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Grieving Together

A grief ritual. We did it again. We laid the stones, lit the fire, called in the sisters and the spirits and let go. Singing, moving, crying, supporting, falling, rising, breathing, drumming…

I am grateful for these hills, the creeks, rain, snow and wind. I am grateful for wise mother moon and the sun, sometimes shining down and warming my skin and very often hiding. You all nourish me and I am an extension of you.

I am grateful for the bearers of this ritual: Sobunfu Somé of the Dagara people and Zahava Griss and the Touch & Play community.

I am grateful for the ancestral guardians of this place, the Kanien’kehá:ka people, who honor mother earth and lay down their lives to protect her. This land was stolen from them through deceit, broken promises and bloodshed. To this day, indigenous people are on the front lines of protecting our planet from extractive industries that destroy everything in their path. You can learn more and support the Wet’suwet’en people at http://www.yintahaccess.com.

I am grateful for my sister who taught me deep love, unwavering support and through her death, perseverance through incredible grief.

Our gathering and collective release was a stone thrown into a lake. Under the surface, stress, anger and loneliness swirl. With each brave step forward, the ripples pass through us, through our close ones and out into the world. It felt so very right.

With my re-found friend and soul sister, anything is possible. I am grateful for you, Erin. Expect great things to come!

May you, oh reader, find a way to release what is holding you back, so that life can flow through you once more.

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Planetary Dance

Photo from Earthalive.com

The Planetary Dance is an annual all-day ritual of healing and community renewal. It brings people of all ages and abilities together in a beautiful setting to dance for a purpose. The Planetary Dance Community invites people all over the world to join in a dance for peace in their own communities and peace with the Earth.

In June of 2020, we will hold the Planetary Dance in Cherry Valley, NY.
Contact Angelica Dzeli Palmer for more information and to help make it happen.

“It’s going to take the willing commitment of enough people to say we will heal this earth. Every step is a prayer, and we must pray together for the healing of the earth… The circle is an act of unity, and the four directions give it stability. It’s the squared circle which is the archetypal mandala of harmony.”

– Anna Halprin, Moving Toward Life: Five Decades of Transformational Dance, p. 200, 1995, Wesleyan University Press
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WillowGrove

WillowGrove : Coming of Age

A program for young women in 6th and 7th grades

Through creative arts and practical projects, stories and sharing circles, we teach young women to listen to and trust their intuition as well as how to strengthen their relationships to nature and each other.  They learn how to take care of their bodies and their hearts during puberty, menstruation and beyond. Throughout the program, we will listen to our body’s wisdom, shown through our senses and the range of our emotions.

We come together as a circle to feel the trust, focus, contentedness and positive energy that happens when women and girls meet intentionally. All of this cultivates self-esteem, self-confidence and a feeling of being rooted in Mother Earth and lovingly held by something larger than yourself.

This program is inspired by the Journey of Young Women training program, which all the facilitators of WillowGrove have completed.

When:  Our meetings will be Saturdays from 9am – noon on the following dates: October 12th, 19th and 26th, November 9th, 16th, and 23rd. A Mom’s circle will be held on September 28th.

Where:  This program will be at the home of Normandy Alden at 15 Hill Street in Cooperstown, NY.

How:  We will hold informational meetings on Thursday, September 12th at 6:30pm and Monday, September 16th at 6pm at 15 Hill St, Cooperstown.

Cost:  The cost of this program is $225 per student plus a $50 materials fee. Scholarships may be available.

Registration deadline is September 21st

To register:
1) please click “Add to cart” below and pay the course fee.
2) follow this link to fill out the registration form


Please contact Maria at margirlic@yahoo.com if you have any questions.

About the Facilitators:

Normandy Alden, Facilitator, is a mother, potter, and co-owner of Cairncrest Farm in West Winfield. She has an MFA in ceramics and teaches part time at Hartwick College. In 2006, 7, and 9 she worked as a crew leader for The Student Conservation Association and led groups of high school students doing trail work in National Parks in Virginia, Maine and Alaska. Among her many hobbies are gardening, sewing, hiking and playing music on her ukulele.

Angelica Palmer, Facilitator, is an artist, accountant and mother living in Cherry Valley. She has performed, taught, led workshops and hosted events interweaving community, activism and performance for many years. She teaches contact improv dance, leads women’s and girl’s circles and teaches Nourish workshops on consent, communication and touch.  Angelica has an MA in Experimental Performance and Social Activism from the New College of California and a BS in Statistics and International Development from Cornell U. Her websites are dzeli.com and greencircleny.com.

Maria Llanos Kaltenbach, Parent Liaison for Autumn 2019, mother of 2, has been a community activist and volunteer for over 18 years. Her adventures include going abroad to El Salvador on a medical and dental mission, helping in Honduras with a water purification system for a village of 42 families, and traveling to Texas to help refugees seeking asylum. In her community of Cooperstown, she volunteers with the League of Women Voters, the Glimmerglass Festival Guild, the SSPCA, and the Cooperstown PTA among others. Her goal in life is to raise strong women.

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Post-Nature Performance

Create y(our) Relationship With Nature

What a beautiful intimate experience it was, offering myself as your sculpture and canvas. Thank you for your playful exploration. I am joyous to see the depth and vitality of your relationship with Nature.

Thank you to The Art Garage for hosting my performance and to James Herman for inviting me to offer it.

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Ecstatic Dance Cooperstown!

A free form dance party

June 1st, 2019 at 7pm
Upper Susquehanna Cultural Center
77 North Main St, Milford, NY
$10 – $20 sliding scale, kids free

Join us for an Ecstatic Dance!
Come dance the night away to the magic of DJ Noah Johannesen.
Let the music lift you to a higher plane. Let your stress and thoughts wash away as your body moves to the beat. We begin with a circle of intention and close with a circle of reflection.
If you haven’t heard of ecstatic dances before, they’re big clean spaces for free form dancing. The music is eclectic: electronic, world, funk, pop, whatever keeps the energy flowing.

Check out the facebook event page for this dance
Please like our facebook page to hear about future dances

Here’s a fun intro to Ecstatic Dances.
Another intro, this one with footage of an ecstatic dance.
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Parlor Night

mural by A’shop

An evening of fun, food, creativity and community

A venue for the unusual: performance art, sculpture from found objects, dance, poetry, artifacts… anything with a story and a heart.

Living in a rural town, remote from any urban center, can be challenging. Where do you share your creativity? Where are the weirdos? How do you stay focused on creating while balancing paying the bills and family time?

Here’s a solution! Join fellow artists and art-lovers for this bi-monthly event to share our art and support each other’s creative process.

Food is a big part of this, so please bring a dish to pass as well.

All disciplines and skill-levels are welcome.

To join the discussion & see upcoming events: request to join our facebook group or send me a message.

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Workshop – The Divine Feminine Embodied

Photo by Sebastian Molina

We are in the middle a powerful surge of the rising of the Divine Feminine, also known as the Age of Aquarius. Intuition, empathy, trust and connection are becoming more valued in our society than they have been for thousands of years. As we build these capacities within ourselves, we must release what is holding us back. We have internalized judgement and fear that block our body’s wisdom of deep Eros: love, connection and pleasure.

Journey with me through your body to discover your desires, give voice to them and navigate to their fulfillment. By unlocking your body’s ability to get what it desires, you strengthen your intuition and trust in yourself and each other.

This workshop will involve exercises of deep listening, consent and non-sexual touch.

*from a recently submitted workshop proposal.

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Unraveling: to come undone

I’ve created an interactive performance called Unraveling, exploring obedience, power and collective catharsis through improvisation and it was selected to be part of The Secret City Art Revival in Woodstock this coming weekend.  Join me Saturday, July 28th, in front of WAAM, 28 Tinker Street.  Performances at noon, 2pm and 4:30pm.
It looks like it will be a great festival, full of pop-up performances all over town, a town picnic, a silent disco & more events throughout the weekend.

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Rewilding

How do I extract myself from the normal and navigate back to the sensuous?  Back to where the wind caressing my back takes my breath away, where the soft earth kisses my feet, gently massaging my soles and drinking my tension, where the soft voluptuous clouds whisper their intent.

First I stop speaking and slowly make my way outside.  My shoes come off and I feel the soft cool moistness of the earth.  My gaze softens as I take in the sway of the leaves and grass in the wind.  A deep sigh of release and contentment.  Layers come off and I sink to the ground, letting the breeze kiss my skin.  I tickle the tips of the grass and close my eyes.

I’m there.

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Wild Women Retreat Registration

It is time!  The 4th Annual Wild Women Retreat will take place the weekend of the August full moon: 8/24 – 8/26 in the hills of Hartwick, NY.  Registration is now open until August 10th or until we fill up.

We have a beautiful space with woods and fields and a swimming pond… a covered pavilion and room for camping… It is quite lovely and it’s secluded and perfect for our gathering.   We come together to celebrate and honor ourselves, our sisters, our connection with nature and the cycles of life. We share food and co-create the magic of the weekend with our offerings.

Every year we have had more and more women join us, so we expect this year to be the same.  We have limited space so register soon to reserve your space!

There are two steps to register:

  1. Complete the registration form.
  2. Submit the $20 fee through Paypal (covers you and any babies and daughters you may bring along Saturday.)  This is used to pay for the space.  If we collect more than we need, we will decide collectively how to spend the rest.

Additional details:

In keeping with the collaborative beauty of sisterhood, we will each contribute in a few ways:

Food

Meals are done potluck style.  Vanessa Garcia will be coordinating food this year.  Once registration has closed and we have a full head count for the weekend, she will contact you with your meal assignment. You can then sign up for whichever part of that meal that suits you.  Meals will be arranged to provide a spectrum of dishes to accommodate various dietary restrictions (i.e vegetarian, vegan, paleo, etc).
Any mothers of picky eaters who will be joining us on Saturday are encouraged to come prepared with a sack lunch or snacks in the event your little one finds our menu unpalatable 😉

offerings

In addition to food, we ask you to make an offering of your time and skills.   That’s where the magic happens.  You’ll see more details on this when you register.

schedule

Friday afternoon we set up the space, share dinner and at dusk, there will be a opening ritual of transformation and connection.
Saturday is our family day, so babies and young girls are welcome to join us during the day to frolic in the woods.   It is a time to share gifts, skills, knowledge, workshops, whatever we bring with us and create from the earth.
Saturday night is the Bonfire, so bring your howls, your magic, your drums and your bells. This is indeed a Circle of the Circles and our monthly magic is magnified, so come prepared to let it all go and embrace the wild.
Sunday we share breakfast, relax a final time by the pond and break up camp.

A magical relaxing weekend of sister time, ritual and play awaits!