Aurora Circle
A Space for Reflection, Creativity, and Renewal
This is for you, not for your clients.
Many people who work in service to others spend their days holding space, offering care, and responding to the needs of those around them. Aurora offers a rare opportunity to pause and turn that same care and attention inward.
Named for the dawn and emergence, Aurora is a small circle for professional women whose work involves supporting others. It is a safe, generative online space for reflection, creative renewal, and the quiet emergence of parts of yourself that may have been waiting for attention.
Exploring What Wants Creative Expression Through You Right Now
The Aurora Circle draws inspiration from the natural world, particularly the ecotone - the fertile in-between where forest meets meadow, and sea meets land. It is a place both protected and open, dense with life and rich with possibility. Like this transitional landscape, Aurora is an intentional space where you can pause, notice what is emerging within you, and reconnect with your creativity, your body, and your inner life.
Why This Space Matters
For many women in helping professions, the last time they were invited to reflect on how their work shapes them was during supervision or training, spaces focused on clinical skills rather than their inner lives. The Aurora Circle offers something different. It is a space to explore how years of holding space for others have shaped your own being. Here, there is room to celebrate what has grown, honour what has been carried, and restore a deeper sense of wholeness through reflection, creativity, and connection with the natural world.
Women who care for others spend years supporting the pain, complexity, and healing of those around them. Over time, this work shapes us. It asks much of our attention, empathy, and emotional capacity. Often, the parts of ourselves that long for creativity, reflection, and renewal are quietly set aside. At the same time, the weight of the world, its suffering, uncertainty, and heaviness, can seep into our bodies, minds, and hearts.
Few spaces exist where the women who hold so much for others are invited to reflect on how the work itself is shaping them. The Aurora Circle provides that rare space.
In This Circle, You Will Focus On:
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Noticing what shifts when you make space for your own renewal, curiosity, and inner listening, and discovering how creativity, movement, and the natural world can deepen self-understanding.
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Exploring gentle creative practices such as reflective writing, photography, and contemplative art, guided by inspiration from poets, writers, and other artists, to spark new ways of seeing yourself and your life.
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Deepening your relationship with the natural world, discovering what the forests, mountains, oceans, and stars can teach you about your own life, guiding your reflection, inspiring your creativity, and revealing new ways to move, rest, and grow.
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Cultivating a renewed sense of wholeness and resilience, with practices that support reflection, self-nurturing, and possibility.
Sampling of Sessions 1-3
Session 1 - Edge of Awakening: Noticing Thresholds & Beginnings
In this session, you will explore the transitional spaces in nature and in your own life, noticing where one season, place, or state of being meets another. You will attend to the points where light shifts through the trees, where forest blends into meadow, or where water meets land, and consider what these thresholds reveal about the parts of yourself that may have been quiet or waiting for attention. Through any form of creative expression, you will give shape to the subtle emergence of possibility and curiosity, discovering aspects of your inner life beyond the roles you hold and opening to who you are becoming.
Session 2 - Deep Listening: Hearing What Lives Beneath the Surface
In this session, you will shift from noticing the outer edges of the landscape to listening more deeply to the life that moves through it. As you spend time attending to the subtle sounds of the natural world such as wind moving through trees, water flowing over stone, bird calls carrying across distance, or the haunting resonance of whale song, you will explore what becomes possible when you soften the analytical mind and allow yourself to receive rather than interpret. Just as these sounds travel through vast spaces of water, forest, and sky, you will reflect on what inner voices, feelings, or images begin to surface when you listen without trying to make meaning too quickly. Through creative expression, you will begin to notice what parts of yourself are asking to be heard and how deep listening can open new pathways of awareness beyond the roles and habits of thinking that often shape your work.
Session 3 - Tending What Is Emerging: Welcoming New Growth
In this session, you will turn your attention to what began to stir for you while noticing thresholds and beginnings in the natural world. As spring turns to early summer, you will look closely at places where new growth is pushing through the landscape such as shoots emerging from the soil, leaves unfurling, or plants finding their way toward light. These moments of growth offer a way to reflect on the parts of yourself that may also be beginning to emerge. You will begin to work with these newly appearing aspects of self by bringing them into creative expression exploring their qualities, what they need in order to grow, and how they might find a place in your life alongside the roles you carry.
Sessions 4-6
Session 4: Testing New Paths: Exploring the Edges of Who You Might Become
Session 5: Into the Wild Self: Courage, Adventure, and Living Beyond the Familiar
Session 6: Writing the Next Chapter: Stepping Into a New Story
Registration Details:
Duration: April 2026 – September 2026
Time: One morning per month for six months (10:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST / 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST)
Dates: Fridays are the preferred meeting time. Weekend options can be arranged if the majority of women are unable to attend during the week. Please indicate your preferred meeting time when registering.
Location: Live gatherings on Zoom so you can join from wherever you are.
Cost: $575 CAD / $425 USD (plus .05% tax) for the six-month series
This circle is often eligible for professional development funds.
Seats: 8
*Participants have the option to add individual sessions to their six-month program for personalized reflection and creative guidance. The series can be renewed for an additional six months, and if there is interest from the group, we may also explore offering an optional in-person weekend retreat.
Facilitator
Rachel Schmidt BSW, PLC
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✨ Hello, I'm Rachel. I'm so glad you are here.
I created the Aurora Circle for professional women because I see how deeply they care for others, including therapists, counsellors, and helping professionals, while often losing touch with parts of themselves in the process. Many of my friends in these roles give so much that the curiosity, creativity, and inner life that once nourished them can fade.
I have also seen how nature can help women reconnect with themselves. Time in forests, by lakes, or under the stars can awaken presence, curiosity, and the parts of self that have been quiet or waiting for attention. Drawing on my 30 years of experience in social work, along with certification and training in Psychosynthesis and contemplative arts, I create reflective spaces where women can explore who they are beyond the roles they hold and discover the many stories they want to live.
My studio is in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada, surrounded by 150-year-old trees. I feel most alive and at home in the natural world. Hundreds of women have joined my classes, where I cultivate a safe and generative online space that fosters deep meaning, connection, and creative exploration.
As a mother, artist, and activist, I bring these threads together to guide women in reconnecting with curiosity, creativity, and the deeper parts of themselves that sustain both life and work.
Please join us if this resonates with you.
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