Unveiling Our Stories

A guided JOURNEY

through the GATES of

LOVING INQUIRY

A safe and sacred circle of women writing, exploring and sharing.

A calling forth of our stories, voices, feelings, memories.

A reclaiming of the parts of us that have been judged, criticized, hidden and shamed.

An acceptance and appreciation for all of who we are.

An immersion in the mystery, beauty and magic of creativity.

A liberating of our impulses, vulnerabilities, passions and co-creative possibilities.

A revealing of our power to heal ourselves together.

We have this idea of what writing looks like.

Writing is an out-in-the-world term. It immediately comes with expectations, definitions, and conditioning of perfection.

That’s what makes it so hard. We feel like we are doing it wrong, so we avoid, judge or downplay our desire to write.

Do you ever ask yourself, “Who am I to write?”

Do you ever wonder if you are

talented… poetic… innovative… intelligent… emotional… sharp..

enough to write?

(insert any word here that you use to downplay your ability)

Fortunately, these are just habitual, unconscious judgements, and we don’t have to believe them.

Instead, we can become curious and get intimate with our own writing.

We can practice accepting and valuing our unique truths, voices and expression.

We can allow ourselves to follow our creative impulses and see where they take us.

There are so many layers of memories and stories which contribute to my idea of who I am.

When we share our truth, the parts of us we feel unsure about, in the space we have created, there is safety and a feeling that I know I won’t be judged.

It feels spiritual, reverent, powerful, magical.

– Joni Van Ommen

Unveiling Our Stories

is:

A nourishing and empowering space for writing about your life and what deeply matters to you.

A warm, healing space to slow down and listen closely to our hearts, minds and bodies.

A brave, nonjudgemental space to explore the therapeutic benefits of writing:

giving voice to feelings, revisiting & restoring memories, making meaning of difficult experiences, identifying what truly matters and celebrating the joy, beauty and wonder of life.

A gentle space to practice and cultivate embodied awareness, self-kindness and creative aliveness.

A little bit about me, Ahava Shira

As a creative midwife and guide at the Gates of Loving Inquiry, I work with people of diverse genders, ages, cultures, mental and physical abilities.

As they unveil their stories, and express themselves freely, they are witnessed with love and non-judgment, and their sense of who they are grows and expands.

For over 30 years I have been UNVEILING my stories, discovering new voice(s) and opening to the joy and wonder of being alive.

Through the creative and therapeutic practice of writing, I have cultivated resources of self-compassion, intuitive play and imagination, rewritten old beliefs about who I am and how I can be in the world, and healed my relationships with myself and others.

I have also recovered parts of myself that I had dismissed as undesirable and unworthy of attention.

Join us for

Unveiling Our Stories

A guided JOURNEY

through the GATES of

LOVING INQUIRY

Register Here

Unveiling Our Stories

is for you if:

You feel sure you have stories to tell but aren’t sure whether the stories will mean anything to anyone else.
You dream of telling your stories but get lost in procrastination and distractions.

You yearn to express yourself but you have an inner critic, who is always pointing out your faults and insufficiencies.
You want to learn to relate to your writing with kindness, curiosity and acceptance.

You feel alone in your writing and want a supportive community to inspire and motivate you
You crave sharing your writing with others but you hesitate because it is so vulnerable and you are afraid of being rejected.

If this is you, I invite you to join me for a journey of

Creativity:

We’ll create a safe supportive space to DIVE DEEP INTO our stories.

We’ll open to a treasure box of prompts and practices that help us to enter into the writing with a permission to play, imagine, have fun and discover what we have to say.

Compassion:

We’ll cultivate kindness toward our writing and ourselves.

We’ll practice a calm, meditative awareness to help us open to the stories, feelings and memories that live in the body and need safety and trust to be given voice and shared.

Connection:

We’ll feel seen, heard and accepted for all of who we are.

We’ll be embraced by a circle of care and courage, supporting us to walk through our fears and other blocks to creativity and build our confidence to express ourselves freely and fully.

The longer and more regular we meet, the trust and intimacy within the group deepens, which allows for me to go deeper into my writing.

Being witnessed, listened to and felt deeply and having reflections back, it shifts the way we see ourselves and our experiences and the stories we tell.

It creates this beautiful space where the possibilities are limitless.

– Shelly Silva

Here’s how Unveiling Our Stories will unfold

We will gather for 12 weeks from

for

Every week you will be invited to:

A 90 minute “Creativity Call” to

OPEN into the play & magic of the creative process

EXPLORE themes using the Gates of Loving Inquiry as our guides.

CREATE a safe space of warmth, ease and kindness to share with each other.

A 60 minute optional “Freefall Call” to

EXPAND & DEEPEN your journey

Throughout our time together, you’ll also receive:

Invitations to pause, reflect, open, listen inwardly and dwell in your intuition.
Guided meditations to calm the mind, soothe the nervous system, relax and settle into your body.
Compassionate accompaniment through sacred witnessing in a circle of confidentiality, trust and intimacy.

CALL SCHEDULE:

these are 90 or 60 minute calls

Creativity Calls

TBD

Freefall Calls

TBD

I understand that life can get really busy, and I don’t want to overwhelm you. If you can’t make all the calls, that’s okay. This is meant to be a creative support to you.

Creativity Calls will be recorded. Freefall calls will not.

Your investment

I am offering

Unveiling Our Stories

on a tiered system as part of my commitment to financial accessibility and equity.

This pricing system allows each person to consider their financial access when joining, making way for those who may need extra support. I also offer payment plans for each pricing tier.

$1260
– Supporter –

OR Three monthly payments of $420

This is our “pay it forward” option for UNVEILING, where the extra money you pay helps to support the folks on the lower end of the sliding scale. You can think of this price as an opportunity to both join us and to support your fellow community members while you’re at it. You are able to pay for “wants” and spend little time worrying about securing necessities in your life.

$1050
– Full Price –

OR Three monthly payments of $350

This is the actual cost of UNVEILING, and is joyfully offered to folks who can comfortably meet all of their basic needs (food, housing, transportation, medical care), and who have expendable income to regularly purchase things like books, fancy coffee drinks, and online subscriptions, etc. You may be paying off debt or working to build savings, but you also have access to steady income.

$855
– Reduced –

OR Three monthly payments of $285

This price is joyfully offered to folks who would find enrolling in UNVEILING at full price to be a sacrifice, but it would not create true hardship. It’s for folks who rent and don’t own their home, have no access to savings, have very limited expendable income, and cannot afford a vacation or take time off without financial burden.

Join us for

Unveiling Our Stories

A guided JOURNEY

through the GATES of

LOVING INQUIRY

Register Here

Unveiling Our Stories

is for women who:

want to reflect on their experiences and discover what truly matters to them with creative openness and compassionate curiosity.
yearn to reclaim parts of themselves which have been judged, criticized, shamed or neglected.
desire to transform the belief that healing is a lonely and isolating experience and to create community that invites them to grow into more of who they are.
crave spiritual learning and long to understand and practice a more wholistic awareness of their lives through writing and creativity.

Unveiling Our Stories

A guided JOURNEY

through the GATES of

LOVING INQUIRY

A safe and sacred circle of women writing, exploring and sharing.

A calling forth of our stories, voices, feelings, memories.

A reclaiming of the parts of us that have been judged, criticized, hidden and shamed.

An acceptance and appreciation for all of who we are.

An immersion in the mystery, beauty and magic of creativity.

A liberating of our impulses, vulnerabilities, passions and co-creative possibilities.

A revealing of our power to heal ourselves together.

We have this idea of what writing looks like.

Writing is an out-in-the-world term. It immediately comes with expectations, definitions, and conditioning of perfection.

That’s what makes it so hard. We feel like we are doing it wrong, so we avoid, judge or downplay our desire to write.

Do you ever ask yourself, “Who am I to write?”

Do you ever wonder if you are

talented… poetic… innovative… intelligent… emotional… sharp..

enough to write?

(insert any word here that you use to downplay your ability)

Fortunately, these are just habitual, unconscious judgements, and we don’t have to believe them.

Instead, we can become curious and get intimate with our own writing.

We can practice accepting and valuing our unique truths, voices and expression.

We can allow ourselves to follow our creative impulses and see where they take us.

There are so many layers of memories and stories which contribute to my idea of who I am.

When we share our truth, the parts of us we feel unsure about, in the space we have created, there is safety and a feeling that I know I won’t be judged.

It feels spiritual, reverent, powerful, magical.

– Joni Van Ommen

Unveiling Our Stories

is:

A nourishing and empowering space for writing about your life and what deeply matters to you.

A warm, healing space to slow down and listen closely to our hearts, minds and bodies.

A brave, nonjudgemental space to explore the therapeutic benefits of writing:

giving voice to feelings, revisiting & restoring memories, making meaning of difficult experiences, identifying what truly matters and celebrating the joy, beauty and wonder of life.

A gentle space to practice and cultivate embodied awareness, self-kindness and creative aliveness.

A little bit about me, Ahava Shira

As a creative midwife and guide at the Gates of Loving Inquiry, I work with people of diverse genders, ages, cultures, mental and physical abilities.

As they unveil their stories, and express themselves freely, they are witnessed with love and non-judgment, and their sense of who they are grows and expands.

For over 30 years I have been UNVEILING my stories, discovering new voice(s) and opening to the joy and wonder of being alive.

Through the creative and therapeutic practice of writing, I have cultivated resources of self-compassion, intuitive play and imagination, rewritten old beliefs about who I am and how I can be in the world, and healed my relationships with myself and others.

I have also recovered parts of myself that I had dismissed as undesirable and unworthy of attention.

Join us for

Unveiling Our Stories

A guided JOURNEY

through the GATES of

LOVING INQUIRY

Unveiling Our Stories

is for you if:

You feel sure you have stories to tell but aren’t sure whether the stories will mean anything to anyone else.

You dream of telling your stories but get lost in procrastination and distractions.

You yearn to express yourself but you have an inner critic, who is always pointing out your faults and insufficiencies.

You want to learn to relate to your writing with kindness, curiosity and acceptance.

You feel alone in your writing and want a supportive community to inspire and motivate you

You crave sharing your writing with others but you hesitate because it is so vulnerable and you are afraid of being rejected.

If this is you, I invite you to join me for a journey of

Creativity:

We’ll create a safe supportive space to DIVE DEEP INTO our stories.

We’ll open to a treasure box of prompts and practices that help us to enter into the writing with a permission to play, imagine, have fun and discover what we have to say.

Compassion:

We’ll cultivate kindness toward our writing and ourselves.

We’ll practice a calm, meditative awareness to help us open to the stories, feelings and memories that live in the body and need safety and trust to be given voice and shared.

Connection:

We’ll feel seen, heard and accepted for all of who we are.

We’ll be embraced by a circle of care and courage, supporting us to walk through our fears and other blocks to creativity and build our confidence to express ourselves freely and fully.

The longer and more regular we meet, the trust and intimacy within the group deepens, which allows for me to go deeper into my writing.

Being witnessed, listened to and felt deeply and having reflections back, it shifts the way we see ourselves and our experiences and the stories we tell.

It creates this beautiful space where the possibilities are limitless.

– Shelly Silva

Here’s how Unveiling Our Stories will unfold

We will gather for 12 weeks from

for

Every week you will be invited to:

A 90 minute “Creativity Call” to

OPEN into the play & magic of the creative process

EXPLORE themes using the Gates of Loving Inquiry as our guides.

CREATE a safe space of warmth, ease and kindness to share with each other.

A 60 minute optional “Freefall Call” to

EXPAND & DEEPEN your journey