Growing Humankindness

Growing Humankindness community - July through December 2024
2024-07-01 08:00 - 2024-12-31 17:00 (America/New_York)
The community is an online support group for Growing Humankindness alumni who want to deepen presence, mindfulness and self compassion in their relationship with food and with themselves.
Each month we have a Healing Focus that explores a particular area to nurture healing in our relationship with food.

July – Bringing rest and play to the healing journey
August – Inner listening
September – Connecting with the body’s grace
October – Softening pursuit
November – Self forgiveness
December – Birthing your healing story

Then we meet twice a month for zoom webinars where you can ask questions, share your experience, and connect with others. One of the monthly webinars is a ‘Soul Circle’ where we explore the month’s theme in an explorative way – through collage, journaling, inner exploration, or writing.
We meet from 3 to 4:30 pm central time on one Thursday and one Saturday a month:​​​​​​

Thursday, July 11th and Saturday, July 27th
Thursday, August 15th and Saturday, August 31st
Thursday, September 12th and Saturday, September 28th
Thursday, October 10th and Saturday, October 26th
Thursday, November 7th and Saturday, November 23rd
Thursday, December 5th and Saturday, December 14th

The community also includes an online forum, the option to have a listening partner, and unlimited online access to our library of courses.
The community is a 6 month commitment and is a closed small group with a limited number of spots – you sign up for six months at a time. Tuition is $125 USD per month for six months.
Learn more and sign up here.

The Nutrition Awakening
2024-12-11 08:00 - 2024-12-18 17:00
The ‘what to eat’ question is one that plagues so many of us! With so much dietary advice it can be hard to know what or how to eat. And yet the food we eat has a powerful impact on our physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual health.
This summit may be for you if you want to:

learn how you can eat for greater health
lower your sugar intake
eat a lower inflammation diet
reverse or prevent chronic illness
or understand the food-mood connection

Experts who’ll be speaking on the summit include Vera Tarman, Bitten Jonsson, Craig Emmerich and Robert Lufkin. My presentation is on how compassion, presence, and relational neuroscience can help you soften painful or harmful emotional bonds with food.
If this speaks to you, I’d love to have you join me. And please share this with those who might be interested.
The summit begins on December 11th and is free. You can learn more and sign up here.

Book of Love - 2025 Soul Diver's circle
2025-01-19 08:00 - 2025-06-23 17:00
Friends, this is my favorite group to facilitate, and one that’s perfect for you if you’re needing rest from the ‘work’ of healing.
The Book of Love is a playful, art based group to reconnect to your wholeness: to birth the deeper story that lives underneath our experiences of loss, disconnection, rupture and trauma.
In this ongoing group you’ll be crafting a journal – using a blank book that you fill with images, stories, symbols and more – to create a book of connection, a chronicle and witness to your soul’s story. Through this creation and through sharing a space with others, you’ll reconnect with your deepest self, soften shame, and embolden courage.
The next Book of Love group begins January 2025 and is open for registration through January 13th. We’ll meet once a month from January to June from 1 to 4 pm CST on Sundays or from 10 am to 1 pm CST on Mondays. You choose your group – Sundays or Mondays.
Tuition is 6 monthly payments of $125 and there are limited spots. You can learn more about The Book of Love here.
If you’re reading about this event after January and are interested in a future Book of Love group, please contact us to join the waiting list.

Reclaim Your Power Summit
2025-04-01 08:00 - 2025-04-17 17:00
Hello friends, I want to invite you to join me at the free Reclaim Your Power Summit where I’ll be one of 15 guests speaking about health and recovery.
My interview will focus on caring for the roots of emotional eating, how to support yourself in sticky situations, and how to help shift the narrative we can carry inside of “I’m broken.”
You can learn more and sign up here.

Gathering Ourselves: April creativity circle
2025-04-25 12:00 - 15:00
Friends, please join us for an upcoming, free, open to all experience of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In this online gathering, we’ll be using prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other.
This gathering is a chance for you to experience a taste of our upcoming 6 month group, Gathering Ourselves, to see if it’s the right fit for you. Bring yourself, and bring a friend!
Learn more and register here.

Gathering Ourselves: A Creativity Circle to Nurture Connection and Compassion
2025-06-06 08:00 - 2025-11-14 17:00
Friends, please join me and my co-facilitator, Tamara Strijack, for Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In these online gatherings, we’ll use centering exercises, prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other with ‘the ears of our hearts.’
We’ll be meeting once a month from June to November from 12 to 3 pm CDT on Fridays. Tuition is 6 monthly payments of $125 USD and there are limited spots. If the group is full, please contact us to join the waiting list.
Learn more and register here.

Writing Through Illness: A Poetry Workshop with One Art
2025-07-17 18:00 - 20:00
“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you. Your feelings need you. Go home and be there for all of these things.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Illness – of all shapes and forms – is a complex threshold. As we journey through her doors, we meet change, loss, fear, pain, grief, fatigue, gratitude, wonder, awe – the full mystery of what it means to be human and to live in a human body.
In this online playshop with One Art, a poetry journal, we’ll explore, write and share our way into a more generous, deeper connection with the complexity that arises when we host an illness in our body’s ‘guest house.’ We’ll use writing practices, presence, and poetry to meet these guests and nurture a more regenerative, curious, and compassionate relationship with our bodies, hearts, and minds.
What might illness have to share with us? How might it meet us? How might we meet it?
This workshop is open to anyone who’s been touched by illness – their own, a loved one’s, a friend’s – and all kinds of illness – physical illness, mental illness, chronic illness, sudden illness. All levels of writing experience are welcome.
If you can’t join us live, we’ll record our time together so you can explore it later at your own pace.

Listen: Gentle ways to support your healing with food
2025-10-01 14:00 - 2025-11-12 16:00
There are core areas that nearly everyone faces when healing their relationship with food – places of challenge, difficulty or tension that arise in our bodies, minds and nervous systems. While these places of stuckness can feel frustrating or alarming, they’re doorways – places where we can bring curiosity, warmth and listening to help soften the wounds that lead to painful behaviors with food.

In this interactive class, we’ll explore seven of these core areas with listening, respect and creative, playful exercises:

embracing neediness
befriending cravings, the cry for help
caring for collapse and powerlessness
becoming more comfortable with the ebb and flow of emptiness and satiation
leaning into limits and protective love
receiving care rather than caretaking
and softening perfectionism and walking the maze.

This class is designed to deepen self compassion so we can become allies for our healing. For 2025, I’ve tweaked this class to be more focused on the zoom gatherings themselves. We’ll use poems, prompts, creative play and group sharing to bring healing, care and ease to these places of tenderness that are a part of the human experience.

We’ll meet on zoom on Wednesdays from 2-4 pm CT. You can learn more and sign up here.

Deepening into Winter: A Creativity Circle
2025-12-12 12:00 - 14:00
Please join us for a special winter session of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with what’s within ourselves and with each other. We’ll be gathering in December to ground and connect with ourselves before the flurry of the end of year holidays.
Wendell Berry writes “that the dark, too, blooms and sings.” So let’s sing into the dark, and gather in the dark, and see what may be blooming in this time of quiet and time of festivities.
In our online gathering, we’ll use prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our yearnings and desires for the holiday season.
You can learn more and sign up here.

Gathering Ourselves - Spring Equinox
2026-03-27 12:00 - 15:00
Friends, please join me and my co-facilitator, Tamara Strijack, for the next session of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In these online gatherings, we’ll use centering exercises, prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world. You don’t have to think of yourself as creative or a writer to come – merely a desire to show up and play.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other with ‘the ears of our hearts.’ By listening to ourselves and each other, we hope to become more vibrant, compassionate, tender and courageous.
We’ll be meeting on Friday, March 27th from 10 am to 1 pm Pacific/11 am to 2 p m Mountain/12 to 3 pm Central/1 to 4 pm Eastern/6 to 9 pm London/7 to 10 pm Prague time.

The gathering will be recorded if you can’t make it.

Tuition is $60 (CAD or USD.) Or purchase the entire series for the year (4 gatherings) for $200.

Register for Gathering Ourselves

Poetry reading with One Art
2026-05-03 13:00 - 14:30
Hi friends, I just heard that this reading will be rescheduled. Stay tuned to the calendar for the new date.
Friends, I’m over the moon to spend time with fellow writers Ellen Rowland and Phyllis Cole-Dai and our host, editor and founder of One Art, Mark Danowsky, for a poetry reading on Sunday, May 3rd.
There will be time for reading as well as time for questions. If you feel moved to come, I’d love to have you join me!
It’s free, but you need to register here.
Here’s a bit more about Ellen and Phyllis (I highly recommend Phyllis’ online community, The Raft)
Phyllis Cole-Dai resides in Maryland. She’s the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the popular Poetry of Presence volumes of mindfulness poems. She invites you to hop aboard The Raft, her online community.
Ellen Rowland is a writer and editor who leads small, generative poetry workshops on craft and form. She is the author of two collections of haiku: Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, and most recently The Echo of Silence/L’écho du Silence, a bi-lingual book of haiku and tanka. Her full-length poetry collection, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. You can find her writing in ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, Braided Way, Humana Obscura, and several anthologies, including “The Path to Kindness” and “The Wonder of Small Things” edited by James Crews. Her chapbook of after poems, In Search of Lost Birds is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She lives off the grid with her family on a small farm in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram , Facebook and Substack.

Gathering Ourselves - in person
2026-06-03 15:00 - 18:00
Friends, I’m delighted to announce that Tamara Neufeld Strijack and I will be hosting an in person session of Gathering Ourselves on Main Island, Vancouver, on Wednesday, June 3rd. I’ll have the details for the exact time, cost, and location soon. But I wanted to let you know about this wonderful opportunity now so you can join this live session of creative play, nurturing, and soul making.

Gathering Ourselves - Summer Solstice
2026-06-26 12:00 - 15:00
Friends, please join me and my co-facilitator, Tamara Strijack, for the next session of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In these online gatherings, we’ll use centering exercises, prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world. You don’t have to think of yourself as creative or a writer to come – merely a desire to show up and play.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other with ‘the ears of our hearts.’ By listening to ourselves and each other, we hope to become more vibrant, compassionate, tender and courageous.
We’ll be meeting on Friday, June from 10 am to 1 pm Pacific/11 am to 2 p m Mountain/12 to 3 pm Central/1 to 4 pm Eastern/6 to 9 pm London/7 to 10 pm Prague time.

The gathering will be recorded if you can’t make it.

Tuition is $60 (CAD or USD.) Or purchase the entire series for the year (4 gatherings) for $200.

Register for Gathering Ourselves

Gathering Ourselves - Autumn Solstice
2026-09-25 12:00 - 15:00
Friends, please join me and my co-facilitator, Tamara Strijack, for the next session of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In these online gatherings, we’ll use centering exercises, prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world. You don’t have to think of yourself as creative or a writer to come – merely a desire to show up and play.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other with ‘the ears of our hearts.’ By listening to ourselves and each other, we hope to become more vibrant, compassionate, tender and courageous.
We’ll be meeting on Friday, September 25th from 10 am to 1 pm Pacific/11 am to 2 p m Mountain/12 to 3 pm Central/1 to 4 pm Eastern/6 to 9 pm London/7 to 10 pm Prague time.

The gathering will be recorded if you can’t make it.

Tuition is $60 (CAD or USD.) Or purchase the entire series for the year (4 gatherings) for $200.

Register for Gathering Ourselves

Gathering Ourselves - Winter Solstice
2026-12-18 12:00 - 15:00
Friends, please join me and my co-facilitator, Tamara Strijack, for the next session of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In these online gatherings, we’ll use centering exercises, prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world. You don’t have to think of yourself as creative or a writer to come – merely a desire to show up and play.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other with ‘the ears of our hearts.’ By listening to ourselves and each other, we hope to become more vibrant, compassionate, tender and courageous.
We’ll be meeting on Friday, December 18th from 10 am to 1 pm Pacific/11 am to 2 p m Mountain/12 to 3 pm Central/1 to 4 pm Eastern/6 to 9 pm London/7 to 10 pm Prague time.

The gathering will be recorded if you can’t make it.

Tuition is $60 (CAD or USD.) Or purchase the entire series for the year (4 gatherings) for $200.

Register for Gathering Ourselves
