Into the Ancestral Forest

Three Old Tales · Seven Weeks of Storytelling, Mythopoetic Writing & Song

Mondays, November 9–December 21, 2026
6–8 pm · In person · Niwot, Colorado

Three story journeys

Red Rewilded
The Wild Daughter of Intuition
Wild Return - a wild shapeshifting story of retrieval

A path through the forest. A belly full of Stories. Encounter with the Wilds. Choices. A path of Needles and pins. A doll in the pocket. Knowing that needs to be fed. The Wolf that hurled itself from her lips, retrieving Stories. Encounters with Beauty. Sacred Reciprocity.
We feed the stories. They feed us.

Across seven weeks, we’ll enter three old tales.

Story is alive. She is a wild creature. Story has body, layers, weather, symbols, colors, places. She is an ecology.

Body meets image. Marrow, flesh, belly, memory.

We enter the dangerous places. The Sacred Wild Holy places. The wolf’s belly. Grandmother’s hut. The Dark North. Edges. We never know what we will find, retrieve, reStory.

A thread. A wild voice. An elixir. Something forgotten.

Around the story fire

I’ll tell the tales aloud. We’ll sing. Listen. Write/rite our way in. Rewild our words. Return. Witness.

We’ll follow what stirs in the body. A word, an archetype, a poem is a doorway to crack open another story. An image may grow roots, wings. Another person’s words may wake something sleeping in our own.

We’ll write into these encounters. Invent words. Invent new shapes. Gather fragments and begin to discover what they are making. A Story Apothecary.

There will be time to read our words aloud (always optional, highly encouraged) and hear them held by the circle, reflected back by the words caught from the mouth of the speaker. We witness without explaining away the mystery.

We feed the Ancestral imagination. The old storytelling marrow. What have we inherited from these symbolic soul tales? What asks to be remembered? What do we compost, retrieve, preserve, seed?

Story as a living creature invites sacredreciprocity. We feed the doll. We tend the fire. We consider what the stories—and the living world—ask of us in return.

Living things require habitat. So do stories.

Come as you are

You don’t need to call yourself a writer. You can be a writer.

Bring a notebook, a pen, your curiosity. Your longing. Your questions.

Sharing is optional. You may write, sing, speak, or simply listen.

Adults of all genders are welcome.

With Stasha Ginsburg

I’m a writer, storyteller, and expressive arts educator with an MA in Transformative Language Arts and a thirty-year practice of storytelling and divinatory arts.

I’m certified in SomaSource® with Melissa Michaels and Golden Bridge. I’m currently studying in Martin Shaw’s two-year Connla’s Well story school and training in ancestral healing with Daniel Foor.

Fairy tales have accompanied my own passages. I return to them through body, memory, place, and imagination.

Dates and contribution

Seven Mondays, 6–8 pm

November 9, 16, 23, 30
December 7, 14, 21

We meet during Thanksgiving week and close on the Winter Solstice.

Location: Niwot, Colorado. Address shared upon registration.

Sliding scale for the seven-week series:

  • $275 — Supported

  • $350 — Sustaining

  • $450 — Supporting

Choose according to your financial circumstances. Each rate includes all seven live, two-hour gatherings. The supporting rate helps make the lower rate possible.

To register

Email movingthestory@gmail.com with your name, chosen contribution, and a few words about what draws you.

Let me know if you’d like to arrange installments. I’ll reply with payment details and information about our gathering.

This hut. This soul hut. This strange and gnarled-dream hut at the threshold of bones and night. This ancient, archaic living hut.

This hut
of old old
wise wise
grandmother grandmother
spirit breath.

this hut of ancestral wisdom beyond just humankind.

This hut of knuckles and kneecaps, tea leaves, and poppy seeds. This hut of floating hands that grind the wheat. This hut of mystery. This hut of death. This hut of the stove that never goes out or dims. This hut of fire and rebirth.

I crossed the threshold to this hut and came back alive to tell a tale. This hut turned me into mush. Ground me into pollen flour. Churned me into butter. Chewed my bones. Spit me out and said

there, there devushka … start over. Nothing to fear. It’s only dusha. Soul in otherworldly tones.

once I wanted to know too much and it grew me old too soon. But also, I strove to unlearn, to unlearn.
To allow for chaos and the irrational. To sit in confusion and unraveling. To come undone. to question.

but also to hold the questions silently. To sit with mystery and dreams. To sleep with stories past their years. To drink the tea of wisdom and not talk too much about it until I was belly full and had assimilated secrets long enough for them to be tattooed in my marrow.

—Stasha Ginsburg · The Wild Matryoshka