‘For years I have felt lost and confused, feeling all the external pressure to know who I am and what my path is, how to make a living, and be a producing member of society with some expectation that it would all be clear and immediate as soon as school was done. As I felt those pressures increase I wanted so badly to be able to meet them but only withdrew further and further inward into cloudiness and depression, feeling more disconnected from who I thought I was than ever. I needed mentorship and a safe container to move through the generations of stories that were making life so dark and murky for me, and I couldn’t do it by myself. I found a community of women who I truly look up to as role models of service, adulthood, and womanhood, who not only show me how to live in a good way through their actions, but could teach me how, and guide me through the process of clearing my ancestral lines and personal traumas, building self-generative practices, and unearthing and claiming my gifts to be able to step into selfhood and service. It continues to amaze me that through this process I’ve released self-destructive patterns that I’ve carried my whole life, and now truly feel free from. I am healing my relationship to my family, to my body, and to the emotions that have made it hard for me to show up to life. Today I feel stronger in my sense of self, freer from the shackles and shadows that have kept me in hiding and self-loathing, and energized and inspired to activate in my service and give back to the world that continues to give me so much.’

~ Previous Tree Of Life Initiate

“During this formative time, I met monthly in a circle of women for council and ceremony, received mentoring from older women who I perceive to be incredible change-makers in the world, and learned beautiful and powerful new prayer modalities. Through this work, I have come into myself as a spiritual leader and understand that I walk in the world in an essentially prayerful way; my connection to Spirit is central to who I am. It has been deeply enriching to delve into a ceremonial prayer form that draws strongly from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life while also incorporating more universal and ancient women's ways, modern eco/psycho-spiritual teachings on life cycles and rites-of-passage, and relevant and useful teachings from global spiritual traditions, while also honoring and including what is sacred to indigenous peoples that lived on this land long before we got here.”

Rebecca Schisler, 2014-15 Initiate, Visual Artist, Writer and Educator

“I left the country and the culture I knew to pursue an alternative and healthier lifestyle in the United States. Although I found a home in the work of environmental education and social justice, the effects of depression and residual childhood trauma still hindered my progress and self confidence and prevented my career success. Through my experience in Tree of Life, I was able to process and move through what was holding me stuck in unhealthy patterning in relationships with people, food, myself and almost immediately after completing my Creation Rites ceremony, I began a path as a Horticultural Therapist working with teens and women in Eating Disorder Recovery. Every day is still a choice and a journey but I now have the tools and a greater understanding to walk into each moment with a clear knowing of myself and curiosity for mending.”

~Previous Tree of Life Initiate