Thank you for hearing the call to walk in this world as an initiated adult and to offer Rites of Passage ceremonies for the young women in your life, your community and beyond.

When I was 20 years old and was sitting up on a mountain in the verdant “Valley of the Gods” in Kalalau, Kauai, HI for four days on a Vision Quest and fast, I was clearly given a vision for my life: hold Young Women’s Rites of Passages.

Certainly Spirit must have had the wrong number, how was I- a young woman myself, very much still walking through my own coming of age and womanhood manage to hold a space to initiate and support others? The directive was further shared, keep walking forward all the support needed will be there. And it has been.

This summer we will gather for our 14th year of a 5 day Rites of Passage Ritual called Growing Goddess (ages 11-14) and Moon Mystics (ages 15-18). I stand tall and feel humbled and grateful to be a “Thresholder.” This term came to me recently as I realized that- time and time again I find myself helping to anchor down and celebrate these essential transitions and alchemical opportunities in the arc of a human life. I am here holding the thresholds. Sound familiar to you?

The past 5 years it has become clear to me how necessary Rites of Passages for Young Women is for the health of the Earth and the upliftment of the heart of humanity and how poignant that I share my wisdom around facilitating Rites of Passage ceremonies for young women. We as women are the continuation of our species on Earth, we alone hold the ability to bring life. Our creative birthing be that to children and/or to our visions/callings~ bring the healing, the life, the change that is needed to bring peace, justice and beauty on Earth. I have been called to share everything I’ve learned in the past decade plus of being a Rites of Passage Guide. I am offering a skillful giveaway, teachings, invitations and a set of gifts to support you into fully embodying the mentor, the Village Auntie, the Rites of Passage Guide that you feel called to know.

This is a path of holding, orienting, celebrating and feeding all of life as you tend to the Threshold of Womanhood. I honor your deep knowing for being here, this Earth-based and ancient solution for regenerating our culture and coming into right relationship and balance with creation is dreaming up through many of us right now. I want to offer you a strong foundation of skills and tools, to support your yearnings and callings from the Earth/Spirit to serve as a Rites of Passage Guide for girls and young women.

I see and feel a world where when a girl is blossoming into her womanhood- there is a place she can go (no matter where she lives) to find deep and meaningful connection to herself, to her intuition and to her glimmering authenticity as she comes in touch with her gifts for the world.

In the non-profit I founded and direct Earth Path Education, we cultivate an annual ceremony where girls and young women come together with Indigenous Grandmothers, Village Aunties, and Wise Women Mentors to make true friends with peers and lasting mentoring relationships with adults and elders they trust. Rites of Passage is an Earth-based ritual, it is cross cultural, it is not dead, it lives in the soil, in the waters, in the fire, in the vast blue sky, in the prayers of the ones who came before- to carry us home. When we sing, dance and pray, when we show up to the majesty and mystery of the Earth, transformation-deep initiation is possible.

This is not meant to be a sampler plate, it is an in depth training, designed to offer you what you need to start offering Rites of Passage for young women in your life, community and beyond. This is not a spectator sport, it’s participatory.

Back in the 80s, I read a very short but life-changing book – Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself by the late Judith Duerk. This book and the wisdom it contains sustained me through both difficult and empowering times in my life. Many decades later, this book inspired the name of my shamanic apprenticeship – A Circle of Stones. Judith began many of the chapters with:

How might your life have been different if there had been a place for you…a place of women, where you were received and affirmed? A place where other women, perhaps somewhat older, had been affirmed before you, each in her time, affirmed, as she struggled to become more truly herself. A place where, after the fires were lighted, and the drumming, and the silence, there would be a hush of expectancy filling the entire chamber…a knowing that each woman there was leaving old conformity to find herself…a sense that all of womanhood stood on a threshold. And if, during the hush, the other women, slightly older, had helped you to trust your own becoming…to trust it and quietly and prayerfully to nurture it. How might your life be different?

Last year, I met Lena Eastes, founder of Earth Path Education, and I very spontaneously answered her call to share wisdom at a 10-day women’s initiation at a beautiful retreat center in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. I heard “women’s initiation,” and I felt the great-grandmother aspect of me opening her arms to embrace the aunties who would circle for this life-changing rite of passage. Some of these soulful aunties were also called to hold these ceremonies for their daughters, nieces, and the young women in their communities.

At first, I thought only of the aunties and the young women they would serve. But to my surprise, I found myself in the presence of three other grandmothers – an African Sangoma, a Lumbee grandmother, and a Cherokee grandmother. I realized that I had stepped into a very needed and powerful multi-generational ceremony. In fact, the grandmothers among us also had profoundly moving initiations. We grandmothers circled with the younger aunties, and we all experienced our very individual and intentional Changing Woman Ceremony.

I never had a woman’s initiation—not when I had my first moontime nor when I had my last. I have created these ceremonies for others but will admit that I never took the time to honor myself! Well, I drove off that mountain feeling like a different woman. My sisters had witnessed my prayers; they supported my transformation; they dried my tears; they laughed with me; and that precious circle of women that I had not previously known continues to support me today.

That is the power of intentional women’s circles. The ripples never die. Each woman touches other girls, women, aunties, and grandmothers.

Rites of passage are needed in every chapter of our lives. I see a world where all generations stand together. We envision and shape the next chapter in our lives by marking and celebrating what we are passing through. We truly hold our unfolding.

🌿 Have you experienced an initiation? If not, come! 🔥 Do you feel a pull in your bones to guide others? If so, come!

How might your life have been different if there had been a place for you, a place of women? A place where other women, somewhat older, had reached out to help you as you rooted yourself in the earth of the ancient feminine…A place where there was a deep understanding of the ways of women to nurture you in every season of your life. A place of women to help you measure your own stature…to help you prepare and know when you were ready.

A place where, after the fires were lighted, and the drumming, and the silence, you would claim, finally, in your Naming, as you spoke slowly into that silence, that the time had come, full circle, for you, also to reach out…reach out as younger women entered into that place…reach out to help them prepare as they struck root in that same timeless earth.

How might your life be different?

Woman, standing on a hillside, peering, Peering into blue space… …what will woman be? …not yet fully seen …not yet fully revealed …but coming …coming …what will woman be?

Imagine a world of Women's Initiation at every stage of life. Imagine.