FOunder
Cashavelly Morrison
Cashavelly Morrison (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher, and founder of The Center for Female Sovereignty. Since 2010, she’s taught undergraduate creative writing, performance art, mythology, and gender disparity to artists at the University of the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC. She is passionate about combining creativity and expression with healing and nature connection, seeing each as coming from the same spiritual wellspring. She studied and performed as a ballet dancer for 18 years before training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City and acquiring her MFA in Creative Writing at Hollins University. She’s released three studio albums, and her work as a musician has been featured in Rolling Stone and NPR’s Mountain Stage. Her first feature film Metamorphosis, combining storytelling, dance, and music, accompanies her third album of the same name (released October 2021) and won awards in the LA Independent Women Film Awards and the Montreal Independent Film Festival, and was an official selection of the Boston Independent Film Awards, the Berlin International Art Film Festival, the Riverrun Film Festival, and the Toronto International Women Film Festival. In 2021, she participated in the 10-month wilderness immersion program Deep Remembering with rewilder and naturalist Luke McLaughlin, learning plant medicine, basketweaving, friction fire, holistic healing approaches, and more. This new knowledge deepened meaning in the personal and artistic work she has done through therapy, Shamanism, and embodiment practices. Her artistic work continues to explore these interests in a 4th studio album she is currently recording with producer David Wimbish. She is passionate about empowering women through friendship, empowered sisterhood, and healing patriarchal wounds. She loves to celebrate women, their work, and visions. She leads Soulbirthing, diving into the Feminine Mystery to make discoveries with her sisters. She also facilitates and hosts the Songbird Supper Club, uplifting and celebrating women creating in her hometown of Winston-Salem. You can learn more about her music and artistic projects at www.cashavellymorrison.com.
Retreat Guest Teachers
Callan Burton-Shore
Callan Burton-Shore grew up making fire and sneaking in the woods at the Living Earth School in Virginia. She is an avid tree climber, hide tanner, song carrier, and wood carver, and does not like to be kept indoors. She feels most alive when playing games or when covered in the blood of an animal she is processing. She has taught at multiple nature connection schools and currently teaches at Forest Floor Wilderness School in Asheville, NC. She is a graduate of Luke Mclaughlin’s Deep Remembering Immersion program and will continue on in 2022 as a second year student in his program. As someone who has struggled with anxiety much of her life, she is equally as passionate about the soft skills, such as holding space for grief and grounding into ourselves, as she is the hard (physical) skills. Having learned most of her skills in male-dominated spaces, she very acutely feels the need to have female and non-binary spaces in which to practice the more embodied skills.
Heather Edwards
Heather Edwards, PT, CSC (she/they) has been a pelvic physical therapist for 18 years and is an AASECT certified Sexuality Counselor as well as a Sex Educator. They achieved their dual certificate at the University of Michigan Sexual Health Certificate Program. They founded Vino & Vulvas in 2015 and it quickly became their favorite thing to do. They have presented at APTA, AASECT, Teen PEP, Interconnect conferences and teaches for Pelvic Global Academy on the topic of inclusive sexuality and sexual health. In addition to education and clinical work, Heather is an artist and illustrator of the coloring book series "Coloring Books for the Crotch Enthusiast" as well as her newest release, "VaJoyJoy: An illustrated story about a nonbinary vulva's self-discovery". She offers coaching and consultation that focus on interpersonal power dynamics as well as oppressive systems' (like patriarchy and racism) effects on the freedom (or lack thereof) that allow us to show up in the world as our true selves.
Sara Callaway
Sara Callaway finds the natural world fascinating and delightful. Humans she finds even more mysterious. It is her deep desire to respect, understand, and enjoy both. To that end, she trained as a naturalist with the Wilderness Awareness School, spent a decade working at and managing organic veggie farms, and keeps showing up to learn, teach, and coordinate at Earthskills Gatherings across the Southeast. Since mysterious humans also include herself, she has a longstanding personal growth habit that manifests as an extensive self-help library, trainings in shadow work and self inquiry, and over fifteen years of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) studies. These studies have helped her compassionately relate to herself and to others, and she is excited to share them with you.
Clara Moon
Clara Moon was born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Her creative process has explored many different mediums & disciplines, from illustration, painting, sacred body-painting, calligraphy, photography, videography, graphic design, leather-working, jewelry design, styling, & creative directing. Her work is deeply spiritual & invokes a transformative process to empower, inspire, & heal. Using this creative alchemy, her aim is to channel & honor the divinity within to restore our connection to the sacred world that surrounds the macrocosmic & microcosmic worlds of our celestial bodies.
She began her leatherwork journey when she apprenticed under Joshua Roberts, a fine craftsman of Shamantic Arts n' Crafts. The slowing down & intention weaving throughout the tedious process of working with animal hides feels like the most respectful way she can honor the life these animals have given. It was a natural evolution to begin creating sacred body adornments & power pieces to be worn during ceremonies or rituals of rite of passage. She sees the body as a living altar--upon which it may be adorned & celebrated through wearing 'Power Pieces’ that hold deep mysticism, wisdom, & healing for the temple of our bodies.
““What we find when we reconnect to great memory are not simply elements of the past, but also the core elements of creativity and the spontaneity that is often missing in life. This requires a reimagining of what memory means. When considered as an eternal river—the river of remembering—and when we consider the meaning of ‘remembering’ means to piece it back together, then stepping into this river of memory means becoming inspired, and particularly inspired by the muses. It’s from the word muse that we get the word music, and museum, and we also get musing, as in standing in the river long enough that things begin to spontaneously arise within us and come through us as genuine creative energies, imaginations, entering the flow of life and therefore the world. And in this ancient way of seeing and being, the understanding was that imagination is the deepest power of the human soul. And so when we face a world that is falling apart, often what is needed most is, I call it vertical imagination. That on one hand connects us to the deepest of the deep, the well of memory itself, and on the other hand connects us to the heights of heaven and the great imagination that we’re looking for in order to genuinely piece things back together by the force of creation that involves both the original source from which everything flows and the immediate images and ideas trying to be born into the world. In this old way of understanding, the gift of the muses was the root for the power of speech, so that the poets, the artists, the seers, the philosophers were all servants of, and messengers from, the muses and of course from the mother of the muses Mnemosyne the ancient river of knowledge, the deep well of memory, the ever-flowing source of renewal and rejuvenation in the world. […] The seers, the poets, the artists, the philosphers had to be in Maat, that is to say in Truth, in a condition where the personal truth was connected to the Cosmic Truth, and thus, the artist was in harmony with the Universe. […] Every day is a moment of truth in the world, and by that I mean, a moment in which the ancient river of Mnemosyne tries to enter the world again carrying meaningful memories but also carrying the energy of creation and imagination and it tries to happen through us because the only way these things can enter the world is through those people who are living at a given time. Another old idea is that when the muses sing, they tell of things that used to be, and things that are, and things that are about to be. In other words, they pull us into this flowing river in which the past and the future are connected. And in those moments, we can live in Maat—we can be vessels of the renewing, rejuvenating energy trying to enter the world.””