Matriarchal Medicine
Retrieving the Wise Woman
May3 -5, 2024
Guides: Tish Linstrom and Tracey Forest
We are calling in the sacred Matriarchs!
The Matriarch is the Wise Woman, the Visionary, the Seer, the Intuitive, the Guardian, the Healer. And she is missing.
Between the Mother and Crone stage lies the often forgotten or buried time of the Wise Woman/Matriarch ~ a time when a woman is at the height of her agency and personal power.
Do you feel a strong YES to the following questions?
Are you in the changing time, both physically and emotionally and soulfully?
Is your center of gravity shifting from caretaking all your family’s needs toward serving the greater world?
Do you know you’re somewhere between mother and crone?
Are you being called to a deeper soul life of service?
Do you have some unattended grief about aging and the shifts occurring in your body or your family structures?
Are you feeling a need to CLAIM creative power arising within you, from your body and from the Earth?
Do you crave sharing space and wisdom with other women?
Do you want to join with other sisters to be in solidarity and support and celebration?
Do you feel your power increasing as you age, but aren’t quite sure how to access it or what to do with it?
Is there an unmistakable pull in you to uncover something deeper to step into?
These are the questions we will explore together.
We Are the Ones
Many of us who enter this season of life know we’re called to a threshold – a time to honor or release what’s no longer needed for the Way ahead, to give rise to the woman we have become and lean into who we are being called to become (what’s still in the Mystery).
We carry both a yearning and a commitment to remember the power in this life passage. We know that the older woman is vital to Life, full of the wisdom that comes from years of experiences, full of capacity to tend to the greater Earth Community.
Yet few of us have the containers we need in the Wise Woman/Matriarch life passage - to retrieve the profoundly personal and essential wisdom this passage brings.
Even though the dominant culture speaks endlessly of loss, degeneration and diminishing value in the aging woman, we know this is a potent time of transformation and possibility, of huge reservoirs of creative life-force energy and desire to serve all of life.
We know that damage has been done to all stages of the feminine experience over centuries, just as Earth herself has been degraded. We know that the fabric has been torn and twisted.
But this weekend is about repairing and reweaving us both personally and collectively into a new tapestry of strong, inner-connected, Earth-sourced, multi-faceted matriarchs who are resilient, empowered, resourced and ready to bring our gifts to the world with new intensity and direction.
This weekend is designed for those hungry to step more fully into their soul wisdom, and the gifts only they can bring to a world hungry for Matriarchal Medicine.
Come spend Beltane Weekend immersed in ceremony, sharing stories and wisdoms, council, solo time wandering on the land, deep imagery journeys and visioning.
Through tapping into the heart of Gaia and reclaiming our elemental power in wholeness, a deeper well of our unique medicine, gifts, and capacity for love and service reveals itself. We remember ourselves as the sacred guardians of life, and this life becomes the very elixir we offer as a healing for the world.
DETAILS
FOOD
Bring your own lunches and breakfasts. We will be sharing a potluck meal on Saturday night, so bring a dish to share (and keep in mind many are GF or vegan)
Coffee and tea will be provided all weekend long. You will have access to our outdoor kitchen (sink and two-burner stove) and a guest refrigerator with limited space, so bring a cooler if possible. Please bring easy-to-put-together or reheatable foods (premade might be best) as we will not have time for extensive prep and cooking.
TIMING
We will begin Friday evening around 7:00 pm. You are invited to arrive between 5:00-6:30 to get settled. Please come having eaten supper (or bring your own supper).
We will end on Sunday afternoon between 3:00 - 4:00 pm.
LODGING
Spirit Hollow is a rustic retreat. Lodging options are as follows:
Slumber-party style in the yurt (bringing your own bedding and padding. This is a shared space, so if you need more privacy, we suggest you book a room nearby or stay in your own tent).
Your own tent
Shared space in one of three tent cabins (2 per) with cots
We have two hot outdoors showers and four outhouses for your use.
A What-to-Bring list will be sent upon registration.
OTHER LODGING IN THE AREA:
There are plenty of inns and Airbnbs for staying in the area.
We recommend all of the following hotels/motels/inns, all within 20 minutes of Spirit Hollow:
Harwood Hill Motel, Route 7A, 802-442-6278
Governor’s Rock Motel, Route 7A, Shaftsbury, 802-442-4734
Serenity Motel, Route 7A, Shaftsbury, 802-442-6490 (closed in winter months)
Henry House Inn, Route 7A, N. Bennington, (802) 442-7045
Eddington House, A Village Inn in North Bennington, 802-442-1511
Guides Tracey Forest and Tish Linstrom
TRACEY FOREST, MA, CYT
Tracey (KeyTurner) is a soul initiation guide, who is passionate about helping others step through the doorway into the mystical and the mythical, the sacred and the sublime, the earthy and the erotic, the dark depths and high heights. She is a fearless and compassionate facilitator who has “been to the mountain” and descended into the abyss to lament for the earth, to celebrate the beauty and pain and who knows the rich gifts that lie in the dark to be mined. She stands in the portal, holding a lantern, singing ancient songs, dangling a key, inviting you to step through into the vast landscape of your Soul.
KeyTurner is particularly called to help women and young adults to move from the outworn worlds, across thresholds into yet-too-be-revealed worlds that are coming. She is a deep listener of Earth's dreaming, of the "in-betweens," in communion with the sacred land that is Spirit Hollow and a devotee of the underworld, the soul stream, the mythological realms in service to the deepest Source beneath all identities, all spiritualities and all beings.
Director of Spirit Hollow, the center where she lives and guides in SW Vermont, she is a healer and teacher, yoga teacher and singer of soul-stirring songs. She is a graduate of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies Three-Year Program (1998) in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing under the direct teaching of Dr. Michael Harner; also, she’s a Certified Yoga Teacher at the 200-hour level, having studied with transformational teacher, Shiva Rea.
With 30 years of experience guiding others, she been studying with Bill Plotkin for the last eight years. She is a Certified Level 1 Wild Mind Nature-Based Underworld Guide with the Animas Valley Institute. Currently, she is in the final phases of the multi-year Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) with Plotkin learning the nuances of Soul Initiation Guide and cultivating more tools to assist in the Wholing and Healing of this broken, beautiful world. Visit her at KeyTurner Forest
TISH LINSTROM, MA
Tish (MotherBone) is deeply passionate about reweaving rites of passage, the wild mature feminine, and soul-based journeys for women to access and reclaim their wholeness, vitality, true fluency, and creative force. She is devoted to Earth/the Great Web of Life and the remembrance of who we are and our sacred aim - to embrace and act from our roots and ancient spirit as intimately connected people to each other and the animate world.
Her unique body of work is a rich tapestry of 30 years of lived experience and guiding - her personal soul journey in the past several years funded an understanding and fierce commitment to the essential reweaving of our relational fabric and wisdom (art and skill) as women, including the vital reclamation of the Wise Woman/Matriarch.
Tish crafts and guides spaces for women in this life stage to claim the deep bone-knowing wisdom they carry and are being called to act on and in service to - spaces for women to step fully into their soul gifts, their medicine, their creative bodies of work and right leadership or eldership. In service to Beauty, Possibility, and Thriving Life.
We are the Ones. Visit her at Wise Woman Roots.
