom sessions each to include a deep dive into the medicine of mythopoetic story (different stories told every other week) and guided writing prompts to support life story excavation and exploration

• 2 One on one life story coaching and/ wild matryoshka editing sessions

• Suggested Writing prompts, life story writing tips and guidelines for personal use

• Suggested Story Medicine teachings to and readings to explore in your own time

• Suggested Rituals and/or affirmations for connecting to your natural rhythms and the rhythm of the moon

• Poems, inspirations and seasons of the soul 

• Guided meditations and/or felt-sense and expressive arts movement practices

You will come away with

 *a polished collection of life story and mythopoetic story writings in the form of prose, poetry, non fiction, fiction, journaling and more for publication in an anthology of voices from our course

*a greater sense of self-love, self-worth and wholeness.  

*greater freedom and energy, renewed creativity and amplified voice

*Story as Elixir, Write of Passage Creations

*Your own personalized story/writes of passage initiation.

Cost

$1500 

Payment Plans available.

Please let me know if you’d like to schedule a short call to talk about the program. I would be honored to witness you, write with you, story with you and guide you in and out of the beauty of your personal story rebirth.