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A Vision Quest for Women

Is it timely and appropriate for you to honor the inner part of you that is calling for your attention? If you answer yes to any of the following questions, put yourself on Decision Road and follow the Vision Quest Rite of Passage.

Are you unsure in which direction your life is heading?

Do you want to connect with a powerful and meaningful way to understand yourself?

Have you been torn away from a part of your life that you are not ready to leave?

Do you want a structure that will support and guide you in working through your important feelings?

Do you feel ready to leave behind a life that no longer works for you?

Do you yearn for a way to honorably complete and close up a part of your life?

Are you poised on the threshold of beginning something new in your life?

Do you want to find a way to bring together all the parts of yourself to fully embrace the new beginnings in your life?

Do you feel adrift and without internal guidance?

Do you want sacred guidance that will direct you in beginning a journey to meet and converse with the guides in your life?

Do you want to be of service to your community?

Do you feel stirrings to engage in a process that will help you articulate and integrate your vision and role in your community?

Do you feel lost and have no vision or is your vision unclear?

Do you feel called to begin your own "adventure of the hero" to call for your vision?

Do you have a recognition - that you just feel but may not be able to articulate - that it is your time to take your Sacred Journey?

This is a program that assists you in preparing, planning, and carrying out a Vision Quest - the ancient ritual of bringing forth your vision into the world. You will be guided in identifying your quest, picking your place of questing, the preparatory work before the quest and integrating the experience after the quest.

The program is specially designed to be manageable within your normal routine.

Is A Vision Quest for Me?

A Vision Quest is for anyone in transition who wants to complete their old life and get ready to step into their new life.

You might find a Vision Quest calling to you if…

• You are unsure in which direction your life is heading. A Vision Quest will connect you with a powerful and meaningful way to understand yourself.

• You have been torn away from a part of your life that you are not ready to leave. A Vision Quest will offer you a structure to work through your important feelings.

• You are ready to leave behind a life design that no longer works for you. A Vision Quest will show you a way to honorably complete and close up that part of your life.

• You are poised on the threshold of beginning something new in your life. A Vision Quest will assist you in bringing together all the parts of yourself to fully embrace the beginning.

• You feel adrift and without internal guidance. A Vision Quest will direct you in beginning a journey to meet and converse with your guides in life.

• You want to be of service to your community. A Vision Quest will show you how to engage in a process that will help you articulate and integrate your vision and new role in your community.

• You have no vision or your vision is unclear. A Vision Quest will take you on your own "adventure of the hero" to call for your vision.

Invitation

I would like to extend to you a personal invitation to join a unique and exciting experience.

Just by your being here to read this, I know that you are concerned about your quality of life and how you can make a contribution to yourself, your family and your community. Because you have great respect for your own personal growth and being your best, a Vision Quest may be an appropriate step for you to take at this time.

A Vision Quest is about creating your own journey to bring yourself forth. In a way, embarking on a Vision Quest is very much like the journey of pregnancy and birth.

As the vessel for a new life in pregnancy, you embark upon a journey full of unknowns with grand expectations and fears to meet and pass through. Just as in pregnancy, in a Vision Quest you will prepare to leave behind the life you have known so far and get ready for the Threshold Experience of bringing forth your new manifestation. The Threshold Experience of a Vision Quest is much like that of a birth - it is powerful and mysterious and just have to trust the process. The Incorporation phase of a Vision Quest supports and honors you as the hero of your own adventure as you step into your new life.

Rites of Passage

What is a Vision Quest?

A Vision Quest is a traditional rite of passage that is undertaken when one leaves an old phase of life and passes into a new phase of life. In the A Vision Quest for Women you will be guided through all phases of a Vision Quest and prepared to take your own "adventure of the hero" and to call for your vision.

A Vision Quest is a ritualized, structured process that one consciously engages in to end one life phase and step into a new life status. Rites of passage are incorporated in community life as a vehicle for making meaningful and important life’s transitions. They are used to mark such events as the onset of puberty, menarche, marriage, divorce and mid-life.

Rites of passage are a means that the community uses to officially recognize the leaving behind of an old phase of life and the embarking on a new role and function in the community. You do not undertake a Vision Quest to solve a problem or to get something fixed in your life. You undertake a Vision Quest to honor your transition and to give meaning to your life changes.

A Vision Quest Is Your Own Journey

A Vision Quest is an internal experience reflected in your external quest that mirrors your process of finding and accepting the meaning in your life changes. It is part of your declaration to your community that you choose to become a vital force in your community in your new life status. It is a means of anchoring your own experience of yourself as effective, responsible, resilient, courageous and enduring. It is your vehicle for setting in motion your own processes for self-renewal and healing.

A Vision Quest is a journey undertaken to meet and consciously integrate your own mysteries and awareness. It is your personal encounter with your fears, weaknesses and uncertainties. Through this encounter you reveal to yourself your insights, wisdom and light.

Your Vision Quest Midwife

A Vision Quest is undertaken with an experienced Vision Quest Midwife. One who walks along side of you taking you through the steps of preparation and severance; safeguarding the process and watching over you to see that you are adequately prepared. As your Vision Quest Midwife, I oversee your Preparation and Severance phase and make sure that you prepare yourself for your Threshold Experience.

Once you pass through the preparation and severance phase and are ready to go call for your vision, I'll leave you at the threshold - at the door of your own birth as you take your mysterious journey to yourself.

When you return from the threshold, I'll meet you again and take you through the all-important process of debriefing. In calling for your vision, you will have met yourself in your new life status and as you return to your community you take on a new role in that community. Not only do you step back into your community in a new role but also you return with the powerful and beneficial gift of your vision.

In the Incorporation phase, I support and anchor you in understanding your journey and bringing your vision home and beginning your new relationship with it. I will assist as you integrate your quest experience, articulate your new role in the community, gain understanding of your new self and to incorporate your vision into the world so that "your people may live" a new life.

My Story

After my last child was born when I was 34 years old, I embarked on an intensive healer’s journey that lasted almost until I turned 50. I explored the more esoteric realms of healing. I experienced the depths of woman’s spirituality under the guidance of Susun Weed. I deepend my Native American roots by being initiated into the Seneca Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge by the Clan Grandmother Twylah Nitsch. And I traveled into unknown mystical / multidimensional territories with a long apprenticeship in Cherokee mysticism.

When I completed that journey, I brought back with me an understanding of our multidimensional nature and the value of honoring and interacting with all the aspects of ourselves. I merged these right brain experiences with my left brain training in psychology and found I had discovered the potency of nature centered therapy and environmental psychology, and the power of rites of passage.

Learning to manage your moods and energy has many aspects.

Yes, you have clear up fundamental physical imbalances and understand how to organize your day and regulate your basic physiology. You also have to understand what your emotions are telling you and how your mind is guiding you through your life. At some point in your healing journey you will most likely find that in order to be truly healthy you “must go off in search of the one life you can call your own” – the place where “out deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meets”.

There will be times in your healing and in your process of emerging as your true self when you will feel that it is necessary to take a more intuitive, symbolic healing path. A Vision Quest is a time honored rite of passage that is designed to reconnect you with the soul of yourself.

Rites of passage are initiations incorporated in community life as a vehicle for making meaningful and important life’s transitions. They are used to mark such events as the onset of puberty, menarche, marriage, divorce and mid-life.

Rites of passage are a means that the community uses to officially recognize the leaving behind of an old phase of life and the embarking on a new role and function in the community. A rite of passage honors your transition and gives meaning to your life changes. There are many initiations you will be asked to undergo as you pass through the different stages of your life.

By traveling deep within yourself, you will connect with your call to embark upon your next initiation. Each initiation offers you the opportunity to grow in grace, wisdom and courage. Each gateway to the depths of yourself requires focused, guided, hard personal work in order to move to the threshold of change.

Undertaking A Vision Quest

What Does a Vision Quest Look Like?

This is a feminine contemporized version of the traditional Vision Quest. It is an exploration that occurs over a 6 month (for some longer) period. I act as your initiatory midwife guiding you through this Rite of Passage. Our meetings throughout the process take place by phone and except for the Threshold Experience (a 24 - 72 hour or more journey into nature) you take your Vision Quest from your own home base.

Your Personal Vision Quest starts with two one hour sessions each month for the first 4 months to move through the Preparation and Severance phase and prepare for your Threshold Experience.

In the 5th month, you will embark on your own planned Threshold Experience with appropriate backup and support. We will meet once before you leave for your Threshold Experience and again as soon as possible after you return from your Threshold Experience.

In the 6th month, we will meet in two one hour sessions to complete the Incorporation process.

Throughout your Vision Quest process you will have unlimited e-mail and phone follow up and guidance.

Instructional Information

During the course of your Vision Quest additional information may enhance your journey and help familiarize you with various aspects of rites of passage pertinent to your personal journey.  At the beginning of your Vision Quest you will intuitively chose 3 instructional topics below to learn more about.

We will explore these topics as needed in several ways: they may be woven into our personal sessions; I may include additional information about these topics outside of our sessions; or we may schedule an additional session to explore the topic.

These Instructional Sessions will include work in some of the following areas depending on your need, desire and journey:   

• Ritual work
• Ceremonial work  
• Shield making  
• Power objects  
• Seven directions work 
• Medicine wheel work 
• Selective appropriate Seneca Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge work
• Earth Energy charts
• Pathway of peace charts
• Birth colors 
• Cycles of truth 
• Sensitivity charts 
• Stone reading  
• Entering into the silence  
• Dream charts

Where, When and How

Preparation and Severance

The first four months are for preparations and severance. I'll be there to guide you every step of the way as you design and engage in personal rituals and routines that will complete this portion of your life and get you ready for stepping into the next phase of your life.

In addition to your personal rituals and routines, you will engage in two structured Preparation and Severance rituals. These structured ceremonies/rituals have some specific parameters that need to be followed to allow for the most significant interaction between yourself and the procedure. Beyond the basic structure, you will be designing these ceremonies and rituals, too. I will help you in choosing your design.

The first Preparation and Severance ceremony is called a DeathLodge. This is a symbolic completion and saying good bye ceremony that occurs sometime in the second or third month. For this ceremony you will say your good-byes to everything in your life up to this point - those thing which you wish to leave behind and those things which you wish to take with your in the next phase of your life. You can say good-bye either literally or figuratively. This ceremony usually takes place outside in some safe place and lasts one hour to several hours. Some may engage in this practice several times over a period of weeks. Before you enter your DeathLodge ceremony I must ensure that you are as well prepared as possible and give you the OK to proceed. We'll have a de-briefing session within a day or two - no longer - after the DeathLodge.

The second Preparation and Severance ceremony is the Medicine Walk. This walk occurs one month before your Threshold Experience. The walk takes place from sunrise to sunset in a safe place outside in nature. You take food and drink with you for the day and take an unstructured walk being mindful of symbolic messages and guidance pertinent to what you will be seeking in your Threshold Experience. We'll work together to plan and prepare you for this Medicine Walk. Once again, before you undertake your Medicine Walk, I must give you the OK to ensure that you are prepared. And again, we'll have a de-briefing session as soon as possible after the Medicine Walk. 

During the 4 month Preparation and Severance phase, I help you prepare for each of these rituals/ ceremonies and design your personal activities that you will be doing during each of these ceremonies. I also help you choose the place in which you will do each of these ceremonies and help you set up a buddy safety system based on a set of criteria we'll review.  Normally, women don't travel too far from their home to do these ceremonies but of course you can if you wish to.

Threshold

In the fifth, month you will undertake your Threshold Experience. This is what many people think of as the Vision Quest. It is the nature based experience of calling for your vision. The Threshold Experience is at least 24 full hours and up to 72 hours wherein you are alone in a safe nature based area. Some women camp outside and some women go to a place where they will have shelter (such as a cabin, hotel, Inn, friend's house) which acts as their basecamp. During your Threshold Experience, you are alone in nature and will carry out the activities, rituals and ceremonies that you will have designed for this time.

At some point in your Threshold Experience, you will begin your ritual of calling for your Vision. This usually lasts from sunset to sunrise. Some women stay awake through the night and other choose to sleep. Fasting is not required and generally, I don't recommend it for women unless you have a real desire to fast. I find that women have very little need for that kind of artrificial prompt to connect to their intuitive wisdom.

Some women chose to travel to areas away from their home to do their Threshold Experience.

During your Preparation and Severance phase, I will help you prepare for your Threshold Experience and give you equipment lists, and safty precautions, etc. Before you embark on your Threshold Experience I must give you the OK to ensure that you are as well prepared as possible. We'll have a de-briefing session as soon as possible (within a day or two) after the your return home from your Threshold Experience.

Incorporation  

Following your Threshold Experience and for the month after is your Incorporation Phase of the Vision Quest in which you will integrate your Vision Quest, particularly your Threshold Experience.

It is during this time that you articulate the vision that you received and how you will bring it into your daily life. This is actually the most important phase of your Vision Quest. Many people have visions but few bring their visions into the world. During this time, we'll work together in our sessions to help you re-incorporate into daily life.

At the end of this sixth month, our work together with your Vision Quest officially comes to a close. For you, the Vision Quest energy and experience will continue for another year. On the anniversary of your Threshold Experience you will revisit your power place of your Threshold Experience (either literally or figuratively) and officially close your Vision Quest.

Stepping Out On Your Own

This is the basic structure of the process. It methodically sets up protochols sufficient to maintain the robustness of the rite of passage and also allows flexibility for your personal preferences to be honored and for your personal journey to take place.

Even though you are working with a Vision Quest Midwife, a Vision Quest is a process that you do by yourself under your own power and guidance. As you step out of your purpose circle and begin your "adventure of the hero" you leave behind your old corporal body and venture into the wilderness with your spirit body leading the way. Along the way, you will begin to see with new eyes. As you travel through the interface between nature and human you may be "blinded" by the extraordinary, gifted with visitations and presences, asked to accept your own personal medicine or tricked by the ordinary.

Giving Your Consent

When you feel ready to answer the call that you have been hearing, I urge you to go ahead -trust those feelings - and step into your journey.

This feminine contemporized Vision Quest allows for a great deal of individualization and personalization. You can bring your own traditions, culture and experiences to play throughout the passage.

If you feel that a Vision Quest is right for you now or just have questions about a Vision Quest don’t hesitate to set up a time with me to talk about what is happening for you.

How will you know you are being called to a sacred journey?

Joseph Campbell notes four experiential qualities that define the call:

The call feels like a compelling need not an escape from responsibilities. You have a sense that something is there for you to find and that the truth of your life depends on finding it.

It is a strange thing that somehow feels “profoundly familiar”. You recognize it as yours even though you don’t know anything about it and couldn’t explain it if you did.

You “know” that one part of your life is over with.

You didn’t expect it and you don’t want it but you know that you are being pulled into it by some unseen dynamic.

If you feel the desire to work with an initiatory midwife as you embark on your sacred journey you can give me a call at 434-263-4996 or email me at maryann@evenstaronline.com to set up a time to talk about the gateway you are entering and to begin your journey.

Even as your heart quickens at the opportunity to embark on your own Vision Quest your head may immediately give you the reasons why it can not happen, I challenge you to continue taking a leap of faith with each step in your Vision Quest. A Vision Quest is not a rational, understandable journey. It is a journey of your heart. Only by listening to your heart can you be brave and courageous enough to take the journey. Allow your heart to lead the way and take each step, even though, you can not see the next step.

If this is the time for you to take your Sacred Journey and this is the place to do it in, I welcome you into the adventure of your journey.

Individual Vision Quest

A Vision Quest can be a deeply personal and private experience. You may find a confidential intimate relationship with your Vision Quest Midwife a more profound catalyst for discovery. If you are being called to face the depths of your own fears and your own multidimensional presence you may need or want a private venue. An individual Vision Quest taken with a Vision Quest Midwife affords you the opportunity to experience the exquisite splendor of meeting heart to heart with only yourself in your many varied forms.

The fee for an individual Vision Quest is $1625 and includes 12 individual sessions and work with the Instructional Topics over a 6 month period . All sessions are telephone sessions unless you want to do the sessions in person at the Evenstar Mood and Wellness Center. Payment can be made in up to 5 installments but must be paid in full before you take your Threshold. All installment payments are automatic payments by credit card or checking account on file.

No refunds are given for the Vision Quest payment. Once you are in it, you are in it. All agreed upon payment arrangements are expected to be completed according to our agreements. If for some reason you fail to complete your Vision Quest your payments will be processed as agreed and you will have one year from the time you fell out of contact in which to complete the journey with me in this rite of passage structure.

Some women chose to extend the time frame to better meet their individual needs and the fee is adjusted accordingly.

To register for an individual Vision Quest call me at 434-263-4996 or e-mail at maryann@evenstaronline.com

A Vision Quest for Women Group

Embarking on a group Vision Quest with other women brings a special energy and dynamic to the adventure. The depth of the connections in such a group can be a powerful catalyst for untold miracles. A group of women can employ models of questing that are especially appropriate for women.

• A Vision Quest for Women Group starts with a personalized individual session. The Group will meet in 55 minute sessions 3 times each month for the first 3 months to move through the Preparation and Severance Phase and prepare for the Threshold Experience.
• Then each group member will embark on her own planned Threshold Experience in the 4th month.
• Each woman's Threshold Experience is undertaken independently with appropriate back up and support. Group members may arrange within the group to embark on a group Threshold Experience. Part of the preparation is designing and planning your Threshold Experience with experienced guidance.
• In the 6th month, the A Vision Quest for Women Group will meet for three 55 minute sessions to complete the Incorporation process.
• Each member of A Vision Quest for Women will meet with me individually four times. Once before the group sessions begin. Once during the Severance Phase. Again as soon as possible upon return from her Threshold Experience. And once again for final Debriefing and Incorporation.
• All sessions are telephone sessions. The group is kept small (5-8 members) so that each woman has the opportunity to be thoroughly prepared and supported in her quest.
• The fee is $695 for each participant. Includes 12 group and 4 individual sessions over 6 months. Payments can be arranged.

Energetic and Spiritual Growth and Evolution
Contemporized Rites of Passage for Women

To register for either Vision Quest for Women program call me at 434-263-4996
or e-mail at maryann@evenstaronline.com 

What's happening for you and how can I help?
No obligation.
Call 434-263-4996 or email to schedule yours.

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