― Pat Schneider, How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice

“A writer is someone who writes.” 

It’s a simple quote from Pat Schneider, founder of the Amherst Writers & Artists organization, that strikes both hope and fear into the heart of every writer. Too often our culture associates being a successful writer with being a published author. Too often our expectations and beliefs about what constitutes being a writer gets in the way of the very thing that makes us writers: the act of writing. The truth is that every word we write contributes to a larger body of work, regardless of whether it goes beyond our private pages or not. Our writing doesn’t need to be perfect to matter. We write to explore, to imagine, to deepen into our craft. Writing is a spiritual practice, not meant to feed our ego but rather to nourish our connection with the Divine, with the spirit of community, laying the foundation for deeper expression and understanding.

This fall, join Rev. Jessica Steward, MFA for “Creative: Writing,” an eight-week creative writing circle that is part of our new “Creative Studio Series.” On Sundays, starting October 26, 2025, participants will be offered a writing prompt and invited to write in response to the prompt. Writers are encouraged to play with writing fiction, poetry, nonfiction and will be given word or time limits for each exercise. This is quite different from our proprioceptive writing circles in that participants are encouraged to write creatively, to push the bounds of imagination and stretch their growing edges as a writer.

During each live circle, writers will be asked to read their response to the week’s writing prompt. As a facilitator, I will ask a few simple, open-ended questions as an invitation to revise or continue your piece. Then, as a group, we will complete a fifteen-minute flash writing prompt to continue the creative act of self-expression. Our goal during this circle is to activate our mutual creativity and benefit from the myriad gifts of writing together in community. 

At the end of our time together, you will then be invited to submit a two-piece portfolio that I will review and give feedback on for further revisions.

Schedule & Logistics

Due to my fall schedule, we will meet weekly for three weeks, taking a two week live-meeting break—during which time you will still receive prompts and be encouraged to share your writing online. Then we will meet again for a final three weeks. At the conclusion of our time together, you will select two, edited pieces, write an introduction to these pieces—why you chose them, and what you hope to receive from me in terms of feedback—and then submit that portfolio to me for my review.

• First prompt: October 26, 2025
  • Eight (8) weekly prompts
• Live Circles: Thursdays, 7pm ET to 9pm ET (4pm PT/6pm PT)
  • October 30, 2025
  • November 6, 2025
  • November 13, 2025
  • Break for Brendan’s Birthday
  • Break for Thanksgiving (US)
  • December 4, 2025
  • December 11, 2025
  • December 18, 2025

What’s Included…

• A Private Virtual Circle in House of Belonging
• Eight (8) Weekly Prompts
• Six (6) Live Circles (These will not be recorded.)
• One Final Portfolio Review (Includes Introduction and two (2) selected pieces)

Join the Circle

In the spirit of this “collective care fellowship”, all paid programs offer 3 tiers of pricing: Collective Care Beneficiary, Collective Care Maintainer, and Collective Care Contributor. We may play all of these roles throughout our lives and wherever you find yourself in this moment is welcome.

Note, my circles always sell out quickly. Registration closes by October 25, 2025.

• $205 (Contributor)
• $185 (Maintainer)
• $165 (Beneficiary)

About Your Facilitator

Reverend Jessica Steward is the founder and abbess of A Mighty Kindness, a sanctuary for seekers, skeptics, and scamps. In April 2025, Rev. Steward received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Chatham University. She is currently working on a memoir, in addition to composing and delivering monthly reflections in her Sermons on the Couch. A selection of her writing can be found on her Substack site, Luminous Flux.

We stood transfixed for long moments, listening. My eyes filled with tears. It was as though I were an infant in the womb, hearing for the first time the heartbeat of her own mother.  Like the deep-sleeping turtles and fish being gently rocked in the water far beneath the thick spring ice with each new pulse, I felt the interior waters of my own body responding. The lake, beckoned by the moon, had come alive to thump against its ice-bound prison in response to its sky-bound lover.

As surely as I knew that evening that summer was on its way to liberate the living waters, I knew that something within me was being called back to life as well, and that it was my work to help free it from its long winter’s freeze.

Now it is full summer, the ice gone from all lakes and streams, the water free and sun-warmed. On clear evenings, I love to track the waxing moon’s passage across the sky by watching its dazzling reflection on the surface of our lake. Sometimes the water is still, providing a perfect mirror for the moon to admire her own luminous beauty. Sometimes the wind ruffles and tosses the water, and the moonlight dances and sparkles on the waves like loose diamonds. Always, this lover’s dance between Moon and Water resonates in my own body as deep mystery, as receptivity, as generativity. I too, like the lake, am teeming with life. I too have responsive cycles and dark depths within me. I too am the reflection and beloved of Mother Moon shining down, her light spreading over me like a sweet blanket as she draws me into her safe embrace.

This year, on the day after the Summer Solstice (when the sun will reach its highest point in the sky for the year), the full moon will hang in the sky at its lowest point in several years, making it appear especially enormous and bright. May this auspicious event be an invitation to each of us to attune to the nighttime sister of our bright summer days. May Mother Moon illuminate for us our own beautiful depths and call to life the generative waters within the womb of our wild, creative and dark feminine soul. May we be drenched in her warm and beneficent love, and may we love her back in return.

Let us consider the myth of Vasilisa and her becoming. There are several variations of the fairy tale but for this summer issue we are going to work with a Russian version of Vasilisa the Beautiful inspired by the rendition in Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

The myth of Vasilisa the Beautiful can be traced to pre-Grecian times. It is essentially a coming of age story of a young woman traveling the psychic underworld in a quest for fire who combines her gifts of intuition, maternal guidance and matriarchal love to blossom into a wild and full woman.

Beautiful can describe Vasilisa’s external appearance, but in true liberatory spirit, the word is meant to convey the qualities of her inner gifts and soulfulness.

Vasilisa is a young and sweet girl when her mother, on her deathbed, gifts her with a tiny doll. Her mother tells her that if Vasilisa is ever in need of help she can ask the doll and it will know what to do. Her mother offers this blessing and tells Vasilisa to keep the doll with her, feed her when she is hungry and to never tell anyone of its existence.

Several years later Vasilisa’s father remarries and the stepmother and her two stepdaughters despise Vasilisa. They mock and demean her and force her to do the chores and wait on their every need. Eventually the stepfamily conspire to kill Vasilisa and purposefully snuff the home fire and send her on a quest to visit Baba Yaga to rekindle the flame of the hearth. They do not believe that Vasilisa can survive meeting the witch and will not return. Naive but determined, Vasilisa heads off into the forest with her doll to find the witch and ask for fire.

Through the dark woods, Vasilisa speaks to her doll for guidance and offers her bread. She encounters a man in white on a white horse and the sky becomes day. Then a man in red goes by on a red horse and the sun begins to rise. As Vasalisa arrives at the hut of Baba Yaga, a rider in black on his black horse brings on night. The witch’s house is an eerie structure made with bones, teeth, skin and sits atop erratic chicken legs. The hut is surrounded by skulls filled with flame that cast their glow.

Baba Yaga flies in on her cauldron, a warty fierce hag, and demands to know why Vasilisa has come. Vasilisa asks for fire and the witch proceeds to test Vasilisa with questions and impossible tasks which she must complete before she will be deemed worthy of aid. If she fails, Baba Yaga will eat her. She makes Vasilisa bring her food, wash her clothes, clean the house, sweep the yard, separate mildewed corn from good, poppy seeds from dirt. In every case, Vasilisa reaches into her pocket and the doll offers blessings, guidance, and extraordinary help to complete what is asked.

The final test is when Baba Yaga asks if Vasilisa has questions for her. After Vasilisa inquires about the horses and riders, Baba Yaga presses for more questions. The doll quivers in Vasilisa’s pocket so Vasilisa quells her curiosity and says she is satisfied. Baba Yaga commends Vasilisa’s wisdom and offers her a skull with fiery eyes to carry back to her home.

Vasilisa listens to her doll as she navigates her return. At one point the skull lantern seems scary and too much to bear, but the skull reassures her to stay the path and so Vasilisa keeps the frightening gift of light bestowed by Baba Yaga and presses on.

As Vasilisa returns home, triumphant in her quest, the stepmother and stepsisters whine of their cold, miserable circumstances. The skull lantern gazes upon them and reduces the stepmother and stepsisters to ash.

As you consider this summer season of becoming here are some contemplations:

• How can you celebrate the blessings and secret helpers in your life?
• How can you tap into the strength, willpower and matriarchal love that is available to you?
• How do you discern what is right for you?
• What wants to bloom in you? What has endured? What wants to announce itself upon its return home? What wants to rest?
• What new ways of being can help you honor what has been let go?
• What wisdom glows within? How can you encourage this fire to burn?
• What strengths can you adorn with appreciation? Can you live them more honestly?
• What feels expansive, wild and powerful within you right now? How can you make it an offering for your world in a right sized way?

Summer is an invitation to let live what wants to live. To savor our vitality. Perhaps you can synchronize with its rhythms and rejoice in the fiery wildness that dares and lives within you. Let this wildness be your guide.

“Fuck! Babe! What have you been up to for the past two years?”

I’ve known business coach and author Pamela Slim for nearly fifteen years and her greeting was friendly and effusive, a reflection of the inner sunshine she carries with her everywhere. As a native Californian who’s been living in Mesa, Arizona for the past two decades, it’s not surprising she emanates a natural warmth and light. I laughed and reminded her it had been at least four years since we last connected. With the advent of texting and social media, it’s easy to stay in touch even when lives and careers diverge.

I reached out to Pam to see if she’d be willing to speak with me about her writing career. As a graduate student in my first year of an MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham University, I wanted to talk to a writer whose success I admired. It just so happens that in addition to being a successful business coach and innovative community builder, my long-time friend is also an award-winning author of three, critically acclaimed, business books targeting entrepreneurs. Despite—or perhaps because of—her breezy affability and heartwarming humility, Pam enjoys close friendships and working relationships with the upper echelon of business and entrepreneur authors like Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink, although her own career has been somewhat less flashy and she herself is arguably more approachable. While I’ve always understood her success, I realized that in all the years I’ve known her, she and I have never spoken about her life as a writer.

 I first met Pam when I was in training to be a life coach. In addition to owning her own business coaching and consulting practice, Pam was one of my instructors in the life coach training program I was enrolled in. Her primary teaching topics were on marketing, networking, and promoting our own unique intellectual property, which also happened to also be my area of expertise at the time. I liked her easy and accessible approach to teaching and felt an instant kinship with her. As a corporate escapee, I learned a lot from Pam during my training and through reading her first book, Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur. It was rare for me to find a teacher and mentor that made me feel like my own success in coaching was not only possible but inevitable.

After I completed the master coach training and certification program, Pam and I became peers in the life coach training program. I joined the ranks of its instructors, where Pam and I briefly got to work together, redesigning the marketing classes in the coach training curriculum. Unfortunately, the transition from student to staff was challenging for me: I enjoyed teaching, but the behind-the-scenes reality of our cliquish training organization took some of the shine off my experience. Pam had already begun to distance herself from the organizational drama and eventually left to grow her own coaching practice.

During this brief collaboration, I managed to learn a lot about adult learning from Pam and attribute some of my own skills as a trainer and facilitator to this time together. Over the years we would see each other at various coaching events but she was also busy with her own business and raising two young children, so our moments of connection were fewer and further between.  In the meantime, I enjoyed reading her second book, Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together, and keeping connected with her on social media.

After leaving corporate work for coaching, it seemed as if I jumped out of the aphoristic frying pan straight into the fire. In early 2017, I unceremoniously parted ways with the life coach training program and its managing organization where I worked full-time. I learned over the years it was a highly personality-driven company, rife with favoritism, paranoia, and dysfunctional work dynamics. It was also an incredibly stressful working environment. While I was glad to be moving on, I was still shocked at suddenly losing most of my income.

When Pam learned what had happened, she immediately reached out. Something similar had happened to her in the early days of working with the same organization, making her decision to leave years later much easier. While sharing my story, Pam listened with deep empathy and offered forthright, comforting, and expletive-laden support. Then, with her signature generosity and convivial compassion, she asked me to come do some consulting work for her business. She was moving into a critical part of growing her new Mesa-based community learning lab and “needed” my expertise. Her support came as a beneficent response to my unspoken prayer that I would survive this experience, support for which I will forever be grateful.

Nearly five years later—with many life transitions between us—I was excited to catch up with my friend and learn more about Pam as a writer. I prepared a list of questions for us, knowing I would need a guidepost to bring me back to the goal of our conversation since staying on topic has never been our strong suit. We met via Zoom and after catching each other up on our personal life updates, I finally hit “record.”

“I don’t know anything about you as a writer, and I was curious if writing has always been something that’s been important for you?” I asked.

“It has,” she replied.  “Writing has always been part of my family life. As you may know my dad was a photojournalist. And so, he loved to write.”

Pam goes on to explain that her father, Lewis “Skip” Stewart got a dual degree in English and Journalism from what is now the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. After graduation, he worked as a reporter for the Roseville Press-Tribune. He then went on to further his photographic studies at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara. I know that Pam’s father was a great influence on her life, and she grew up watching him write for his career—often on a yellow pad before two-finger typing his article on a typewriter.

Besides being the daughter of a photojournalist, Pam also shares how her “introverted” family’s mutual love of reading and discussing books was an influence on her career, even though becoming a writer was never part of her plan.

“I’ve always enjoyed it. I love to read. I was good at writing. I would get good grades in English… Yet, I never thought in a million years that it would be anything that I would do professionally.”

After graduation, Pam went on to work for non-profits as well as in training and development for ten years before starting her own coaching business. To help grow her burgeoning practice, Pam took a class on how to build her online business profile. It was ultimately an assignment on blogging as a business development tool that changed the trajectory of her career. Pam shares, “It wasn’t until I started writing my blog that I really connected with my voice and a love of writing again in 2005.”

Pam named her blog “Escape from Cubicle Nation,” which went on to become the title of her subsequent book after an editor—Emily Rapoport at Portfolio, a division of Penguin Books—discovered Pam through the blog and its supplemental podcast in 2008. It was actually a 2006 viral post on her blog that helped shape the future of Pam’s writing career from burgeoning blogger to published author. “It was May 6th, 2006 when I wrote the open letter to CEOs post that I shared with [marketing guru] Guy Kawasaki, where he posted it on his blog. It went madly viral everywhere… At that point, somebody who responded to that [post] reached out, introduced me to their agent, and I did an early shopping around with an outline for the book that got rejected by everybody. One publisher said, ‘You know, it’s kind of pedestrian,’ I was like, ‘Okay, whatever.’ So, I just went back to writing for another year and a half.”

It was a critical year and half, offering Pam the chance to continue to sharpen her voice and widen her audience. Eventually, she got that fateful email from Emily—who worked at the very same publisher who had said her original book proposal was “pedestrian.” Emily shared that she listened to Pam’s podcast on the train to and from the office, which eventually led her to reading Pam’s blog. “It really was ‘blog to book’…that’s how it started. And then I got a two-book deal with the option for the second that was Body of Work.”

Escape from Cubicle Nation won “Best Small Business/Entrepreneur Book” from Porchlight’s “800-CEO-Read” awards in 2009, which was an incredible and unexpected achievement for Pam as a new business author on the scene. She then published her second book, Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together, in 2013. Portfolio passed on publishing her third book, The Widest Net: Unlock Untapped Markets and Discover New Customers Right in Front of You, which got picked up and eventually published by McGraw Hill in 2021. It ended up winning a Porchlight Business Books award and was named the “Best Sales and Marketing Book” for 2021. And while the total sales of her three books may not be what Pam would hope, Pam understands that the books are a specific tool to help get her messages out, connecting her with amazing people who need her special brand of entrepreneurial magic through her one-on-one coaching, classes, workshops, and retreats.

Throughout our interview, I glance at my prepared list of questions to make sure I am covering what I wanted to discuss. There is one question in particular I want to ask, although I suppose it’s more of an entreaty rather than a question. For as long as I’ve known Pam, her writing has always focused on advice for the entrepreneur. Yet based on my personal experience, she has deeper life wisdom to impart to her reader that goes well beyond intellectual property, brand growth, community development, and entrepreneurship. She has offered me many spoken and unspoken lessons on living a life of integrity and devotion. I am curious if she has been called to write more specifically about who she is in the world and not just what she does? While she frequently uses her stories in the context of her business books, I wanted to know if she is ever going to write a book filled with lessons on building a beautiful life and not just building a thriving business. Before I can form the words, though, a moment of pure serendipity happens: Pam says she already knows what her next book will be about and asks me if I want to know.

Duh. “Of course,” I reply.

At first, Pam thought her next book would be on making good choices, because much of her career has been about helping people sort through “really difficult decisions in such a way that is in alignment with who they are, so they can live with the decisions that they’ve made.” However, while contemplating her next book, Pam recalled a guest post she did for artist and author Hugh MacLeod’s website gapingvoid. The blog series was called, “Remember Who You Are” and the post she wrote for that blog is ultimately where she wants to take her next book. It is about how to pull yourself back from the edge of life when the world makes you feel “less than” the truth of who you are. I can feel the hair on my arm rise at the coincidence unfolding before us.

As she pulls the article up on her computer so we can read it together, Pam shares that this post gets to the heart of her next book. She wants to help others understand “what is the way—no matter what is happening around you— that you can maintain a sense of yourself? No matter what’s happening, how do you find a way through it?” Pam says that this article feels very specific to what she wants to write next not only for her fans, but as a prayer and love letter to her children.

“That’s really what I want to write to them: How you navigate this thing called ‘life.’”

I smile and feel a little frisson of joy, smiling at the synchronicity. I tell her then why I am smiling, letting her know that this is exactly what I had hoped she would write her next book about. “Because” I explain, “you have so many lessons that run deeper than business. And those are often the ones that have saved me personally in my darkest hour. Who’s going to tell those stories?”

“Me?” She replies. We both smile widely at the converging magic of the moment, Pam’s eyes crinkling and sparkling in that magnetic way they always do.

“Yeah, it’s you,” I answer.

I sense our work here is done. I could ask her about her writing process, pick her brain about how she sits down to write the actual book once a book proposal is accepted. But there is time for that later. I said what I needed to say to Pam today, conveying to her that her stories— her life—matter and I want the world to know more of who she is as an incredible human and not just as a business coach. I can tell she is touched by our conversation and delighted by the serendipity of our shared vision for what’s next for her. It’s the gift of friendship that allows us to see each other so deeply and speak to one another so openly. We wrap up the interview and I turn off the recording so we can chat a little bit more, including dreams of co-facilitating a writing retreat in Scotland. I am grateful for her conversation, for her story, and for the reminder that there is a beautiful connection that exists between us regardless of how often we speak. Something alchemical has happened in our conversation and I am curious to see where it leads us both, as writers, as humans, and as friends.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t have to wait long for my quick-start friend to begin working on her next book. The next morning, Pam tags me in a post on Facebook, sharing with her community that through our conversation, she has been connected to the heart of her next book, which she had been pretending she didn’t want to write yet. She also mentions our conversation and the subject of her next book in her newsletter that day. As a final confirmation that our time together was as meaningful for her as it was for me, I received a personal email from Pam with the subject line “Your fault” and the title, subtitle, and dedication for the book she began writing right after our call, but truly the book she began writing the moment she was born.  The title, at least for now, is Remember Who You Are. I smile, with tears in my eyes, glad for the invitation back to myself and grateful for the friend who has made the invitation to me many times before.

~Rev. Jessica Steward

Note: I wrote this as part of a graduate school assignment and chose to publish it because Pam is truly one of the inspirations and guiding lights for our work at A Mighty Kindness. She is the embodiment of sacred activism and compassion-in-action that is at the heart our organization and I’m proud to call her “friend.” ~The Rev

This is a term Tamira Cousett used in a podcast conversation with Shauna Janz this February: Elder Wisdom Why Now. When I heard it, my soul reverberated ‘yes’.

I believe this is the call of our time. To learn how to emerge, trembling, together. We are being asked to collectively weave something regenerative. I don’t believe the design is for us to know or direct, the invitation is to build the capacity to bravely show up and see what arises.

We can feel the fragility and uncertainty of our time. The sorrows of our world are many. We hear the cries of our past and future ancestors, our communities, our beautiful Mother Earth. We want to respond but “how?” seems to be the overwhelming question. “How do I respond?”

Just as you are. Together.

It is both galvanizing and safe to know that others are responding and they too feel wobbly but do it anyway.

We are being asked to untangle our medicine, our imaginations and our sense of belonging from the suffocating overculture of late-stage capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist patriarchy. It is time to see what we can create beyond what is falling apart. The soul is not defined by individual accomplishment, degrees or certifications, but reflected and amplified when we come together as our genuinely imperfect selves.

It is time to tend to one another. To the seen and unseen. To all our kin.

The work is unpolished and unrefined. The work takes guts and vulnerable gestures that only have meaning when they are offered for one another. We need to trust the things we don’t have names for.

The magic is what happens between us.

This takes a willingness to be present with ourselves and each other. It takes courage to show up with our fears, our grief, our doubts, our joys, our stories, our prayers, our bodies, our blunders, right where we are and offer them.

This is sacred work. This is soul work.

This is A Mighty Kindness.

If you want to find spaces and company for your trembling emergence, the holy chambers of The House of Belonging welcome and need you.

~Criss

Persephone’s story is remarkable. She is a beloved maiden full of life and hope who is swallowed into the Underworld and tricked into believing it is her home by Hades. Persephone has no real power over her life. Her life’s meaning is defined by what she means to others and is the excuse for much suffering.

How would a young woman find sovereignty in such a position?

I think Persephone is a Queen of Trembling Emergence.

To traverse between the dark and light worlds each year must have instilled a great power within her that she had to apprentice herself to learn. I think of how she may have prepared for the journeys. What did she do before seeing her mother and feeling her love and the warm sun again? What rituals may she have adopted to say farewell to the sweet fragrance of flowers and the dancing light? How did she return to a realm of quiet dark and shadows, forced to be a Queen amongst decay and death?

What did she do in this in-between? When Persephone returns she is changed and the world and people she returns to are not the same anymore either.

How did Persephone find herself? What or who did she orient herself to? 

The preparation for the transition and the in-between places are worth considering as we here in the Northern Hemisphere ready ourselves for longer daylight, warmer temperatures and new blooms. It is a hopeful and fragile time. Spring is a lesson in paying attention, sensing the right conditions, resting and slow release energy, staying with the discomfort, turning towards possibility while letting go of what no longer serves the new.

What or who invites us to change? Makes us tremble? Makes it all worth it? 

Persephone represents the chance to find agency in the emergence. She reminds us that only by descending into the underworld of self can we renew life.

~Criss

By Invitation Only

Friday, October 6, 2023 TO BE RESCHEDULED
6:00pm to 8:30pm
Held at Private Residence
All Supplies Included

Here is a simple truth: if you are a human, you have experienced grief.

If you have known love, you have known loss.

If you have experienced joy, you have experienced sorrow.

Our lives—our world—is filled with love and joy, grief and loss. As a culture, we are great at celebrating our happiness. Yet, there are very few spaces where those of us who are grieving can feel safe to honor and express what we’ve lost or even what we will someday lose. 

In this 2.5-hour workshop on Friday, October 6, 2023 we will create a figurative and literal container to “vessel”—or tenderly hold—our grief and honor our losses. Together, we will acknowledge what we are grieving, sharing only what we feel comfortable, and then begin the loving, gentle practice of healing from what has been lost. We will complete a brief writing practice to begin engaging with and honoring your grief before enjoying (yes, enjoy!) a shared creative project. During our remaining time, we will create a container or vessel to support our grieving process and honor that which we have lost. We will paint, decoupage, or bedazzle in companionable silence (with some good tunes!) and then share our creations with one another before closing the circle with a discussion of how to continue the practice of honoring and holding our grief with tenderness and love.

Facilitated by spiritual mentor and interfaith community chaplain, Rev. Jessica Steward, this gathering will use her Circle Sanctum Facilitation Model to help create a sanctuary for emotional safety and loving support for each circle member. As an experienced facilitator, Rev. Steward has supported hundreds of circles with wisdom, respect, and necessary humor. Her work is trauma-informed and draws from a variety of spiritual and healing modalities to meet each person wherever they are on their healing journey. Your care is her utmost priority.

Please note: Sharing is always optional in every circle. Review the Circle Sanctum Facilitation Model for more details.

What to expect:

• Upon arrival, you will be greeted and given an opportunity to contribute to our shared grief altar.
• Rev. Steward will open the circle with a moment of silence and a reading before welcoming each circle member.
• After our welcome + introductions, members will have a chance to offer a brief introduction, sharing only what you feel comfortable.
• Rev. Steward will offer an overview of our time together and then share guidelines for our figurative container—our circle.
• Using prompts, we’ll spend 10 minutes free-writing before sharing what we’ve written. (Sharing is a process of having your grief witnessed without comment or commentary.)
• After group writing, we will create a container as a representative vessel for our grief or loss. Be it “God or Goddess Box” or “Memory Box,” we will enjoy decorating a keepsake for our prayers or our memories that we hold precious. This will be done in companionable silence with good music. A box and materials will be provided.
• In our remaining time, we will share what we’ve created and then discuss how we can create an ongoing practice of honoring our loss or grief before closing our circle and departing for home.

What To Bring

• An item—a photo or other representation—of something or someone you’ve lost or are grieving for our altar. You can retrieve your item at the conclusion of the circle.
• A journal or notebook and pen
• NOTE: A container and art supplies will be provided. However, if you have your own container (box or jar) that you would like to bring to decorate or items you’d like to incorporate into your project, please bring them.

Register Now

• $35 (Project supplies will be provided.)

To register, email jessica@amightykindness.org to receive a private link to register.

Questions? Email me at jessica@amightykindness.org

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.” ~Regina Brett

We live in a commercialized world, rooted in “doing” and where productivity is the measure of our worth and we’re encouraged to mindlessly consume.What if, instead, we devote ourselves to living differently?

What if, instead, we learned to slow down and savor life?

Welcome to Savoring Summer— an invitation to live life differently. To sink in. To slow down. Together, we will create space to deepen, wonder, and play. We will experiment with co-creating our sacred lives in relationship with nature’s elements and invitations. We will prioritize and honor “being” as the holy state that it is. Nothing is required for this journey except your desire to learn how to truly savor and appreciate the pace of summer.

In this special 7-week offering, enjoy seasonally-appropriate weekly invitations to journaling, contemplation, rest, reflection, and so much more. This inner journey of sacred delight will be a combination of self-paced content with just a few live gatherings to honor the season’s invitation of—you guessed it—sinking in and slowing down.

As your guide, Lantern Keeper Jen Trulson truly walks a path of devotion when it comes to honoring the rhythms and the cycles of nature and all that each season has to offer for herself—and helping others to do the same. She loves to walk with women who are pulled to live in reciprocity with nature as our guide and “being” as our default mode. To live in exchange with life.

Your inner road trip into spaciousness, reverence, and joy begins July 17, 2023 ending on a Blue Moon—the second full moon of the month—August 30, 3023.

The Invitation

Hello, Friend—

Every year, summer whispers, “Slow down, sink in, savor me.” While “hot as hell” may not be my favorite temperature, the warmth and wonder of the season is one I deeply cherish. Something about this time of year invites me to abandon my regular routines and rhythms for those infused with more connection and wonder. I still partake in practices to ground and center me. However there is a sense of more space—hello, long summer days.

You see, I have a thing for slowing down. Pausing. I believe that each season invites a different energy. While winter feels more like a time to tend to our tender and tired parts, summer feels like a time to embody the vitality of the sun—life force energy itself. It’s an opportunity to be open to its abundant invitations of connection, playfulness, and wonder.

Come join me on a 7-week journey to sink in, slow down, and savor summer. Deepen into and connect with the invitations of our natural world and Divine Guidance to return to your own sacred rhythm this season. During our time together, I’ll provide abundant space and support for you to reflect on what “savoring summer” means for you.

We begin on July 17th with the Cancer New Moon, tuning into Luna’s invitations and guidance. We’ll gather live via a Zoom call around each full moon—August 1st and 30th—for celebration, sharing and ceremony. And how special!? Our closing call will be on the Blue Full Super Moon in Pisces at the end of August. (Don’t worry, I’ll explain exactly what that means when we’re together…)

Each week, enjoy moon forecasts with journaling prompts for each new and full moon. Wake up every Monday morning to a sacred invitation and Divine Guidance to help support you in living in relationship with the season, nature, and world around you. Consider it your companion for the week in sinking in and slowing down.

Over the weekend, you’ll get a little love note from me too. It will be something to support you in reflecting and mining the magic and medicine from your week. Reflection and contemplation will help nurture and deepen your relationship to both self and summer.

So come. Walk with me this mid-summer. A season of softening.

Are you ready to savor summer? Let’s slow down. Sink into your natural summer rhythm. Allow the season’s invitations to support and guide you. Let’s savor summer together.

xox, jen

About Our Circle

Are you ready to sink in and slow down? Are you eager to walk through the summer in reverence and presence? Here’s what you’ll experience during our time together.

Together we will…

• Gather on the full moon to honor its invitations, share our stories, and celebrate our experiences of savoring summer’s magic and medicine. 
• Experience how showing up for yourself and each other in-circle is a sacred exchange with the Spirit of Summer. What you give you will receive tenfold in return.
• Enjoy the opportunity to feel nourished, inspired, and empowered. 
• Share our voices while also practicing being a compassionate presence for each—lovingly witnessing, gently listening, and softly being. 
• Sit “shoulder to shoulder” in a virtual circle without fixing, saving, or giving advice.

The Details

• Each Monday, wake up to our community invitation to connect, daydream, and reflect.
  • Support for slowing down and sinking into the season, sprinkled with summer surprises.
• Each weekend, wake up to find another love note from me, reflecting on the week and inviting you to do the same.
• Each Full Moon, we will gather in circle via zoom, to celebrate our walk with savoring summer.
  • Tuesday, August 1st, for the Aquarius Super Full Moon.
  • Wednesday, August 30th, for the Pisces Super Full Blue Moon.
• We’ll gather at 5:00pm PT/8:00pm ET for 60 – 90 minutes
• Each in-person circle will include:
  • A gently guided rest-in to gently arrive, together.
  • An overview of the season’s invitations, including the full moon forecast.
  • Ample time to connect, reflect and share your experience, and deepen into slowing down and sinking in.
  • A guided rest-out, to return to the world a little softer and grounded.
• A private community in the House of Belonging on Mighty Networks to encourage sharing.
  • Our sacred spot to inspire, empower, and connect between our two live calls.
• Each circle will be lovingly facilitated by Jen Trulson, using the Circle Sanctum model.

**The two full moon circles will be recorded. However, you won’t want to miss the live calls infused with summer’s joy and gold.**

What You’ll Receive

As part of this circle you will receive:

• 1 (one) private community to gather on Mighty Networks
• 2 (two) 60 to 90-minute, In-Person Community Gatherings on the August Super Full Moons
• 7 (seven) weeks of bi-weekly invitations to support you in slowing down, sinking in, and savoring summer

Plus…

• Receive access to a library of rest meditations, contemplative prompts, and free resources when you join our free Kindness Community, The House of Belonging.

How to Prepare for Live Circle

• Come comfortable. You are encouraged to come as you are from your summer space or cozy corner, where you can join the circle uninterrupted.
• Bring a journal and pen and your summer self, experiences, and reflections.
• Nourish and support yourself before and during circle. Have something to quench your thirst and a little snack if needed.

Register Now

**Self Registration is now closed. Contact bekind@amightykindness.org for late enrollment.**

In the spirit of this “collective care fellowship”, all paid programs offer 3 tiers of pricing: Collective Care Beneficiary, Collective Care Maintainer, and Collective Care Contributor. We may play all of these roles throughout our lives and wherever you find yourself in this moment is welcome.

For late registration (prior to August 1), please email bekind@amightykindness.org.

(Use the applicable code under “coupon code” to receive Maintainer and Beneficiary levels)

• Register as a Contributor: $88
• Register as a Maintainer: $68 (use coupon code SSM723)
• Register as a Beneficiary: $48 (use coupon code SSB723)

Questions? Contact us at bekind@amightykindness.org

Facilitated by Rev. Jessica Steward and Lantern Keeper Jen Trulson

Tuesdays at 5pm PT/8pm ET; Begins April 25 through July 11, 2023 (We meet on Wednesday, July 5, 2023.)

Realizing Freedom Together.

“The heart of truth can be found in all things, in all circumstances, in all times. This book is about acting in the world on behalf of this truth. It’s about reconciling our personal desire for truth and freedom with our desire to relieve suffering in the world. Our suffering is not separate from the suffering of the world. Our liberation is not separate from the liberation of the world.” ~Caverly Morgan, Author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together

We live in a world that feels increasingly divided. Increasingly disconnected. Increasingly unsafe. And increasingly unkind. Our government’s ongoing legislation is not only regressive but oppressive. The violence, murder, and ongoing oppression of perpetually ignored and marginalized populations not only continues but is alarmingly on the rise. Sanctioned violence and discrimination can be found at the highest levels of influence and government in our countries. It seems that anyone who isn’t a Cis-gendered, Heteronormative White person continues to have to live in constant fear for not only their psychological and physical safety but also their basic liberties. In 2023.

Our institutional and societal systems of oppression are so deeply rooted in our colonized cultures that most days it feels impossible to know what to do to free ourselves, never mind the world at large, from their rule. As a result, there may be an urge to isolate and retreat from one another. And yet the path to healing ourselves and our planet cannot be done in isolation because individual freedom or liberation is directly tied to everyone else with whom we share the world. Because as civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer has said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

True freedom or liberation can only be achieved together.

But how?

In her book, The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together, author Caverly Morgan proposes that when faced with the enormity of the problems of the world, it is by applying our individual spiritual practices—designed for realizing personal freedom—to the collective that we can make a tangible difference in the world. Offering a wealth of teachings and reflections, solo and group exercises, and personal stories that inspire us to put our values into action, this timely guide invites us to connect with the deepest truth of who we are, and then use that understanding to transform our own lives and the world we share.

At the core of this book is the call to liberation—to find freedom that is within and without—both personally and collectively. “The longer we cling to the notion that there’s a separate self who awakens, the more arduous our path will be,” Morgan writes. “We realize freedom together.”

“When I liberate myself, I liberate others.”  ~Fannie Lou Hamer

This April, join us for a 12-week, immersive journey using The Heart of Who We Are as our guide. This powerful book will help us deepen into the core of our being—exploring the nature of consciousness, identity, and interconnectedness.

Through her accessible prose and insightful individual & group exercises, Morgan will lead us on a journey of self-discovery and connection. Together, we will explore how our own sense of self is intertwined with the world around us, and how our actions can ripple out to create positive change—even when it feels overwhelming and impossible.

Whether you’re new to the world of mindfulness and meditation or an experienced practitioner, The Heart of Who We Are offers valuable insights and practices that will help you unwind the internalized systems of oppression that exist within you and then bring that insight and healing out into the world around you.

Your facilitators, Rev. Jessica Steward and Lantern Keeper Jen Trulson, will also share their own experiences, insights, and practices to complement those shared in the book. From Yoga Nidra to Shenpa to Lectio Divina to Tonglen, we will share a variety of contemplative modalities to help us find freedom within ourselves so we can bring it forward to our families, communities, and hopefully, the world.

“Collective liberation acknowledges that multiple oppressions exist, and that we work in solidarity to undo oppression in ourselves, our families, our communities, and our institutions, in order to achieve a world that is truly free. We work collectively because we recognize that each of us has a stake in ending White supremacy and all related systems of oppression.” ~Center for Racial Justice in Education

Together We Will…

• Deepen into the concept of collective liberation and take real and practical steps towards it.
• Explore the nature of the ego and how it keeps us separate from deep and meaningful connection with self, spirit, and community.
• Understand the nature of our conditioning and how to begin addressing the internalized systems of oppression that arise from the conditioned mind and perpetuate the illusion of separation from each other.
• Learn how to “bring your life into your practice versus your practice into your life.” Everything in our lives is an invitation to remember our inherent wholeness and our interconnectedness with all things. Together we will learn how to awaken without requiring special circumstances to do so.
• Address the nagging voice of our Inner Critic and move from judgment and shame to compassionate understanding and appreciation for ourselves and all our parts.
• Tap into the well of Love and the Compassionate Mentor that is ever-present within us.
• Develop regular individual contemplative + reflection practices to help embody the lessons that we learn each week.
• Learn how to apply meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative technologies to the collective by practicing each week as a community.

What You’ll Experience During Our Time Together

While the idea of collective liberation may feel intimidating or perhaps even serious or heavy, it is, in fact, quite freeing—filled with hope and healing.

During our time together, you will..

• Cultivate a deeper sense of belonging within yourself and to yourself.
• Experience less anxiety or depression as you begin to understand who you are at a much more genuine level.
• Appreciate the powerful threads woven between us while also respecting and understanding the differences that also exist.
• Develop more authentic and meaningful connections with yourself, with Spirit, and with other like-spirited people.
• Learn to live your life from the depth of its center instead of toiling in the shallows.
• Create a sense of personal authority and sovereignty as you untangle yourself from the internal and external story lines and systems that hold you back.
• Feel more comfortable with—and find more appreciation for—your emotions and the depth and breadth of information they offer to help you more easily navigate the world.
• Realize how deeply connected we all are and how you don’t have to isolate or “go it alone” in order to find the fulfillment of freedom.
• Feel more comfortable and at home in your own body as you find liberation from the oppressive messages you’ve inherited about its worth.
• Develop greater compassionate understanding, appreciation, and respect for all the parts of yourself that have been helping you survive in a challenging environment.
• Experience more spontaneous joy and laughter as you learn to reclaim your wonder and awe in the simple pleasures and ordinary magic of our world.

Circle Details

• 12 weeks; April 25 through July 11, 2023.
• Tuesdays at 5pm PT/8pm ET for 90 minutes
  • Please note we will meet on Wednesday, July 5, instead of Tuesday, July 4 to accommodate the US Independence Day Holiday.
• Meet via Zoom
• Weekly, you’ll be encouraged to complete contemplation & journaling invitations posted via our private group in our free online community—House of Belonging.
• During our live circle, we’ll engage in group discussion, contemplation, & journaling practices.

Preparing for Circle

While you will need a copy of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together by Caverly Morgan, this is not a book club. This is a contemplation and reflection circle using a book as a framework for our time together. With that, please review the following for how to prepare and what to bring to circle:

• • Purchase a copy of book:
    • Amazon (Affiliate Link)
    • Bookshop.org (Affiliate Link)
  • Have a journal and your favorite pen. Journaling and reflection are core to this offering.
  • We will use the Circle Sanctum Facilitation Model for our weekly sessions.
  • Each week, you will read a chapter and then come to circle prepared for contemplative practices, journaling, and discussion

• While live attendance is not required, it is strongly encouraged for collective liberation.

Enroll Now

In the spirit of this “collective care fellowship”, all paid programs offer 3 tiers of pricing: Collective Care Beneficiary, Collective Care Maintainer, and Collective Care Contributor. We may play all of these roles throughout our lives and wherever you find yourself in this moment is welcome.

Registration is now closed.

• Please email us at bekind@amightykindness.org if you have questions.