Kristy Taylor Counselling & Psychotherapy Services

02/11/2022

Gathering The Bones Spring 2022

We are excited to announce our next offering of Gathering The Bones: Skeleton Woman.

This is a tale about the importance of community in relation to creativity and healing, a process that requires a certain courage, ingenuity, and attentiveness. Learning to work with the Life/Death/Life cycle, the essence of creativity, teaches us about the stages of creative action- animation, development, decline and reanimation. Being in vital relation to our own imagination, to others, and within community, we discover creativity, not only as a solitary act, but also one that restores, inspires, and deepens our capacity for connection and well-being.

Like Spring, preparing for the great revelation of new growth, we too find ourselves longing for renewal in these difficult times where hope is so often buried in indifference, short sightedness, and disconnection.

Please join us for six Thursday evenings beginning March 24 through April 28th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM (CST) on Zoom. Link to register in comments below.

With anticipation and warmth,
Kristy and Debbie
Living Story Project

Image: Skeleton Woman by Jeanie Tomanek
https://www.jeanietomanek.com/

04/30/2021

Mothering ourselves asks us to take time to reflect, to rest, to hold close what nourishes. In these spaces we may hear our own voice, follow our own call, and listen to one another. Please join us as we explore Mothering Ourselves: Trusting Our Inner Truth – Sunday, May 16th from 1:00PM – 4:00PM (CST).

Link to register:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/mothering-ourselves-trusting-our-inner-truth-tickets-152396984483

LSP 🌱

Artwork: The Girl Who Likes A Ribbon by Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi

04/30/2021

Exploring, nurturing, and celebrating our Inner Mother encourage us to embrace with unconditional love who we are in this moment. It involves acceptance of what has often been maligned in culture, dismissed by systems, redesigned by industry. We are not to be “improved” by market standards of performance and beauty; deemed "acceptable" because we meet some future goal defined by commercial targets. We are not broken. We do not need fixing. Within, we have the resources,strength, insight, and intuition to call our name, to discern our gift, to tell our truth, and find our path.

Please join us as we harvest the wisdom of the Inner Mother through story, movement, and conversation. As always, we track and trust the heart of the matter.

This is a by-donation event. Link to register below:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/mothering-ourselves-trusting-our-inner-truth-tickets-152396984483

LSP 🌱

Photograph by Elisabeth Waldman

04/05/2021

When we are in a period of change, it is important to pay attention to both external and internal landscapes.

In terms of the pandemic, external landscapes have been defined in a variety of ways contingent on policy, procedure, and daily briefings, often beyond our control: Social distancing, lockdowns, re-openings, surges, variants, supersites, testing sites, bubbles, pods, and quarantine.

The internal landscape, while affected by what happens externally, need not be entirely defined within its terms. The internal landscape is older than this pandemic. It is multi-dimensional and multi-layered – rich with all the experiences of a lifetime. It is built by a plethora of resources, including the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual aspects of one’s being and becoming.

When in transition, we must draw from that continuum. It is where growth is found.

We are not interested in a “new normal.” We are interested in the dynamic interplay between external and internal forces that we manage, both individually and communally, to encourage ground, balance, and creative choice.

Please join us for Toad, Transition, and Transformation on April 22nd, 202l from 7:00PM - 9:00PM (cst) as we dig deeper into this discussion.

Link to register in comments.

Warmly,
LSP 🌱

01/08/2021

12/30/2020

"Creativity is one of those intimidating words, like artist, musician, writer, and so on, which has been co-opted to mean something rarefied and unreachable. We think of ourselves as being 'a creative type' or not, as if it were a quality bestowed on the chosen few. But if we decolonize the word and take it back to its true origins, we find the Latin root crescere, a word which means to come forth, spring up, grow, thrive, swell. Like the crescent moon, creativity is the living impulse in each of us which continually begins again" (Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa Turner).

Our Great Cosmic Mother is who we turn to when recovering, discovering, and deepening this living creative impulse. To learn more and to register: https://greatcosmicmother.eventbrite.

12/11/2020

“The Great Mother in Her many aspects—maiden, raging warrior, benevolent mother, death-dealing and all-wise crone, unknowable and ultimate wyrd—is now powerfully reemerging and rising again in human consciousness … Isis, Mawu-Lisa, Demeter, Gaia, Shakit, Dakinis, Shekhinah, Astarte, Ishtar, Rhea, Freya, Nerthus, Brigid, Danu—call Her what you may—has been with us from the beginning and awaits us now.” The Great Cosmic Mother, Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor

The Great Mother is the wine of life, the mother of all living things. She is the green Earth, the mysteries of the waters. She is the creative force, the primogenitor of wave, tide, and wind.

While we commonly associate Mother to Child, she is not limited to the convention of childbirth, and childrearing. In her saltwater cauldron, gestates idea, art, music, dance, invention in the broadest sense - Life. She is maker, illuminator, muse. She is who we can turn to in time of need, as, in her light, she is compassionate, merciful, and loving. She is an advocate of connection, fusion, and relationship to Self, others, and the creative process within.

Please joins us as we explore the creative energies embodied in the Mother archetype, what happens to our creative process when those energies feel as though they have been extinguished, and how, in these times, we may reignite our creative Self.

This full-day workshop will be held on Saturday, February13th, from 9:30AM- 4:30PM on Zoom - both on and off-line. Participants can expect a reading of The Little Match Girl, small and large group discussion, visualization, and personal reflection through writing, representing, and Soul Collage©. Participants will be given non-screen time to complete their Soul Collage©. Preliminary instructions and materials for the Soul Collage© process will be forthcoming in the Welcome Note to participants in good time for the day’s event.

Mother workshop collaborative guests:

Odette Heyn C.M. Red with Grace Choreography: Stephanie Ballard

Marci Wenn, LCSW-R, Soul Collage© Facilitator

This workshop is open to anyone who wishes to engage in this conversation.

https://greatcosmicmother.eventbrite.ca

This event presented by LIVING STORY PROJECT:
Living Story Project is an initiative focused on storytelling to foster connection, creativity, and community.

Stories allow us to better understand what is often incomplete, untold, or hidden in prevailing mainstream narratives. Using an array of oral and written storytelling traditions from across the globe, Living Story Project creates an inclusive space for interactive and dynamic conversations about issues that matter.
While Living Story Project’s theme-based events centre around specific topics regarding the human experience, it is the vitality of the conversations among participants that generate community-learning and bring these topics to life. The objective of Living Story Project is to connect people to themselves, to one another, to time, and to place.

LSP 🌱

Artwork by Jeanie Tomanek, https://www.jeanietomanek.com/

Design and communications by Krishna Lalbiharie, krishna.lalbiharie@gmail.com

11/16/2020

11/01/2020

When so much seems beyond our control, we can feel fearful, helpless, and sometimes even hopeless.

The Handless Maiden gives us opportunity to explore not only loss, but also courage, choice, power, and purpose.

Please join us on Sunday November 15th, from 7:00PM - 10:00PM as we explore this story and engage in meaningful conversation.

https://handlessmaiden.eventbrite.ca

Artwork: Silver Hands (Handless Maiden), by Jeanie Tomanek

10/13/2020

Excited to share Living Story Project's next storytelling event: THE HANDLESS MAIDEN: INITIATION IN THE UNDERGROUND FOREST, Sunday, November 15th, 2020 at 7PM.

Please see poster and Eventbrite link below for all information, including how to register.

Please joins us as we explore the symbolic journey of the Handless Maiden.

This is a profound story about power, identity, and the courage to take one's life into one's own hands to reclaim that which has been wrongfully taken.

The tale is a gruesome one. It involves not only the severing of the Maiden's hands, but also the loss of the only world she has ever known. And yet, in travelling with the Handless Maiden and watching her suffer this dismemberment, we discover the depth of her insight, the range of her resources, the strength of her spirit, and the path that ultimately leads to re-growth.

In this workshop, we explore themes of wandering, endurance, and transformation. The quest within The Handless Maiden provides both strategies and a map for how we, too, might encounter and triumph over our own psychic severing. Undertaking this journey encourages us to access our creative center, and realize our most authentic Self.

This three-hour New Moon workshop will be held on Sunday November 15th, from 7:00PM-10:00PM on Zoom. Participants can expect small and large group discussion, visualization, and personal reflection through writing and representing.

https://handlessmaiden.eventbrite.ca

This workshop is open to anyone who wishes to engage in this conversation.