Rites of Passage Summer CamPS
Growing Goddesses (Ages 11-14) and Moon Mystics (Ages 15-18)
Session Two: Way of the Rose Priestesses
July 14-18, 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 13 years, this will be our 14th 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.
Rose Priestesses: A Journey of Sisterhood, Devotion, and Embodied Love
Step into an ancient lineage of wisdom, beauty, and sacred feminine power with Way of the Rose Priestesses, a transformative camp for young women. Rooted in the symbolism and medicine of the rose, this journey calls us to remember who we are as leaders of love, keepers of sacred boundaries, and devoted stewards of the Earth and each other.
The Heart of the Rose Priestess Path
The rose, with its fragrant blossoms and protective thorns, is a symbol of the divine feminine. It teaches us to open our hearts fully while honoring the power of our sacred "yes" and sacred "no." As we embrace the rose’s wisdom, we strengthen our ability to lead with love, embody grace, and stand rooted in impeccable boundaries. This is the way of the Rose Priestess—a path of generosity, authenticity, sisterhood and devotion.
Our Daily Rose Practices
Each day, we will immerse ourselves in the medicine of the rose, forging a deep connection to its essence through:
A Daily Rose Dieta: Drinking rose teas, rose honey and rose potions to harmonize our hearts and spirits and to listen more closely to this sacred medicine.
High Noon Rose Flower Baths: Receiving the healing and nourishing power of a strong rose tea on our skin that soaks in with the sun
Flower Altars: Remember you are the altar, adorning each sister with rose mandalas as we share our affirmations for each other.
Crafting a true Rosary: Transforming rose petals into sacred “rose clay” by slowly cooking the rose petals down and rolling rose beads and stringing them into our own true ROSEary along with crystal beads, a symbol of prayer and devotion to accompany you through all of life’s joy and challenges. I cried as we have been in our planning portal this winter with the facilitators envisioning some of these Growing Goddesses taking their birth journeys with these Rosaries we will create. This journey is guided by Rose Priestess and Jewelry artist: Samantha Stokes.
Sacred Rituals of the Rose
Through ceremonies and shared practices, we will honor the rose as a guide to sisterhood and spiritual leadership:
Rose Initiation & Water Blessings: Receiving the rose into our heart and hearing her unique message and calling to us. Crowning our hearts to lead the way. Offering baptisms/water blessings in the river to honor renewal and connection.
Anointment & Self-Massage: Using rose essential oils to bless and nourish our bodies, reclaiming the sensual and sacred nature of our physical forms.
Copper Still Rose Water Distillation: Crafting Rose hydrosol from organic old fashioned roses grown by Lena, Mayan and Samantha, connecting to ancient alchemical traditions. Each young woman will also bring a bottle home of this rose water we create.
Rose Spa Rituals: Indulging in rose sugar scrubs, rose oil, and rose honey facials to honor the beauty and divinity within.
Sisterhood Through the Rose
The way of the Rose Priestess is also the way of sisterhood. Together, we will:
Offer roses to the waters, cultivating gratitude and reciprocity for the Earth’s abundance.
Reflect on the principles of true sisterhood: how to hold one another with love, listen deeply, and stand together in integrity.
Practice the art of giving and receiving, and every bond flourishes with trust and care.
Why Revive the Way of the Priestess?
In a world longing for embodied, love-led leadership, the Rose Priestess path reminds us that strength lies in vulnerability, and generosity flows from a heart crowned with wisdom and generosity. Reviving this ancient path is a call to reclaim our connection to the Earth, the sacred, and each other—a call to heal, grow, and lead together with our hearts.
Join us on this transformative journey as we awaken the Rose priestess within and weave a sisterhood that honors the rose’s timeless lessons: beauty, balance, and love. 🌹
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.
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.
Session 2 Way of the Rose Priestesses: July 14-18, 2025
at Sacred Mountain Waters Retreat Center in Marshall, NC (near Asheville, NC)
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 from 5 -7 pm 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.
*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 (no offense parents) is that they 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 Pots
Session 2: July 15-19, 2024
Theme: SilverSmithing Wedding Rings,
Wilderness SOlo and Vow Writing
Self Marriage Ceremony
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.
