Rites of Passage Summer CamPS
Growing Goddesses (Ages 11-14) and Moon Mystics (Ages 15-18)
Session One:
July 7-11, 2025
Join us in honoring and celebrating the blossoming women in our lives as they receive their birthright of a beautiful and intact Rites of Passage Ceremony.
Twice this summer, a group of devoted, skilled mentors and young women ages 11-14 (Growing Goddess) and 15-18 (Moon Mystics) will take to the gorgeous mountain wilderness of North Carolina to feast our wild souls with the songs of trickling wild streams, hawks soaring flight, bubbling laughter and elder trees.
Through supportive sisterhood/frienships, fun, ritual and nature connection each young woman's/initiate’s inner gifts and natural authenticity emerge. The blossoming woman is nourished through connection to true self, nature and community. Community Supported/ Nature Based Rites of Passage helps usher a girl into healthy young womanhood, feeling confident and connected to herself, her family, her community and the natural world.
Growing Goddess is a Nature-based Rites of Passage Camp honoring the sacred time when a girl is becoming a woman. We have been offering Rites of Passage ceremony for 14 years, this will be our 15th summer of holding these sacred thresholds for healing and upliftment of the feminine spirit and witnessing teens in their becoming.
This is the time to claim our passageways and make them reflective of the natural, wild and wise beings we are, as we feed beauty to the Earth and serve our families and communities.
We believe rites of passage is essential for healthy culture and an empowered entry into womanhood. The ceremonial beauty of this Rites of Passage feeds both the wild soul and the Earth.
We believe intergenerational mentorship, sisterhood, strong intuition, awakened creativity and a deep connection with the Earth provides the taproot of strength needed to weather the tests of life and womanhood in a healthy way.
We believe you don’t have to come of age in isolation, unaware and in trauma. Rather, we rise connected, in tune and resilient. Womanhood is beautiful, powerful and worth celebrating!
We gather to witness, celebrate, uplift and orient girls on the threshold of their womanhood through a Rites of Passage ritual in the mountain wilderness of one of the regions most gorgeous retreat centers near Asheville, NC- Sacred Mountain Waters.
While we can’t share everything these young women will experience together, here is a description of some of our main activities. (*We cannot guarantee everything listed will happen as our priority is honoring needs of each young woman and the group over any agenda.)
Session One: July 8-12, 2024
at Sacred Mountain Waters Retreat Center in Marshall, NC (near Asheville, NC)
Theme: Earth My Body and the Ecology of the Wild SouL, earthen CookPot CReation as INitiation
Learn to Make and Fire a Clay Cookpot
Flower Ceremony and Way of the Rose Spa
Cacao Ceremony
Arrow Break
Council
Plant Walks
Sweat Lodge
Womb Care and How to Self Care Womb Massage, Make Womb Massage Oil to take home
Red Tent
Mineral Ceremony
Orientation, Hazards and Agreements
Water Ritual
Ancient Initiation Myth told under the stars
Growing Goddess Origin Story
Nature Awareness Games
Singing Empowering and Earthy Songs
Drumming and Dancing
Fire Tending
Herbal Medicine Making
Mindful Eating
Sound Apothecary, Sonic Night
Swimming
Sauna
Hydrotherapy (cedar hot tubs/river/pond)
Stargazing
Red Tent
Guided Conversations that Matter about the world these teens are in and what they encounter and skill sharing on how to navigate challenges.
Receiving Songs from your Soul and the Earth
Ceremony with Indigenous Grandmothers
Village Welcome Back Ceremony
I must take a moment to underline the deep skillfulness of this team of committed and highly training Village Aunties and Grandmothers, Mentors and Guides who will be tending your daughters and these initiates. This work is our deep commitment. I know of no other program with the level of facilitation and support that we are offering towards the vision of Rites of Passage for young women.
Our Red Tent and moon lodge is where we have conversations that matter about becoming a woman and we address important curiosities and questions of the young women, and they share their knowledge with each other. We connect in council about self care, the power of our yes and no, sex and sensuality, health, honoring and understanding our cycles physiologically and spiritually and whatever else needs to come up. This space is healing, sacred and extremely important to decompress from our current culture and create the feminine and honoring culture we deserve.
Then, when our time together is near completion, our families and community will be the open arms of the “village” as we return like fresh water from the high mountains to nourish all of life with our clarity, power, and beauty. Please join for our Welcome Home Ceremony 5-7pm on our final day.
We believe the importance of fire tending has practical, ceremonial and inner significance. We will learn to tend the fire of our passions, creativity and power with skill and grace.
Myths are maps, and we will share some especially potent maps from the wise woman mystery school of mythic stories, these stories come alive within us, silently guiding us towards our path and our truth.
There’s something so soothing about having our hands in the earth, we will craft Earthen Cook Pots with clay this is an ancient coming of age practice for many nations including the Tzutijil Mayans and the cook pots are representations of our wombs, of our ability to nourish ourselves and our families and communities and a deep reflection on our selves as creatresses of life in many forms. This will be a project we tend throughout the days and it will require some skillfulness and focus.
*How did we get so super blessed to have Evelyn Irving, lead Chef Queen, Ayurvedically Trained and creatress of jaw dropping flavor and deep nourishment?! The feedback is that the initiates want Evie to come home with them and keep cooking.
Our meals will be nourishing, local when possible, and can accommodate allergies with advance notice. Please note, we strive to keep a majority plant based menu, with sustainable animal protein offered a couple to a few times.
We really go for it each year with this ceremony, bringing together an epic group of facilitators to vision, design and tend this prayer throughout the year. We center Nature Reverence and Community, Cultural and Personal Healing and braid it with art, music, prayer, practical skills, movement, body and cultural awareness and tool building for these critical times.
Most women I meet say they did not receive a proper honoring or initiation as they entered into womanhood. We as Village Aunties are here to say: not on our watch! This generation will have the red carpet of honoring their importance and becoming rolled out for them in joyful service to their unique souls and celebrating their sacred walk on this Earth.
We hold a space to detoxify and heal from the dominant culture and personal life/family traumas. So that young women have the inner spaciousness to write their own stories and hear their own inner guidance and truth.
SACRED RECIPROCITY
Presenting Tiered Pricing. There are 25 spaces open in each session. Once one Tier is sold out the next tier will be available.
We are starting with
8 spaces for $666
9 Spaces at $766
8 Spaces at $866
Pricing is for five days and four nights, per young woman.
Session One: July 8-12, 2024
Theme: Earth My Body and the Ecology of the Wild Soul, Clay Cook Pot Creation
Session 2: July 15-19, 2024
Theme: Ring Making and Self Marriage Celebration
We lost our beloved friend and Village Auntie Courtney Brooke Allen as she was hit and killed instantly by a drunk driver Jan. 15th, 2021, she planted her way of beautiful heartfelt service, song, storytelling, and devoted love and tending to the Earth and Community in all of us. When she passed it made it even more apparent the strength and commitment of what we do, even in the darkest of times, the most challenging of losses, we are still here, holding this threshold, like health and life depend on it. Certainly that’s how Courtney Brooke held this fire for these initiates, because it was the most important thing in the world to her, to tend the prayers and to tend them well. Forever you are with us my sister.
The blossoming woman is nourished through connection to true self, nature and community.
