Dear ones -

The world can feel like a big, overwhelming, and dangerous place. For children and for adults. Because, in many ways, it is.

Even beyond obvious dangers like violence and accidents; on some level, I think we’re always aware we’re like a fire - life consuming us, as we consume it, until our finite time is up. Every breath containing the grief and gratitude of loving and losing.

Shadow work - the subject of my last podcast episode and a key component of a client’s session yesterday - is the tending to pivotal moments of overwhelm from our pasts.

Moments where the intensity of the love-loss paradox of our aliveness was beyond our capacity to hold.

Moments where the sacred spark of our pure and innocent desires met a wind, which threatened to snuff out something deeply precious and interwoven with our sense of identity.

In those moments, for our own sense of safety and survival, we armored off and moved on. All with the intention of “never feeling that way again”.

Which is fine for the moment. In fact, it’s a brilliant and perfect reaction…

AND, if unchecked and untended later, the protective patterns will keep us reflexively hyper-vigilant for any sign that we’re about to “feel that way again” - preemptively reacting and defending. Which will continue to ripple out into unexpected and (often) seemingly unrelated areas of our lives. We'll end up defending ourselves even when we'd prefer to trust and love.

Ultimately, our protections will affect our ability to access our aliveness.

See, in moments of threat and survival, our tender selves do need protection. Armor protects us.

But for long-term thriving - our bodies, hearts, and souls actually need refuge. Armor does not provide refuge.

Refuge is a place of safety and softness. It’s where bones reknit, breath reweaves, and without “fixing” anything, repair becomes possible.

Refuge is where we can say “ouch”, from the depths of our broken hearts, and know we’re supported and we’ll be OK.

It’s where we can hold love and loss in ways which expand our capacity.

It’s shelter from the wind so we can nurture our little soul-sparks into more robust flames.

It’s where we can clear out debris and drink from the fresh, not stagnant waters, of Source.

Refuge is sanctuary.

To recap that briefly: protection is not refuge, and safety is not sanctuary.

The seed for Sanctuary-the-offering was first planted last year when I was on pilgrimage/ sabbatical in Scotland and Ireland and I found myself de-armoring and coming back alive in deep and unexpected ways. While I’ve been on this animist and ancestral wisdom journey for a while, more pieces began clicking together and settling deeper in.

So I sat with what practices were allowing me to feel so resilient, trusting, and vibrant; what seemed to be bringing me back to connection, freedom, and more whole-self expression.

And I noticed things like:

• less pressure, doing, and trying, more being;
• moving with my own rhythms and noticing the dance between my personal rhythms and natural and seasonal rhythms;
• spending more time outside and honoring more moments of my day as sacred and full of the possibility of magic;
• meeting people human-to-human, with no roles and expectations;
• and stories - those of strangers I met and deeper myths and folktales which carried a certain medicine and wisdom.

I'm aware it's not always possible to drop everything and go on pilgrimage or sabbatical. It is, however, deeply necessary to have regular moments of refuge in our lives and to make sanctuary a practice.

So that’s what this offering is - a few hours a month of pilgrimage. Where you are, in the life you have.

We start the next cohort of Sanctuary-the-offering in 10 days and there are still spots available for you to join us, if this sounds like your thing.

The general flow of each gathering, as it's evolved through the first cohort:

• Each gathering opens with a chance to share and be witnessed, to name what you’re coming into our refuge with that day.
• We weave in conversation about the season and any nature-based holidays and ancestral practices which feel relevant and supportive, validating, or offer us gentle perspective shifts to nourish our hearts and bodies.
• Sometimes there’s a guided meditation or other small practice.
• There’s always a myth or old folktale, offered as medicine and then a chance to dive into the symbolism of the story and what each of us took from it; our understandings of the story and its medicine getting richer because of how we each interacted with it.
• When time allows, we aim for a few moments of solitude within the group - a place to create something, pray or mediate, move your body, rest… whatever. These moments where our cameras are on together, but we're each doing our own thing hold a real sweetness.
• And then we close with final shares and witnessing.

There's no social media group to join or forced sense of community to foster. There's no content to take in or homework to do. There are no recordings.

Just two hours per month to show up and be with other humans in a deeply heart-centered and humane way; sharing and receiving as your heart and body lead you to. In many ways, it's not much. In many others, it might just be everything.

Does this call to you in a potent-but-easeful way? If so, I hope you'll join us.

with Love,

Kate

P.S. A few days before our first Sanctuary gathering, I'll arrive back in Scotland with plans to be there for the winter; and in Spring, to follow old pilgrimage trails and ley lines down to Mary Magdalene's caves in the south of France. I have no doubt, based on my experiences last year with how the energies of the lands, ancestors, and stories came through in my 1:1 work, my time there will flavor our online Sanctuary in potent and beautiful ways. <3