Crack Open the Light:
A 13-week StoryBody (W)rites of Passage

A Three-month Creative & Embodied
(W)rite of Passage for women emerging into Rewilded Light

ONLINE LIVE
February - May
Imbolc - Beltaine

Fridays, 11 am mountain time

Begins February 14th 2026
Join the Circle -send email to movingthestory@gmail.com

Crack Open the Story
From Imbolc to Beltane, (February thru May) we enter the quickening and blooming half of the year —a season of growth, emergence, blossoming, metamorphosis and renewal.

Threading the Dark guided the descent,
Crack Open the Light is the return:

This is not just a creative writing workshop. This is a rites of passage container where women enter mythos, track transformation through writing, body and story, and emerge, changed — with a Story Apothecary (a collection of writings, mythos-memoir, prose, poetry, spoken word, etc) with a reclamation of voice, retrieval of story and creative renewal.

For thirteen weeks, we move through seven thresholds -writing and dancing/moving the story through a dynamic and creative rites of passage; into the quickening, budding, rising bloom of new stories, new truths, and new relationship with our personal life stories. From Imbolc to Beltaine we journey through the animate season of winter turning into spring -torwards Summer — when what was buried rises, what was sleeping wakes, and what was silenced finds its voice again.

Through mythopoetic storytelling, embodied movement practices, and Wild Matryoshka writing, you will enter the old fairy tales and discover: they are also entering you. The stories become maps. Your body becomes compass. Your writing becomes medicine.

Transformative language arts are woven with somatic practice and seasonal wisdom—a creative rite of passage where you reclaim body, voice, wild child, eros, story and elder knowing. Where you repattern the archetypal stories you inherited and (re)write yourself anew.

You don't simply write about story. You write/rite your way into it.

And in the chrysalis of witness, movement, and mythopoetic descent and return, the story also re-(w)rites you.

What You Will Experience:

Reclaim your body as the ground of story
Reclaim your voice through embodied expression and song
Reclaim self-sourcing by repatterning inner and greater archetypes
Reclaim the wild child—your feral, authentic creative self
Reclaim eros as creative life force and sacred power
Reclaim elder wisdom—seeing your journey with new eyes
Rebirth your Soul Story &
Return with your stories as offering, elixir & Story Apothecary

Who is this for

This Chrysalis Container is for women and those who identify with the feminine who are:

  • Standing at a threshold — (in transition -career, relationship, identity, life stage, loss, etc) and need or want witnessing

  • Feel called to descent and emergence work but don’t know how to begin

  • Carry motherline wounds, sisterhood wounds, ancestral grief or inherited trauma

  • Have lost their voice (literally or metaphorically) and need safety, permission and creative inspiration to speak

  • Are allergic to spiritual bypassing and want an embodied, creative rites of passage to integrate shadow material

  • Sense that traditional therapy isn’t enough -want creative, mythopoetic/archetypal work

  • Want writing as self-discovery tool, not just publication goal

  • Are drawn to seasonal spirituality, earth-based wisdom and animist traditions

  • Need brave spaces to be messy, imperfect, unfinished

  • Long for deep feminine community and authentic witness

  • Have done “enough” personal growth work and are ready for DEEP creative containers for personal alchemy

  • Seeking a wild and sacred sanctuary where language is reanimated, voice is reclaimed, and vulnerability is the greatest ally

    You are: Writers, artists, therapists, storytellers, seekers, misfits, wildlings, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, trans & non-binary (and more)

    You don't need to be an experienced writer. You only need to be willing to say YES to your stories, to cross the threshold and to write, move the story/dance, be willing to speak, be vulnerable, to share your creative expression, to witness and be witnessed and to let the old tales crack you open so that you can discover what wants to emerge.

SECTION 3: THE 7 THRESHOLDS - THE MAP

Over thirteen weeks, you will move through seven developmental thresholds—a rites of passage arc that ensures nothing is skipped, everything is integrated, and transformation is held with care.

THRESHOLD 1: SOUL CALL (Week 1)

Answering the Call • Reclaiming the YES

Pre-Week 1: Individual 1:1 intention-setting & mythopoetic life story coaching sessions with Stasha (60 minutes each, scheduled before first group call)

Week 1: We gather for the first time to set collective intentions, establish guidelines and agreements, practice council, create our field of safety, and cross the threshold together into the liminal space of story and transformation.

Themes: Soul call. Call to Adventure. Crossing the Threshold. Severance. Entering liminality. Collective intention. Initiatory. Beginning the journey.

THRESHOLD 2: GROUND OF BEING (Weeks 2-3)

Establishing the Foundation • Reclaiming BODY

We establish body as the ground of all the work to come. Through walking practices, body part warm-ups, sensing and tracking sensations, and moving through rhythms and cycles, we learn StoryBody tracking—following the story's trail through sensation, image, and embodied imagination.

We practice Wild Matryoshka writing—cracking open the layers of story, entering the tale from the inside out, discovering ourselves nested within the old myths. We generate wild, free, feral writing. We learn to write not from the head alone, but from the body's knowing.

This is the map: your body is the compass. Story lives in flesh, bone, and movement—not just on the page.

Themes: Body as ground. StoryBody tracking. Movement as map, sensation, sequencing, wild writing, embodied foundation

Monthly Embodiment Session #1: Extended movement practice to deepen the foundation

THRESHOLD 3: HEART OF TRUTH (Weeks 4-5)

Moving the Story Through Voice • Reclaiming VOICE

We shift from generating writing and reading to embodied voice—rewilding the voice & words into breath, body, song. Through somatic voice work, and speech work we practice speaking our writing aloud with greater emotional aliveness, intentionality, pacing, rhythm, and emotional truth.

We work with the hearth heart’s fire—moving emotion through body and story creatively. We release the mind’s muck to make space for what truly wants to be told. We deepen our capacity for compassionate witnessing and embodied empathy, listening as an act of love.

Heart heat begins to burn through old patterns. Voice is a portal. Truth is medicine.

Themes: Voice, embodied expression, breath, song, moving emotion, truth-speaking, compassionate witnessing, listening as love, heart fire

Monthly Embodiment Session #2: Deeper voice/song/heart work + moving emotions (90 minutes)

THRESHOLD 4: LIBERATION OF CREATIVITY + WILD CHILD(Weeks 6-8)

Mythopoetic Archaeology • Reclaiming SELF-SOURCING & WILD CHILD

In order to write NEW stories, we must first crack open the old archetypal patterns we inherited. This is mythopoetic archaeology—excavating, repatterning, and liberating the creative voice that was buried beneath familial and cultural conditioning.

Week 6: We work with Great Mother / Great Father—the cosmic, benevolent holding forces. Through fairy tale, mythos, writing and movement, we establish trust in the greater good, the container that holds us.

Week 7: We turn toward Inner Mother / Inner Father—cultivating our capacity to mother and father ourselves. We explore lineage stories, family of origin patterns, and the archetypal feminine/masculine within. Through writing and embodied practice, we repattern our relationship to the stories we inherited. This isn't therapy—it's creative liberation.

Week 8: The Wild Child emerges—the feral, authentic, "wrong," misfit, outlaw, wild creative self that lives beneath inherited stories. We gather in our wildest selves (creative dress-up encouraged!), celebrating the untamed voice that refuses to be domesticated.

Liberation! The authentic creative voice is freed because it is HELD.

Themes: Great Mother/Father, inner mother/father, self-sourcing, reparenting, archetypal feminine/masculine, family of origin stories, wild child, feral permissions, misfit, outlaw, authentic voice, mythopoetic archaeology
Monthly Embodiment Sessions: Dancing Mother/Father & Wild Child

THRESHOLD 5: Eros as Creative Power (Weeks 9-10)

Breath of Intimacy • Reclaiming EROS

We turn our attention toward the rich, complex language of fertility, intimacy, and sexuality. Through writing, movement, and embodied practice, we work with feminine/masculine/third gender archetypes—in nature, in self, in story.

There is an invitation to feel the creative pulse moving from within and to write what's often been silenced: sex, sexual awakening, desire, pleasure, the erotic as sacred. We approach this threshold with reverence, restoring the sacred into the realm of sexuality.

We explore intimacy with the creative force itself—passion, eros, aliveness, the body as temple. We (w)rite eros. We enter eros. We reclaim sexuality as creative life force, intimacy as the portal through which new life is conceived.

Themes: Eros, intimacy, sexuality, passion, desire, pleasure, sacred union, feminine/masculine/ creative pulse, fertility, conception, sexual awakening, aliveness, creative life force

Monthly Embodiment Session #3: Eros, intimacy, and the dance of creation (90 minutes)

THRESHOLD 6: BIRTH OF SOUL (Weeks 11-12)

Gleaning the Golden Thread • Reclaiming SOUL & ELDER WISDOM

We are birthing new stories. New selves. New vision.

In these weeks, we glean the golden threads of our journey—tracking what has been written, felt, moved, and transformed across the thirteen weeks. We see our body of work with new eyes—the eyes of the inner elder, the eyes of nature, the eyes of the twice-born self.

We deepen our connection with elder wisdom and the natural world (even online, we write in relationship to nature, perhaps creating masks, working with clay, engaging ritual practices that honor earth). We begin to sense: What is being born through me? What do I carry forward? How has this journey changed me?

We prepare our ritual-celebration pieces—the stories we will share in our ritual celebration. We practice embodied voice coaching to support the speaking of our truth.

Themes: Birth, becoming, emergence, elder wisdom, twice-born, golden threads, seeing with new eyes, nature connection, re-wilding, integration, what is being born, soul fullness

THRESHOLD 7: DESTINY IN ACTION / RETURN (Week 13)

The Performance Celebration • Reclaiming OFFERING

We gather for our final creative rite of passage—a ritual celebration where each woman shares up to 10 minutes of her creative work from the journey. This might include spoken word, storytelling, poetry, visual art presentation, improvisational performance, singing, dance, or other creative expression.

Your creative return and ritual is a threshold crossing. A completion. A witnessed return from the liminal space of transformation back into the world, carrying the medicine of the journey.

We close with final statements of intention—mirroring the opening intentions, seeing how far we've traveled.

Our constellation will have determined together earlier on - if we wish to invite outside witnesses to this ceremony. This is an honoring of the metamorphosis you have undergone—from Imbolc's first stirring to Beltane's full bloom and flight.

Your emergence. Your wings. Your voice. Your truth. Your freedom. Your YOU-ness, radiant.

Themes: Return, incorporation, celebration, performance, ritual, offering, completion, destiny in action, witnessed becoming, closing intentions

How we Gather

13 Weekly Writing Circles (2 hours each)

Every week, we gather on Zoom inside the held container. These sessions are the heart of the work.

Each Session Includes:

1. Arrival & Invocation (5-10 minutes)
We begin with song, invocation, breath, or gentle grounded meditation/body warm-up to arrive and land in our bodies and awaken presence.

2. Mythopoetic Storytelling (15-20 minutes)
I tell myths and fairy tales aloud—not read, but spoken as living transmission. Old stories from the animate world (ancestral stories from Slavic, Romanian/Roma, Celtic, Germanic, Italian lineages, and with great respect, occasionally stories from Siberian and other indigenous traditions that carry the medicine of seasonal passage and metamorphic becoming).

We encounter stories of cauldrons, shapeshifting, emergence from bellies and underworlds; stories of devotion, eros, and love; stories of longing and return. We don't study the stories—we become them. We eat them. We dissolve into them. They eat us. They become us, anew.

3. Embodied Movement Practice (varies by threshold)
Depending on the threshold we're moving through, we engage specific embodied practices: walking, body part warm-ups, dancing archetypes (Great Mother/Father, Wild Child, etc.), moving emotions, call and response with voice, or eros/intimacy movement work. Movement unlocks what thinking cannot access and literally and figuratively moves the story.

4. StoryBody Tracking & Wild Matryoshka Writing Practice
We don't write ABOUT the story. We write our way INTO it.

Using provocative, sensory prompts—Write Red. What does Red smell like, taste like, feel like? What does Red speak through you? Where do you land in the story? Write the wolf's hunger. Write the swan's longing. Write the knowing at the center of the cave.—you enter the mythic field and track Story through sensation, image, and embodied imagination.

We write through the StoryBody—alert, attuned, sensorial, alive—following the scent of what's dissolving and what's being born. You braid mythos and memory into one living current, rooted and winged. That is how the imaginal cells activate.

5. Witnessing & Listening Practice (interwoven throughout)
We alternate writing and sharing: Write 10 minutes → Witness some pieces → Write another 10 minutes → Witness more.

In our safe and held container, women read their writing aloud. We practice deep listening and reflect back what lands—a word, a line, an image—like ripples on water. Not commentary. Not critique. Just witness.

I also offer gentle somatic voice coaching (beginning in Threshold Three —gently guiding how you navigate the piece from page to voice—to support your creative becoming. We root the voice more deeply through breath, pacing, rhythm, tone, and emotional heart expression…to let the story move through your body as you speak.

Vulnerability is the greatest ally in the realm of personal storytelling. Mythos has the power to crack us open. It opens us to one another. Through listening to each other's stories, we are stimulated, inspired. Vulnerability opens us to the mystery of change. It binds us to one another through our naked humanity and the beautiful mess and wonder of our human condition.

To become butterfly is no easy feat for the caterpillar. We will stretch ourselves creatively, in order to change, in order to grow, in order to become more of who we came here to be.

Monthly Embodiment Sessions

In addition to writing sessions, we may experience a few extended embodiment/movement explorations These deeper movement sessions correspond to the major thresholds:

Through dance, breathwork, vocal expression, and elemental practice, we re-member that story lives in the bones, flesh, and movement—not just on the page. We track the metamorphosis somatically, dancing and feeling the dissolution into re-formation. We literally and figuratively move the story. These sessions anchor the journey and free our way more fully into new realms of becoming. They give truth to our writing—because we are not just writing with the mind alone. The body is teacher, ally, and guide.

Between Sessions:

You'll receive:

  • Seasonal writing prompts rooted in StoryBody tracking, sensory exploration, and imaginal emergence

  • Somatic and (w)ritual invitations to ground your creative and metamorphic practice

  • Optional thresholds for reflection, dissolution, renewal, and blooming

  • Access to a private portal with session recordings and additional resources

SECTION 5: WHAT'S INCLUDED

Complete Container:

✅ 13 Weekly Live Calls (2 hours each, Fridays 11am MT)
✅ 2 Individual 1:1 Sessions with Stasha (60 minutes each):

  • First session (pre-Week 1): Soul call, intention setting, crossing the threshold

  • Second session (between Weeks 10-12): Gleaning golden threads, preparing ritual piece, embodied voice coaching for ritual sharing

✅ Recorded Sessions (available if you miss a call, access for 30 days after circle completes)
✅ Weekly Writing Prompts & Practices to deepen between sessions
✅ Private Community Portal for sharing and support throughout the 13 weeks
✅ Performance Celebration (Week 13 ritual rite of passage)
✅ Optional Anthology Participation (submit refined pieces for publication in collective offering)

Your 1:1 Personalized Life Story Coaching Sessions

Your 1:1 sessions are not simply about editing or craft. They are deep, personal mythopoetic tracking work where we explore:

  • What's dissolving in you right now?

  • What imaginal cells are waking?

  • What form is trying to emerge?

  • How does your personal story braid with the mythic field?

  • What is most essential that wants to be written, spoken, and offered?

This tending is the deeper soul of our work together. You receive personalized guidance at the beginning threshold (soul call, setting intentions, severance) and middle threshold (gleaning golden threads, seeing what's being born) of our journey as you navigate new elements of your becoming.

We work with mythopoetic oracle (archetype cards), Tarot, numerology, and more to personalize your journey. We maintain a thread of continuity from what was gleaned in our first session to what you have been stirring, dissolving, rewilding, and becoming.

Each month, we live inside one to three guiding stories — myths and fairytales selected to amplify seasonal cycles, feminine cycles and the initiatory nature of metamorphosis and becoming.

The Emergence —Creative Rite of Passage

The Performance Celebration: A Creative Rite of Passage

In our final gathering, we come together for a ritual celebration on Zoom—where each woman reads or expresses up to 10 minutes of her writing/process/creativity from the 13-week journey.

This might include but is not limited to: spoken word, storytelling, reading poetry and prose, visual presentation of art pieces, improvisational performance, singing, dance, or other creative expression.

To be clear—this isn't intended to be a perfectly polished showcase. It is a threshold crossing. A creative rite of passage where voice and expression become offering.

Our constellation will determine if we wish to invite outside witnesses. This ceremony is an honoring of the passage and metamorphosis you've undergone—from Imbolc's thaw and stirring to Beltane's full bloom and flight.

Your emergence. Your wings. Your voice. Your truth. Your freedom.

Story Anthology: Words as Medicine (Optional)

Your writing across this arc—poems, vignettes, memoir, prose, fragments of dissolution and reformation—will be shaped and refined throughout our time together.

At journey's end, you will have your personal collection—your Story Apothecary, a written manifestation of your mythopoetic passage stitched through soul, mythos, body, heart, season, and the medicine of the turning year.

Optional: Women who wish to participate in a shared anthology can submit refined pieces for publication in a collective offering (like the Threading the Dark anthology). This is not required—your work is yours to share as you choose.

For those who choose to participate, the anthology becomes both celebration and ritual offering—stories reclaimed, retrieved, and re-storied. Poison transformed into beauty. Muck into poetry. And so much more. The Anthology is Self-published and available to a wider community.

The two 1:1 coaching sessions support:

  • Identifying the golden thread of your writing across the weeks

  • Shaping and refining your pieces

  • Preparing your ritual sharing with embodied voice coaching

  • Tracking your unique process/metamorphosis

A personalized process—writing as initiation. You cross the threshold into a liminal container with a beginning, middle, and end. We track that in a way that is accessible, witnessed, and transformative.

What Makes this Work Unique

This Is a Rites of Passage Container, Not a Writing Workshop

We aren't teaching about writing technique—this is a container to midwife transformation through rewilded language. The circles aren't about craft (grammar, structure, publication)—they are about using writing as a technology for psychological excavation, shadow integration, and authentic self-discovery, as much as a container for amplifying creative voice and personal sovereignty.

Fairy Tales Are Initiatory Containers

We work with myths and fairy tales of the old tale road as living maps—not analyzed intellectually, but ENTERED somatically. We become the stories. We eat them. They eat us. They crack us open and reveal what was always nested inside.

Somatic Orientation Is Primary

Writing emerges FROM the body, not just from the head. Movement unlocks what thinking cannot access and literally and figuratively moves the story. We practice StoryBody tracking—following sensation, image, embodied imagination—braiding mythos and personal story into one living current.

Permission for the Unpolished, the Wild, the "Wrong"

I explicitly encourage feral writing, undomesticated tongues, mess. This counters perfectionism and creates space for authentic voice emergence. The wild child, the misfit, the outlaw creative—these are celebrated here.

Seasonal & Cyclical Framework

We specifically align with nature's rhythms, the moon's rhythms—rather than capitalism's constant productivity. From Imbolc's first stirring to Beltane's full bloom, we move with the earth's turning. We write as seasonal creatures, not machines.

Long-Form Commitment Allows True Initiation

This 13-week container allows TIME for an initiatory process—to ease into and navigate descent, dissolution, integration, and emergence. The developmental arc (7 thresholds) ensures nothing is skipped. Deep transformation requires time, witness, and held space.

Rites of Passage Through Transformative Language Arts

This work sits at the intersection of transformative language arts (writing as healing/transformation), somatic/embodiment practices (movement, voice, breath), and nature-based/seasonal wisdom (animist traditions, wheel of the year). It is mythopoetic. It is archetypal. It is developmental. It is initiatory.

You leave not just with a collection of writings, but with a transformed relationship to your body, your voice, your creative power, your capacity to source yourself, and your ability to offer your stories as medicine for the world.

Testimonials

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” — Anaïs Nin

“I must be a mermaid… I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” — Anaïs Nin

You are Somewhere Inside a Cycle of Transformation

Egg. Caterpillar. Chrysalis. Butterfly.
You are a living mystery.
You are not crystalized form. You are the chrysalis of living poetry. Living transformation. Living becoming. Living change.

There are times when it is good to write. To place yourself on a map. To navigate (w)rites of passage where you can mark your destiny and path of change
through the non-linear lines of story and language.

To turn your life stories into poetry, beauty, stars, roots & wings. Roses and butterflies.

Become. Rewild. Transform. Emerge.


Apply Here

To apply:
Email movingthestory@gmail.com with your name, location, and a few sentences about what draws you to Threading the Light.

You’ll be added to the early interest list and notified when the full application opens.

Questions are always welcome.