THE ARCHIVES OF BELONGING
January 21–March 25 | Thursdays, 5–7pm CT | Virtual | Limited to 8
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.
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 — woven from 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.
This is for you if —
You sense that your lineage carries stories you’re curious to meet in the company of others.
You’re drawn to ancestral work, contemplative practice, and intimate community, and you’ve been longing for a place where all three meet.
You know that who you are and are becoming is more than the story you were handed.
You trust that being witnessed can be its own kind of healing, and you want to offer that witness to others.
You sense that the creative process may know something your thinking mind doesn’t yet.
You’re ready to stay with something long enough to meet what lives beneath the surface: ten Thursday evenings, from the heart of Winter into Spring.
OUR JOURNEY TOGETHER
WEEK 1 — WELCOME
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
BloodWe 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
BoneWhat 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
SoulWhat 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, creatives, writers, or poets, living or dead.
WEEKS 8 & 9
SpiritWhat 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 — THE LIVING ARCHIVE
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.
WHAT MAY EMERGE
Over these ten weeks, you may find:
A deeper sense of belonging to your lineage, your story, and yourself
Discernment about what is yours to set down, and what wants to live on through you
Greater capacity to receive the gifts that have come down to you
A felt coherence of heart, body, and creative spirit
Self-compassion that grows quietly through making and witness
The strength of being witnessed whole, and of witnessing others that way
A way of living more fully from what your heart already knows
THE SHAPE OF THE CIRCLE
The Archives of Belonging gathers on Thursday evenings, 5–7pm Central Time, for ten weeks, from January 21 through March 25, 2027.
We begin with an Opening on January 21. We close on March 25, when Spring is fully here.
The circle holds eight people. That smallness is the point.
Dates: January 21–March 25, 2027
When: Thursdays, 5–7pm Central
Where: Virtual
Circle: 8 people
Length: 10 weeks
THE EXCHANGE
Choose your exchange
The exchange runs on trust. I trust you to choose what's true for you — for your own sake, for the work, and for the integrity of the radical placemaking and community we are building together.
$1,200
Supports the full weight of this work — the building, the holding, the ongoing formation — so soulstudiolab can keep bringing work like this into the world.
$1,000
Meets the true value of the work — ten weeks of facilitated practice inside an intimate, witnessed container.
$800
This is the floor — the entry that keeps this work sustainable to build and hold.
A $200 deposit holds your place in the circle and is applied toward the exchange you’ve chosen. The balance may be settled in full or in a couple of payments, whatever is kind to your life, by January 14.
A NOTE ON COMMITMENT
So everything is clear as you step through:
Your $200 deposit holds your place in the circle. It isn’t refundable, but if your season shifts, it can travel with you to the next circle offered.
If you step back on or before January 14, any balance you’ve paid is refunded in full.
If you step back after January 14, payments aren’t refunded. Instead, everything you’ve paid can travel with you to the next circle offered.
A transfer happens once, to the next circle offered only. It doesn’t carry forward beyond that.
Your Host,
Sherri Taylor
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 draws from 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.
ROOTS OF THE PRACTICE
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.
THE CIRCLE OPENS
Enrollment discernment
Registration is itself a small act of discernment. The reflection is a space to listen for whether this is your season, a whole-body yes or a whole-body not yet. Both are honest answers, and both are celebrated.
After your yes: I’ll send you a personal welcome, along with a $200 deposit invoice to hold your place. Once your deposit is in, your seat in the circle is sealed. The balance can be settled in full or in a couple of payments, whatever is kind to your life, with everything complete by January 14, before we gather.
After your not yet: Waiting isn’t missing. I’ll hold the thread for you, and when the next circle opens, you’ll be the first to know.