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THE ARCHIVES OF BELONGING

TAKE ME TO REGISTER

Enrollment is open now through December 21, 2026 or when the circle is full.

Who are you?

Not your resume. Not your role. Not the story you've been handed about your losses and your lineage.

Who are you — by blood, by bone, by soul, by spirit?

The Archives of Belonging is an invitation into the story that is larger than you.

Expansive view of the Grand Canyon with layered red and brown rock formations under a clear sky.

THE OFFERING

The Archives of Belonging is a sacred container for ancestral story-ing, witness, and becoming.

We move through four ancestral cycles — Blood, Bone, Soul, Spirit — tending both the wounds and the gifts of what was handed down, restoring the bonds of kinship with our ancestors in all their forms, and building a living archive of story, image, praise, and grief that belongs to all of us.

This is not therapy. It is not a workshop. It is a communal practice of becoming — rooted in Guided Autobiography, ancestral wisdom, creative expression, and contemplative tradition — grounded in the understanding that we come into ourselves in community, not in isolation.

We gather virtually, in an intimate group limited to eight. We tell our stories in whatever form they ask for: writing, collage, image, voice, and every kind of making. We share our stories whole. We witness each other without fixing. We story our way home.

Close-up image of tree rings on a wooden surface.
Close-up image of tree rings on a wooden surface.
Close-up of a cluster of shiny, brown, irregularly shaped grains or particles with some golden highlights, creating a textured surface.

Our Journey Together

WEEK 1

Long ago, seekers set out in small boats without oars, trusting the current and steering by a star. What might it mean to begin that way, carrying our ancestors with us while holding lightly the old stories we have been told about who we are?

In our Opening, the circle forms. We meet one another, and we meet the ancestors who travel with us. We name the narratives we are ready to leave on the far shore and walk through the shape of the journey ahead: four cycles, each opening and deepening. Then we push off together with a first small practice, the first page of each of our archives.

WEEKS 2 & 3

A minimalist line drawing of a plant or tree with three branches, rooted in a seed or bulb shape, stylized in dark red color, illustrating blood. 
Blood

We turn toward what has lived at the edge of our vision: the gifts and the weight that came down the bloodline together. We honor the oldest way lineage has always traveled, which is the voice.

WEEKS 4 & 5

Radar screen with concentric circles and a sweeping line, illustrating bone 
Bone

What story does your body tell? Its strength and its scars, its seasons of illness and recovery, the way it has carried you to this day. Bone begins with the physical body you live in now, and the deep time held in its structure.

WEEKS 6 & 7

A Venn diagram with two overlapping circles, illustrating the concept of soul
A Venn diagram with two overlapping circles, illustrating the concept of soul 
Soul

What have been the turning points of your soul’s path. We look at the forks we took, the roads not taken, and the chosen kin who appeared at the crossroads. These might be beloveds, teachers, writers, or poets, living or dead.

WEEKS 8 & 9

Lines, stars, and an eye in abstract form illustrating spirit 
Spirit

What if your lineage includes the land beneath you, the moon, and the stars whose matter became your bones? Spirit widens the circle to the cosmos, and the long becoming of the universe.

WEEK 10

At our Closing, we gather the archive and celebrate what persists, both what each of us made and what we made together in the field between us. We began by receiving from those who came before; we close by naming what we will carry forward for those yet to come. The circle completes as Spring arrives in full.

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This is for you if —

  • You sense that your lineage holds both wounds and gifts you haven't fully touched.

  • You are drawn to ancestral work, contemplative practice, or sacred community — and you want all three at once.

  • You know that who you are becoming is larger than who you have been told you are.

  • You are ready to stay with something long enough to meet what lives beneath the surface.

Colorful collage with paper in puzzle like shapes over laid across the image of a tiger's face.

Those who take up the whole of their story tend to live more of it.

And then wider —

Sit with your own story long enough, and it stops being only yours. Each cycle opens further out than the last. You find yourself belonging to a family, then to a lineage, then to a people, then to a living world that has been claiming you the whole time.

What is known about this

None of this is novel, and it isn't only mine. There is a long lineage of people who have gathered others to tell the stories of their lives — and who understood that telling is not confined to sentences. Maya Angelou made a life into literature and named the particular agony of a story kept inside. Audre Lorde refused the idea that poetry is a luxury. Christina Baldwin named the storycatcher and brought the circle back as a form. Pat Schneider insisted that everyone is already a writer. Pat B. Allen called art a way of knowing; Shaun McNiff taught a generation to trust the creative process rather than manage it.

So the archives invite making of every kind. Write it, if writing is your way in. Or paint it, stitch it, gather it, sing it, build it from the materials on your table.

Their findings converge, and they converge with the research on life review — on what happens in a person who makes time to let the whole shape of a life come into view. Greater capacity for life, not less of it. Steadier ground. A marked opening in creativity. And what Birren called the developmental exchange: the discovery that hearing another person's story changes your own.

Your Host,
Sherri Taylor

A Black and white photo of a woman with short curly hair, wearing glasses, layered necklaces, earrings, and multiple bracelets. She is outdoors, with out-of-focus trees in the background. She has a calm expression and her hands are clasped in front of her.

I believe in the medicine of story — and in story-ing as a sacred act. Everyone carries an archive. But not every archive has been welcomed, and certain lineages, certain ways of grieving and belonging, have been denied accompaniment and dignity. The Archives of Belonging exists, in part, to make a place where every story is welcome.

What I aspire to bring is not answers. Presence. And the conviction that we come to know ourselves in company — that what we cannot quite see alone can become clear when others hold it with us.

I have been called a minister of imagination, a threshold-ologist, and more than once a wizard. I believe the body knows things before the mind catches up, that play is a serious method, and that some of the holiest moments in a circle arrive as laughter.

This offering is rooted in the Guided Autobiography tradition — a facilitated autobiographical practice developed by gerontologist James Birren — woven together with ancestral wisdom, contemplative practice, and decades of walking others and myself across thresholds of all kinds.

The first cohort is forming.

Enrollment opens Late Fall 2026.

An intimate group — limited to eight. All enrolled participants are welcomed at a group orienting meeting before the cohort opens.