Dear loves,

This week I came out of my 16th women's retreat circle across 44 months. Our final circle had no starting point and no end, just palms of warmth and women turned towards each other. Heeding the call of these gatherings asks us to reveal more of who we are, to be more of who we are and to show up to more of who we are. We walk away with an expanded sense of who we really are. Hand in hand with two women who inspire me, I am offering two October collaborations in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Each event is a wink from the universe that I am called to. Trusting in these winks, in these sways, in these subtle pulls is one of the best compasses I know to expansion. I want to share why I feel so deeply called to co-create these spaces with these women and you, here and now. I want to know if you feel called, too.

"Myths of Feminine Mystery is about diving into our stories, personal and universal, and coming through the other side owning them all as one scream of aliveness, real and whole." (Melanie Champagne, retreat co-facilitator)

The retreats began with gathering around the power of exploring and reclaiming our personal narratives. Remembering the stories that conspire for our expression. For our voices. For our desires. For our freedom. For our wholeness. For our aliveness. This is each woman's journey. This is not just each woman's journey. No woman is alone on it. We are living a moment where women are initiating themselves into a story bigger than the ones we were told about who we are. We are reclaiming our birthright of true belonging, within and to the world, from which we have been too long severed. We are looking for more than the options the world has offered, in which many of us search and feast and still feel famished at the center of our being.

I am fascinated with how we are remembering the forgotten threads that are elemental to feminine power. We are remembering the soul food that nourishes the parts of us that can no longer live on crumbs. We are remembering the stories that bring us back to ourselves, and lead us back to one another. We are remembering our connection to our bodies and hearts and roots and seas and stories that are inherent within women and nature. Call it our wildness. Call it our true nature. Call it our coming home. Call it collecting our scattered seeds of wisdom. Call it our mystery. I'm called to co-create the Myths of Feminine Mystery Retreat with Melanie Champagne, founder of Collective Astrology and myth-teller, as a return to our sacred and collective inner knowing as women. I want to honor our journeys by gazing through the universal myths to the sharing of our own personal stories. I want to meet your eyes across the fire in witness of the wild mystery that lives as each of us. I want to live my life embodying more and more of that mystery.

"Yes, I believe self-expression is the soul made visible.” (Marianne Richmond, co-facilitator)

The only creativity that has ever been the "objective" of the retreats is the living of our lives in whatever way lights us up, from within. We gather to remember that narrating our life is a creative act, but the greatest creative act we can ever do is the living of our own lives. Steeped in that message, I've taken a journey with my own creativity that has delivered me back to the mere joy of participation. To the joy of dancing with the muse with words. To the joy of surrender and play. To the freedom of moving my body as wildly as it moves me. To moving with creativity and inspiration because that's what life does. To letting go of any idea of what writing has to be or what I might have to achieve through it and instead simply run arms open into the play with words that lights me up. The desire to do it at all is the only permission slip I need. We were born creative beings, each of us. We were never meant to be spectators to a designated few. We're meant to kiss the creative impulse within us into life, by allowing ourselves to return to the childlike lightness of participation. I'm called to co-create Awaken Your Creative Soul with Marianne Richmond, best-selling author and creator of more than 50 children's books, as a gentle and guided invitation back to expressing the creativity that belongs to each of us, if only we are willing to listen to it. I am so excited for these new circles, and I would be honored for you to join us to co-create them in the beauty of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Much love, Aimee