Phases | Girls’ Groups

Meet your group leader -

Fae Hagerty

My story, thus far -

I grew up west of the Oregon Coast Range, just a few miles from the ocean; raised by forests and streams, as much as by the farmer folk I was born to. Seeds of curiosity and love for humans and the greater natural world found space to sprout in my early adulthood just to the east of those Coast Range hills I love so much. In my late 20s, I travelled out across the Cascades into the deserts and mountains of the Great Basin, where I encountered what it means to live in relationship with an animate world, filled with kin of all sorts, and to engage in ceremony. Returning from my desert quest, to the verdant valleys and hills of Western Oregon, I carried home with me a growing sense of the gifts I carry and the work I am here to do. I hold deep gratitude for all of the teachers, human and otherwise, I’ve encountered along the way.

My experience -

My professional work has largely been in the field - & stream, garden, forest, etc! - of outdoor education. I also have experience in wilderness therapy & rites of passage, early-childhood education, school behavior intervention, and small-scale organic vegetable farming. Along the way, I have gained knowledge and practice in holding an effective container, sharing knowledge in accessible and engaging ways, facilitating curiosity and connection with nature, and supporting growth through healthy conflict. My personal pursuits include traditional crafts, cooking, folk herbalism, writing, gardening, ceremony & ritual, animal husbandry, animal processing, backpacking, and more recently learning to play music and catch songs; I enjoy bringing these pursuits into my professional work wherever possible.

I have many years of experience working with younger children, and have felt increasingly called to support their healthy development through the transition into adolescence. I have just been on a year-long journey of mentorship with Johannah Reimer of Wakeful Nature, alongside other women called to the work of becoming skilled ‘aunties’ in their communities. Together, we have gone back to tend our ancestry and fill in gaps from our own childhood/adolescence, gained frameworks for understanding soul-centric human development with its various gifts and tasks, and moved to the weaving of nests in which to hold girls as they make their journeys into adolescence. This work has helped to marry my experience working with children to my own practices of craft and being in circle and ceremony with other women as we move to find our own ways in these ancient practices.

My aspirations for this project -

An important central thread in my story has been to seek, reclaim, feed, and adapt the Old Ways of being human upon the earth. What began as a reaction to the deep well of grief that opened in my adolescence, has grown into purpose and mission: to meet the deep cultural and environmental poverty we’ve inherited with love, hope, and determination to shift it for those who will come after us and those who came before. I believe our collective hope lies in learning to weave traditional wisdom into our modern context and in remembering how to grow ourselves into initiated adults, all in service to life on Earth. And, we can have fun doing it!

The gifts of women and girls are abundant and beautiful, and I wish for us to understand, tend, and celebrate them more fully. I feel delighted and honored to bring what I’m learning to our community by creating a space for girls* to come together in circle to learn, grow, and become more rooted. I hope you’ll join me!

*a note on gender: at this time, I am crafting the container primarily to support female-bodied children identifying as girls (aka cis-gendered girls), as it is a specific experience that I share and feel equipped to hold; however, I want all children to feel valued and have access to mentorship and belonging of this kind! I am open to further discussion about ways to include genderqueer children and/or support affinity spaces to hold their unique experiences.