Hi Friend,
I knew the Origin Stories class was going to be really great. And it has been. Every week, participants tell me how much they are really enjoying it, coming to new realizations, developing their writing practice, making progress on stories they want to be telling, and finally having a chance to think and work through some really deep questions. Even if they don’t know where the story is going.
What I had not expected was the extent to which so much more than ‘Origin Stories’ is arising. People are exploring their relationship to their family and ancestors, yes. And also to disease, to health, to oceans and other watery ecologies, to spiritual figures, to that which has been forgotten, and to silences. To myths and metaphors and questions of inheritance and legacy. To their collective selves. Existential and practical questions are arising, and participants are engaging with them in ways that are authentic.
It is, in short, a space where people are exploring their own eco-spiritualities; their own sense of beliefs and knowings and matterings.
In a time when so much is changing - in people’s individual lives, in the life of nations, of big picture things - it is an incredibly valuable time to go deeper into these questions.
As a spiritual director, I know how many people benefit from portals, entry passages, into some of these big picture topics. We need a way of asking questions, a process for engaging with them, and containers to be held in the asking as well as the questions themselves. We need structure and support. We benefit from circles where others, similar but different from us, can hear us.
Our Origin Stories work is an entry point. It’s a way of coming together around important questions that can be really generative. It's also worthwhile for the thing itself.
Because this course is so generative, and because there was enough interest, I’m offering a second cohort. We will start in about two weeks. It's designed to work with folks who are from the UK/Europe/the Middle East/north Africa and India, as well as people on this side of the ocean who prefer an earlier time slot.
And now that I know that this is such a great container to ask some of the big questions, I want to be clear that you don’t have to want to work on an origin story, per se, to join the course. You might want to be just engaging in deepening your own writing and story crafting, and to engage in core questions of eco-spirituality, such as how do you understand the relationship between people, places, and Spirit.
Maybe you are working on a bigger project, like a memoir or a children’s book or a story about settler-Indigenous relationships that has been too often untold. Maybe you want to just focus on your own writing practice
Which is not to say that anything goes! If you are looking for a superficial course and fast and easy answers, this is not for you. If you are looking for someone else to tell you all the answers, this is not for you. If you are looking to finish a book you’re working on and get it published in the next few weeks, this is not a great option for you.
But if you want to go deeper into your own creative praxis, engaging with meaningful fun questions and eco-spiritual, animist leanings, and you are tired of putting off a lot of the big questions, this might be super supportive. And fun!
Not sure? We have an informational webinar coming right up. Tomorrow, Thursday, May 7, 2026 - 12 pm to 1:15 pm ET (at the same time as the course itself).
Perhaps you will join us!
