Unleashing Ourselves :: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

Bare Bones (just the facts, ma’am)

April 1, 2018 through September 30, 2018
Six months unlearning patriarchal training, processing ancestral trauma, unraveling inter-generational wounding, dislodging internalized misogyny and connecting to our Whole Self through body-centered mindfulness practices, guided meditation and journeying, stream-of-conscious writing, creativity exercises, and community
Bi-weekly (every other week) emails with homework, exercises, and practices
Group discussion prompts offered three times per week in our private online space (Facebook)
Thirteen live 90-minute group video calls (on Zoom)
Space limited to 6 women (plus Gwynn) CIS, Transgender and AFAB non-binary all welcome. There are currently 4 spaces available.
$1500 one time payment or $250/month for 6 months (other payment plans also available)

Registration for the 2018 session is now closed. To learn about other programs and circles I offer, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter.

The Meat (the cultural why for this circle)

Who are we today, now, in this moment? How did we come into being? What stories do we hold within that are not consciously known or even our own? What language has been passed down and internalized without our knowing or consent?

When were we taught to turn against our mothers, daughters and sisters? When was our sacred circle broken? When were we evicted from our red tents?

What are our deep origin stories? What flames have we endured through the generations? What ashes will we rise out of?

Our culture encourages us to disconnect from and disregard our feminine lineage and ancestral ways of being and knowing. In fact, the ways of our female ancestors are all but lost to us, erased from tradition and history by patriarchal “victors” and oppressors. We find ourselves in a place of reinventing the wheel and rediscovering how to drive, so to speak. We scramble for all the ways of connecting to our body, to our spirit, to these ancient ways of simply being a wholly (and holy) connected Self.

In this scrambling to connect, we often unearth a yearning to find our community, and to unravel our cultural training that has told us over and over that we cannot trust other women, that women (including our own selves) are evil, manipulative, selfish. We want this deep connection with other women, the kind of connections our ancient grandmothers had, and yet we have so much to unlearn.

We find ourselves wanting to heal the wounds our own mothers passed down to us. The wounding our culture encourages. The wounding that was passed down to them by their mothers, and to them by theirs.

We may find ourselves longing to understand and know the ways of doing and being of our ancient grandmothers, the women who lived in a time when women were revered and not discarded, a time when societies lived in egalitarian ways, a time when connecting to nature and our self was not considered evil, wrong, or dismissed as “woo-woo”. We want to feel their power, their strengths, their daring and understand how, despite all the wounding, they still live within our own being today.

In this yearning and wanting and longing we are able to begin to see the ways our culture has betrayed us, has leashed us and tied us down, has kept us isolated and separated and disconnected from our sisters, our mothers, and our grandmothers throughout history. We may find ourselves feeling frustrated and lost, dis-empowered and deceived, lonely and abandoned. We may not know how to connect to these women, their stories, their power and strength and daring; these women without whom we would not exist; these women who we may never have met and yet live within us in our DNA and cellular memory.

This circle will be a way for us to deeply connect to these women, to begin to heal their wounds and wounding that have been passed down through the generations, for hundreds and thousands of years. As we connect to them, we will also unearth their immense strengths, their innate power, their courageous daring to exist and defy a culture that tried to eradicate them. We will learn their unique and universal stories and knowing and being as they all live within us.

This circle is about connection. Connecting deeply to the women who came before us; looking at our relationships with other women in a new light; developing understanding and empathy for the experiences of the women who came before and for ourselves. It is about learning more about our Self, who we are and how we became her. It is about growth and expansion and understanding. It is about connection, embodied wisdom, and deeply knowing the power and strength of our feminine lineage.

This circle is not a genealogy course. We will not get caught up in a lot of “facts” or specific details. We will rely on developing our intuition to make the connections we each need to make.

This circle is not about “fixing” us. It is not a fix for anything at all. It is about curiosity, gaining personal knowledge, connecting deeply to our own body, mind and spirit, and processing the ancestral and inter-generational trauma that lives within us. It is another possible step in our journey to dislodge our internalized misogyny and tearing down our patriarchal culture. Yes, there will likely be transformation. Yes, my hope is at the end of the circle we will have been changed. Not in the ways the world says we need to be, rather in the ways of connecting to our own Self, our own wisdom, our own voice and our own knowing. That, at the end of our six months together, we will have a deeper trust of our own body, her wisdom, her stories, her knowing; a deeper understanding of our own mind and have some of our subconscious come into our consciousness; a deeper connection to our female ancestors, their love, their softness and sharp edges, their power and strength. And of course, that we will each also continue our journeys of acknowledging, accepting and loving our Whole Self, Shadow and Light, Beautiful and Ugly, Messy and Neat and everything between and beyond.

The Blood (my personal why for this circle)

In my own seeking and yearning and wanting, I have found deep healing and relief as I connect more and more to the women who came before and live within me, those of my blood, those of myth, and those of our cultural history and as I connect more and more to the those who came before me and live within I have also found myself connecting more and more to all aspects of my Self.

I have dug into and examined what some call the “mother wound” (and I call Cultural Relational Trauma or Patriarch Wounding because I find the name “mother wound” to only perpetuate the idea that women are to blame and not the culture we live in). I have seen how our culture has not only betrayed women, but also systematically and intentionally hunted and killed us, both literally and metaphorically.

My professional training in trauma – ancestral, inter-generational and lived experience – deeply informs all of my work. Understanding how the experiences of our ancestors affect us today is an important aspect to our own healing and growth. Also understanding how our culture continues to traumatize us through gas-lighting and feeding of stories of how we are not worthy or deserving of respect, love or even taking up space, is an important part of not only our own personal development, but also as a way to break down and tear apart the oppressive patriarchal culture that we all live in.

My own initial inspiration into this work of unearthing, unraveling and dislodging how our culture has affected my very being, was the birth of my daughter, followed a year later by the death of my mother. These two events completely changed me to my core. I wanted different for my relationship with my daughter than the relationship I had with my own mother. I wanted to heal the wounding my mother had inflicted upon me and to not pass it on to my own daughter. And I wanted to heal my relationship with my mother, to release my anger and bitterness, my feelings of abandonment and betrayal, so that I could feel different, more liberated, no longer bound to the those old stories and patterns.

As we continue in the cultural shift where women speak up and out against our abusers and oppressors, I believe it is vital that we do the deep inner work of healing the wounding we have all experienced due to generations of women complying and being complicit to a culture that hates us.

So, I offer this circle now. So you can begin your own journey of connecting deeply to the women who came before and live within you. So you can also take these steps in unearthing, unraveling and dislodging your own patriarchal training. So you can also feel proud and strong in your woman-ness, however you choose to present that to the world. So you can also be a part of a small community of women who are yearning to do this work too.

The Sinew (all the connecting parts)

We will approach this work of deeply connecting to the women who came before and live within, to their power and strength and daring as it has manifested in us, and healing the wounding and trauma that has been passed down through the generations due to living in a misogynist patriarchal culture, in a multitude of ways.

Our 90-minute group calls. During these calls we will talk about the work we are doing in this circle as we also connect in real time to the other women in the circle. This is a time of witnessing and being witnessed. Of learning and teaching. Of connecting. During each call we will focus on a guided meditation that will connect us to one of our ancestors as she lives within us, practicing the meditation itself and then talking about it afterwards.

The online component on Facebook. In this private group I will offer discussion prompts three times a week for you to dive a little deeper into the work together as a group. This is also a space for you “land” between our calls, to share what is happening in your life, to be witnessed and to witness the other women who have gathered together. This is a space to be seen and heard and to see and hear others.

The bi-weekly homework email. In these emails will be a journaling/stream of conscious writing prompt, a creativity project, and a body connection exercise. These emails will also contain a short essay from me about the work and the themes we are focusing on and are another way for you to dive into this work.

The guiding principles of all my circles. These principles are intended to remind us all how to be witness and hold space, how to not rush in to fix others, how to sit in our own discomfort and with the discomfort of another. The guideline are:

Everything that is shared on our group calls and within our private FB group is confidential. The caveat to this is that I do not own FB and am not able to control how or if they use anything that we share on this platform. Our calls will be on Zoom and will be recorded to share with the other group members who may not have been able to join us that week or for those of us who were able to attend to give a relisten.
We do not give advice unless it is specifically asked for.
We do not compare life experiences – we have all had good and not so good things happen to us and we are all wounded by these experiences.

You can learn more about these guidelines by watching this I created for a previous circle I have guided and facilitated:

Our Itinerary

The inspiration for the outline of this circle is drawn from a guided meditation by Maureen Murdock in her book The Heroine’s Journey Workbook. In this meditation we connect to and then gather and pass on the gifts of our ancestors: our mother, our grandmother, our great-grandmother, a 300-500 year old ancestor, 1500-3000-year old ancestor and a 6000-year old ancestor. The general outline of our six months together is:

Circle Connection: Getting to know each other and our Self (1 week)
Specific woundings: Defining Ancestral & Inter-generational traumas and Internalized Misogyny (1 week)
Family history: Exploring our family of origin (2 weeks)
The power of words: Examining our inter-generational language (2 weeks)
Unearthing & Embracing our Ancestors: Connecting to the women who came before and live within us (9 weeks)
Nourish & Replenish: Self Care Break (1 week)
Receiving Our Gifts: Connecting to, embracing, & internalizing the strengths of the women who came before and live within (9 weeks)
Integration and Release: Connecting and settling into the women we are today (1 week)

What past circle members have to say

The topics with which Gwynn works are difficult, but she shines a light on them, reminds you to take care of yourself, and leads you through the rough patches with grace, making your journey one of profound learning about who you essentially are at your core.

Being part of your circles has provided me with a fantastic support system and safe place to deal with the tough shit. {Thank you!}

Gwynn Raimondi has helped me face the challenging, neglected, raw & wounded parts of myself with tenderness & steadfastness. She has helped me recommit, reclaim & recharge the feminine parts of myself while balancing the gifts of my inner masculine.

[Gwynn] is a guide, a mentor, a cheerleader, a fact finder & a magic maker with a worthy bag of tools & tricks. All this with the feeling that you just sat at the kitchen table with the womenfolk drinking the wisdom of the ancients.

Gwynn leads you to discover parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed, much less know you want to embrace.

I love Gwynn, she is a compassionate and beautiful soul who is doing amazing work. Her writing prompts and videos have helped me to really dig deep, sort out, and heal, both mind, body and spirit.