top of page
Alderroot Healing & Renewal
Wintering: An group mentoring & ongoing retreat experience for leaders who need seasonal rest and renewal
October 2024 - March 2025
for those who identify as female, non-binary, or trans
Wintering is a 6 month ongoing retreat and small group mentoring experience that will bring you and your leadership practice from drained, disheartened, rushed, and overwhelmed to grounded, inspired, connected, and brimming with possibility.
Emerge renewed and inspired after a season of slow, restful, transformative guidance. Be the leader, educator, change-maker you aspire to be by learning to tap into earth-based support and Self-leadership* with a wise community of like-minded leaders.
Gain guidance, rest, new mindsets, new nourishing practices, and a community of support.
Bring a new groundedness, confidence, and slower pace to your leadership and change-making work by learning to be in connection with the seasons and your own wisdom.
Join this well-facilitated soulful community space and be nourished regularly without having to do a lot of extra stuff. Just trust the transformative process.
*Self-leadership is a term from Internal Family Systems theory and refers to the energy of our core, who we really are as interconnected earth beings. Self-leadership is calm, creative, confident, clear, courageous, connected, compassionate, & curious.
Learn more about why I created Wintering
Why Wintering?
Winter is the season to turn inward, to slow down, and to re-connect. We know this, or often hear this and yet….there is no space in our dominant culture or leadership practice for living in our animal bodies or for cultivating the wisdom that comes from aligning with the season.
Even if we want to create more slowness and ease during the winter season, it’s hard to do so alone…it’s like swimming against the current. We need structure and support to grow as leader-collaborators, to change entrenched patterns, and to nurture ourselves so that we can be the fractal-change makers that this world needs.
Wintering is like an eddy, an opportunity to rest from the demands of the fast-moving current, and to make intentional time and space for alignment. When we get intentional about slowing down, resting, and connecting with the earth and our inner voices, we can access more wisdom.
With more wisdom we’ll take steps away from our dominant cultural patterns of overdoing, overcommiting, overwhelm, and anxiety, and we’ll lead with more patterns of Self-leadership--more calm, clarity, creativity, courage, compassion and confidence to do the work that is uniquely ours to do, to support others, and to live out our big leadership visions with more ease.
With more wisdom we can show up for leadership challenges like uncertainty, decision-making, collaboration, and visioning with new energy and clarity.
How do we do it?
Our winter flow will be guided by an ecological design process:
I will guide you through an emergent ecological design process to support your rest and renewal. By the end of this seasonal experience you will :
-
Deeply observe your life, values, mindsets, feelings, and patterns & uncover your inherent wisdom
-
Clearly envision and imagine a way of being and leading that you really desire, and set clear intentions for moving into this vision
-
Practice shedding old ways of being and try out new practices of rest, earth connection, and spiritual growth that shape a life of wisdom
-
Create new patterns and rituals of leadership rooted in connection and wisdom that bring you more meaning, joy, and belonging.
-
Find inspiration and renewal in new intentions, practices, and relationships
Sessions will include a combination of relationship building activities, guided relaxation and resting, and purposeful reflection and discussion. You are invited to come just as you are and to bring the specific tensions, difficulties, and questions that you struggle with in your own leadership journey in order to tend to them.
​I believe learning and growth happens in relationship. I facilitate in ways that make it safe to honor our true selves in the learning process and that build nourishing relationships within small groups. I share my own vulnerabilities alongside my experience and expertise because I am always growing and emerging too. I facilitate mindfulness and bodyfulness practices, earth-connection invitations, creative and fun practices, and reflective exercises that honor wholeness and support new insight and learning.
Sessions may include:
-
Check-ins
-
Bodyfulness-relaxation, movement, breathing
-
Reflection
-
Observation (of mindset, thoughts, emotions, patterns)
-
Rest practices
-
Earth connection and seasonal practices
-
Reiki energy healing
-
Meditation
-
Discussion
-
Reflective writing
-
Mapping and visioning
-
Simple rituals & ceremony
-
Poetry
This is for you if any or all of these apply:
-
You want support! You want to drop in to a well-facilitated soulful community space and be nourished regularly without having to do a lot of extra stuff
​
-
You identify as a change-maker or leader (no matter what your job is). You might be a non-profit leader, an entrepreneur or wellpreneur, an educator, a higher education professional, a healer or a therapist
​
-
You want to grow your ability to show up as a wise and grounded leader-collaborator or leader-as-host who affects positive change in the world
​
-
You are usually busy and often tired, looking for another way to be
​
-
Your work situation is draining you and leaving little energy for other relationships, hobbies, earth-connection or spiritual nourishment
​
-
You can commit to trying out new practices centered on rest, reflection, and connection
​
-
You struggle with anxiety and/or overwhelm and you’re not sure how it could be possible to rest or renew within your current work structure
​
-
You would like guidance and support in connecting to the earth as a source of support and deep connection in your leadership journey
​
-
You would like guidance and support in connecting to your spiritual self as a source of wisdom
​
-
You feel disheartened by the state of the world and want to reconnect to purposeful leadership
​
-
You value community experience and the wisdom of a collective
​
-
You need some structured time and space to slow down, get support, and be nourished.
Small Group Mentoring Sessions & Cost
In-person sessions will take place at The Yoga Refuge in SE Portland, a cozy studio location where we can spread out, make tea, move our bodies, reflect together, and share beautiful space (7831 SE Stark).
Sessions will take place every several weeks October-March. Sessions are 2 hours each (7:00-9:00pm)
Dates: All dates are Saturdays
October 19
November 9, 23
December 7, 21
January 4, 18
February 1, 15
March 15
If you are interested in this group mentoring experience but don't live in Portland, Oregon, or if virtual sessions meet your needs better, please let me know here. With enough interest I will also convene a virtual group.
Cost:
6 month container of support (October-March). Choose the level of support that will work best for you. Personal mentoring sessions are 1-1 sessions with Heather that are always virtual and can be scheduled flexibly. These sessions can support you in deepening the group mentoring experience.
Level 1: 10 group mentoring sessions $1250 ($208/month)
Level 2: 10 group mentoring sessions + 5 personal mentoring sessions with Heather $2025
($338/month)
Level 3: 10 group mentoring sessions + 10 personal mentoring sessions with Heather $2800 ($467/month)
Payment plans available by request & with a $200 deposit. Contact me with questions.
Note: If we have inclement weather and it is unsafe to travel, we will meet on Zoom. If you are not able to attend all in-person sessions it's okay, but I won't be able to offer refunds for missed sessions, and we won't be able to Zoom you in to in-person gatherings.
About me:
I’ve been guiding leaders for several decades. One of my gifts is designing transformative experiences that help leaders to grow, heal, and change. I ask good questions, feel your energy, and really see you in your struggle. And I understand how hard it can be to deepen your soul-led leadership within dominant systems that primarily support urgency, individualism, production, and profit. I am a values-based leader who has experienced burnout and recovery from burnout, and I understand how to support renewal.
I can help you unravel from feeling stuck on the treadmill of production or from feeling burned out or disenchanted, and to discover new possibilities rooted in trust, rest, connection, and wholeness.
What do I mean by leader? I mean leader as collaborator, leader as host, leader as an emerging changing bad-ass human who also guides or teachers others. I mean leader as change-maker and as a deeply caring and creative person who brings visionary solutions into the world. I mean leader as relationship-builder, earth advocate, and spiritual seeker.
How do we heal and learn together? We center relationships and process; we embrace experience and emergence; we invite imagination, emotion, intuition, and embodiment; we tap into our deep (inter)connectedness and belonging.
bottom of page