Essence
A year-long forest journey for women through four full seasons
reclaiming an ancient way of belonging: to our inner knowing , our bodies, the living world, and each other.
There is something in us that remembers a way of being that modern life has taught us to forget. Something we can feel in our bones, even when we cannot quite name it. Perhaps there are parts of ourselves we have forgotten how to listen to, parts that know the language of story & dream, intuition & imagination, sensing & feeling.
Through myth, symbol, ritual, creativity, movement, reflection, immersion in the natural world, and the witnessing of other women, we create space for you to remember…and for your own Essence to emerge, take form, and be expressed.
✦
from emergence … to embodiment …to expression
✦
Root. Rewild. Return.
Come as you are.
Return more deeply to yourself.
Stepping into the Essence journey…
Our journey is a spiral.
We return. We revisit. We deepen.
Each season becomes part of the next. And, slowly, something essential is remembered.
What Is Essence?
A year-long container
Twelve gatherings that unfold across four seasons, in relationship with the land and a small community of women.
We gather to slow down, step outside our everyday roles, and enter a different kind of space, one where there is time to listen, feel, create, wonder, and connect.
A journey inward and outward
A place to turn inward, listen for what is alive, and discover what is asking to emerge.
Across the year, we move through a living arc. We arrive and build trust, open perception, reclaim the body, and ultimately find the courage to express something true.
Along the way, we begin to remember the Wild Woman, not as someone we need to become, but as something ancient and alive within us.
A practice, not a program
What you discover here is meant to travel with you, into your body, relationships, creativity, home, work, and daily life.
There is a descent.
There is a becoming.
There is a return.
“Essence offers the opportunity of being seen, held, and brought into unity as women; as we seek to find our way home to ourselves, we find each other.”
How Does The Year Unfold?
Four seasons. Four elemental landscapes. One unfolding journey.
-
Winter ~ Excavate
December · January · February
Earth & Myth
Turn inward. Listen. Grieve. Remember.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unearthing what has been buried.
We begin in the dark. We step out of the familiar and descend into the deeper layers of self.
Through earth, myth, ritual, and quiet listening, we enter the places beneath the surface. We make space for grief, memory, mystery, and the parts of ourselves waiting to be remembered.
-
Spring ~ Awaken
March · April · May
Air & Dreams
Breathe. Imagine. Play. Open.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Listening for what wants to emerge.
As the light returns, something begins to stir.
Through breath, dreams, creativity, and deep listening, we attune to the subtle voices within. We awaken intuition, imagination, and the possibilities beginning to take shape.
-
Summer ~ Embody
June · July · August
Fire & Ritual
Feel. Tend. Risk. Transform. Belong.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coming home to the body.
What begins to stir in spring asks to be lived.
Through embodiment, sensory pleasure, movement, fire, ritual, and time in the night forest, we move beyond thinking and into direct experience. We learn to listen to the wisdom of the body, tend what matters, and trust what we find there.
-
Autumn ~ Express
September · October · November
Water & Courage
Create. Reveal. Offer. Be witnessed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bringing what has been lived into form.
As the season turns, we gather what the year has revealed and give it shape.
Through creative expression, courage, and the witnessing of others, we practice letting ourselves be seen as an offering.
We share what is ready to emerge.
What Might You Experience?
You might find yourself sitting around a fire in shared conversation, wandering the land in quiet reflection, creating something with your hands, moving your body in new ways, or speaking something you've never said out loud before.
We will enter sacred spaces with reverence, sit with hard things, ask big questions.
And… we will laugh. A lot. We'll be silly. We'll play. We'll dance.
The sacred and the silly. The quiet and the loud. The grief and the joy. The depth and the delight.
Ritual & Ceremony
Create and participate in rituals that mark thresholds, ask questions, release, celebrate, and transform.
Embodiment
Move beyond the analytical mind and into the body's intelligence through movement, sensory experience, dance, breath, rest, and play.
The Living World
Spend sustained time in relationship with the forest, seasons, elements, and more-than-human world. Allow the land itself to become part of the experience.
Sisterhood & Belonging
Experience the particular magic of women gathering over time, with openness, vulnerability, laughter, play, and care. Build relationships rooted in honesty and trust, and discover what becomes possible when you don't have to do it all alone.
Creativity
Make things. Write. Move. Sing. Create. Follow what wants to emerge rather than what you think you should make.
No prior artistic experience is needed. Creativity here is not about performance or perfection. It is a way of listening.
Witnessing & Being Witnessed
Experience the power of being truly seen and of learning to see others without judgment, fixing, or advice.
We practice being present for one another's stories, questions, struggles, discoveries, and becoming.
A moment of being seen.
And of seeing yourself.
Courage & Expression
Allow what has been discovered internally to become visible to yourself and eventually to others.
In the final season, this takes shape through each woman's
Essence Harvest Offering:
a personal expression of something she has lived, discovered, questioned, or transformed throughout the year.
Over time, something may shift...
What Becomes Possible?
Going Deeper
~Kai, Essence ‘26
Feeling More Whole
~Alison, Essence ‘26
Coming Back to Myself
~Mei, Essence ‘26
Who Holds Essence?
Trish Roberts
Trish is a theatre artist, storyteller, and facilitator whose work grows from a lifelong curiosity about what lies beneath the surface of things—about who we are, what makes us essentially ourselves, and what becomes possible when we listen more deeply. She creates immersive experiences rooted in wonder, imagination, and the living world, inviting people to reconnect—with themselves, with one another, and with the world around them.
Her path has moved through theatre, storytelling, nature, myth, psychology, ritual, and the imaginative life of the forest. Through these explorations, she has developed a deep love for story, imagination, and the ways our relationship with the natural world can open pathways to connection, meaning, healing, and a deeper understanding of our place within a much larger human story and the more-than-human world. At the heart of Trish’s work is a belief that we are here to remember who we are, rediscover our gifts, and bring those gifts back into relationship with our communities and the Earth.
She is deeply committed to creating spaces where honesty, imagination, wonder, and genuine connection can unfold. In the rest of her life, you’ll most likely find her walking in the woods with her dog, finding some little adventure with her family, dancing to live music, making theatre with kids, reading, or following a good question wherever it leads.
She is honored to share this wild place and walk alongside women as they explore the deeper terrain of being human—together.
Nika Fotopulos
From a young age, Nika has been seeking a deeper connection to source; journeying across lands and communities, gathering in circles, learning songs and rituals, exploring the medicines of plants, and discovering ways to pray, move her body, receive nourishment, and honor Mother Earth.
Along the way, she has had the privilege of assisting with primal therapy and earth-honoring workshops and intensives, and has found a particular aliveness in sacred dance and fire circles. As co-founder of Sloyd Sundays of Southeastern Vermont, she helps organize and facilitate gatherings centered on awakening our gifts, cultivating connection, and building community with our neighbors.
Nika is also part of her family’s business, Dickinson’s Reach Yurts, which offers wooden yurt-building workshops that invite people to reconnect with the simple, empowering act of creating with their own hands.
More recently, she trained with Sky Otter as a facilitator of Breath Release for Energy, Transformation and Healing (BRETH), and is grateful to be continuing to weave this Breathwork practice into the Essence tapestry.
As a growing human and mother of two daughters, Nika has woven ritual and rites of passage into the fabric of family life, honoring transitions, losses, and growth within the embrace of community.
At the heart of her work is a desire to share the gifts and practices that have nourished her, while creating a safe and intimate container for soul work. A space where we can listen more closely to what is alive within us, meet the places at our edges with curiosity and care, and remember that we do not have to arrive polished or perfect. We are welcome to come exactly as we are.
“Nika & Trish are very much themselves—very authentic in who they are and what brings them to this. They’re really good listeners, very present, and wonderful weavers, tying everything together before and after. There’s absolutely no question that they’re 100% committed to what we’re doing.”
How Is Essence Held?
“Essence is held with grace and deep care.”
Actually stepping into the journey…
if you're feeling the call, here are the feets…
whoops…
deets.
Let’s get dirty in the details…
Who?
Who is Essence for?
Essence is for any adult woman, at any age and stage of life, with whatever life experience she brings…who has encountered something here that sparks a curiosity, stirs a longing, awakens wonder, or simply makes her think, I want more of that.
Essence is for the woman who arrives just as she is.
The circle itself is small, just a handful of women, always in the single digits.
If you're feeling uncertain about whether Essence is for you, please reach out. We'd love to have a conversation.
What?
What does Essence ask of you?
Essence asks for a wholehearted commitment to the year.
Each gathering builds on the last, deepening relationships, trust, and insight. The depth of the experience comes not from any single gathering, but from returning again and again to the circle.
Your presence matters, not only for your own experience, but for the group as a whole.
We ask you to make all twelve gatherings a priority.
Life happens, and we understand that.
We ask that you approach the year with the intention of being here, knowing that each time we return, we are returning to something we are creating together.
The overnight gatherings are especially important in the arc of the year. They give us the rare opportunity to be together for a longer stretch of time—to settle into a different rhythm, deepen relationships, and experience what becomes possible when we don't have to leave at the end of the day.
If an overnight feels uncertain or difficult, please reach out.
We'd rather talk it through than have that uncertainty keep you from considering Essence.
When?
One gathering each month, held in the forest and shaped by the season we're in.
12 gatherings, season by season
8 full-day gatherings · 4 overnight gatherings
Essence begins in December 2026 and unfolds through November 2027.
✦
WINTER · EXCAVATE
December 2026 · January–February 2027
December 6, 2026 · Sunday
9am–6pm
January 9–10, 2027 · Saturday–Sunday · OVERNIGHT
9am Saturday–2pm Sunday
February 13, 2027 · Saturday
9am–6pm
SPRING · AWAKEN
March–May 2027
March 21, 2027 · Sunday
9am–6pm
April 24–25, 2027 · Saturday–Sunday · OVERNIGHT
9am Saturday–2pm Sunday
May 29, 2027 · Saturday
9am–6pm
SUMMER · EMBODY
June–August 2027
June 19, 2027 · Saturday
9am–6pm
July 17–18, 2027 · Saturday–Sunday · OVERNIGHT
9am Saturday–2pm Sunday
August 15, 2027 · Sunday
9am–6pm
AUTUMN · EXPRESS
September–November 2027
September 26, 2027 · Sunday
9am–6pm
October 16–17, 2027 · Saturday–Sunday · OVERNIGHT
9am Saturday–2pm Sunday
November 6, 2027 · Saturday
9am–6pm
✦
And in between…
The year keeps unfolding between gatherings, too—with monthly invitations, Seasonal Buddy conversations, a mid-year one-on-one with Trish or Nika, and all the materials and supplies you’ll need.
Where?
Essence lives at…
Wildbrook Canopy · Putney, Vermont
Essence is rooted in relationship with the natural world.
The forest is not simply where we meet. It is a companion on the journey.
Why?
“Essence brought me the gift of time away from my responsibilities to really dive into my own dreams and creativity…
of deep connection to these beautiful humans who are walking this journey alongside me…
of my body experiencing the forest in all of the seasonal elements…
of building a community of women who are all collectively tending the fire.”
HOW?
how to contribute…
Choose an amount between
$1,500 and $2,500
that feels right and honest to you, given your circumstances and what you’re able and willing to contribute.
Payment plans are available monthly or quarterly.
✦
We welcome and value barter and exchange.
We want to make Essence possible for those who feel the call while also honoring what it takes to create and sustain this work.
If $1,500 isn’t feasible for you, please don’t quietly rule yourself out.
Let’s talk about what might be possible.
We are open to finding creative ways to contribute skills, time, resources, or care toward your participation in Essence.
We believe reciprocity can take many forms.
✦
how to register…
By November 1:
Click the button below.
Fill out a form.
Send us a $125 deposit.
Questions? We’re happy to talk.
If you’re drawn to this journey but something is making you pause, please reach out.
We’d love to have a conversation.
Email us
✦