Many of us carry attachment wounds from our earliest relationships. But there's another rupture rarely named in the healing process: our bond with the Earth itself, the first ground of our belonging.

Living within contemporary industrialized culture, many of us were never taught to live in deep kinship with the land, with our own bodies as nature, or with one another as part of a wider web of life. We've also grown distant from the raw materials our lives actually run on—the wood, water, fiber, and earth behind everything we use.

Ancestral and earth-based skills help de-abstract those relationships. We come to know the qualities of wood that yield a friction fire, the plants that become food or medicine, the fibers that twist together into something stronger, the earth that can be shaped and fired into a vessel. Through direct contact, the living world becomes less a backdrop and more a vibrant field of reciprocal relationship -- something we depend upon, participate in, receive from, and have responsibilities toward.

These are ancient human gestures, practiced across cultures for countless generations. When our own hands take them up again, we locate ourselves within a much longer human story. We remember.

Remembering Belonging is an invitation to re-weave those bonds -- through the hands and body, through contact with place and material, and through the unfolding relationships within the group itself.

Over three months, we'll return again and again to the same land and to one another: building shelter, making fire, working with fiber, clay, plants, stone, sound, and food. We'll practice listening -- to our bodies, to one another, and to the more-than-human world -- while song and simple ritual help us mark thresholds and create a shared culture of belonging.

Along the way, the land and our work together become places to encounter some of the fundamental questions of attachment and belonging:

How do I sense myself? What helps me feel safe enough to explore? Where do I feel connection, and where do I lose it? Can I pursue what I want? What happens when I need help? What happens when connection is disrupted? How do we find our way back? What can I rest into?

• Format: Closed, small-group therapy experience (6-8 participants)

• Length: 3 months / 6 gatherings

• Schedule: (Mostly) every other week, Sundays, 10:00 AM–1:00 PM

  (April 5+18, May 2+16+23, June 7; dates subject to change)

• Location: private land within 45 minutes from Portland

• Cost: $150/session; $900 total

• Accessibility info: activities involve walking on uneven forest terrain, sitting or working near the ground, and light physical activity. Adaptations are possible — please reach out with access questions or needs.

DETAILS

Remembering Belonging takes place on the ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples including the Cowlitz, Multnomah, Clackamas, other Chinookan peoples, and Tualatin Kalapuya. While many of the skills we practice have emerged in varied forms across human cultures, I hold with humility that we are practicing them in a particular place, with its own Indigenous histories and cultures — a place shaped by peoples whose relationships with these lands, waters, plants, animals, and materials long predate settler presence and continue today. I offer gratitude and respect to those who have cared for and remained in relationship with this region across generations. May the work of this group be a prayer for remembering and relearning how to walk on the Earth in a good way.

Sessions will take place outdoors on forested land and will include a combination of ancestral and earth-based skills, nature-based psychotherapy, somatic and attachment-focused practices, group process, song, ritual, movement, and time around the fire. Participants should be prepared to spend approximately three hours outdoors in a range of spring weather conditions.

No previous outdoor or primitive-skills experience is necessary (and, folks with prior ancestral skills experience are very welcome!). The emphasis is not on mastery or performance of these skills, but on curiosity, relationship, and what we discover about attachment and belonging through learning and practicing together. Weather-appropriate outdoor clothing and a basic bushcraft knife will be needed. A full gear list and knife recommendation will be provided before the group begins; other specialized tools and materials will be provided.

Because this is a closed therapeutic group, participants will be asked to commit to attending all six gatherings. If a conflict arises, please reach out so we can problem-solve together. A short application form and an individual consultation prior to enrollment will help us determine whether the group is a good fit and give you an opportunity to ask questions about anything that would support your participation.