Our intention at Wellspring is that girls need to know they matter, they belong, and that they are needed here. They need safe spaces to explore who they are, in love and connection. They need adults beyond their parents who can support and uplift them. They need to learn healthy ways of relating to their peers, to their community, and to the world around them. They need to learn discernment, regulation, attunement, healthy expression, and how to protect the wellspring of their own vital life force inside of them.
Girls Groups are safe spaces where girls are witnessed, supported, and encouraged as they cross the threshold from childhood into adolescence. We foster a space to explore all areas of who they are becoming, physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. We do this through the age-old wisdom of craft, expressive arts, nature connection, council, and ceremony.
What is a Girls Group?
Girls groups are for girls crossing the threshold from childhood into adolescence. We offer a place to belong and to explore who they are becoming, through the age-old wisdom of craft, expressive arts, nature connection, and council. We meet once a week after school creating deep relationships, consistency, and connection.
This is not an “average” after school program. We are weaving a web that will continue through middle school and into high school, and beyond into their adulthood. This offering goes deep, into nature connection, body literacy including teachings and support through puberty and menstruation, healthy social skills, ancestral craft, expressive arts, council, ceremony, and beyond. We also bring in guest teachers on skincare, herbal medicine, womb care, primitive skills and more, co-creating the village that adolescents need. Through my work with various rites of passage organizations, I have witnessed that what most people need is continuous care through these potent ages. While a rites of passage ceremony is built into the structure of my girls groups, what I view as more important than a one off ceremony, is the continuity of care and belonging as they become adolescence and then adults.
Middle school is often some of the most challenging yet formative years of a young girl's life.
We hold the intention and vision that during those years, instead of trauma and pain, our youth is held by a web of healthy and whole adults, knowing that they belong, they matter, and are safe to express who they are, while learning how to relate to family, peers, and the greater world.
“We must mature into people who are, first and foremost, citizens of Earth and residents of this universe, and our identity and core values must be recast accordingly. This kind of maturation entails a quantum leap beyond the stage of development in which the majority of people live today.”
- Bill Plotkins
2025-2026 Girls Groups
Journey through the Elements
These groups will begin our yearlong journey through the elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, to learn about ourselves and the world around us.
GRADE 6th / 7th
When: Tuesday afternoons, 3:30-5:30pm,
beginning September 2
This is a year long program with two blocks:
Fall: September 2 - November 18
Spring: January 20 – April 28
Where: Arcoiris Yurt, Santa Fe, NM
Investment: 3 tier pay scale: $555, $777, $999 per session.
Payment plans and scholarships available to those in need, please see more information about payment below!
Space is limited to 10 girls
The intention of this work is to offer a continuation into future years. If you have a girl who doesn’t fit in this age group, please email me at WELLSPRINGNM.CONNECT@GMAIL.COM to express interest.
“The need for a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood is a
biological one. If our adolescent self does not sufficiently risk itself being *seen* and *acknowledged* by the larger community…we will continue this yearning, this quest, into adulthood & carry with us, a sense of incompleteness.”
- Ellen Hufschmidt
Skills We Practice:
Art of Council
Ceremony & Ritual
Strengthening Emotional Intelligence
Communication & Relationship Skills
Ancestral Crafts
Conflict Resolution
Nature Connection
Body Literacy
Self Expression
Somatic Awareness
Stress & Anxiety Tools
And Beyond!
In addition: We hold a parent meeting every block, and each year there are potential outings, guest mentors/teachers, sleepovers, trips, hikes, and parent involved ceremonies at threshold moments….
“We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy,
must reach ahead to our children and their children.
And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching.”
- Paul Tsongas
Investment
The investment for each 12 week block is a three tier scale of $555, $777, and $999.
This includes each after school session, as well as materials for our various activities.
$777 is the cost of the program, with $555 being discounted to those in need,
and $999 a “share the love” price which funds our scholarships.
I trust each individual family to assess their own financial needs to place themselves within these tiers. There are scholarships available for those in need, and please do not hesitate to reach out if cost is a deterrent!
Have questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out at
WELLSPRINGNM.CONNECT@GMAIL.COM
I would love to connect!
My prayer is that this work is a sanctuary and antidote to the destruction our youth are living in, and a safe space for girls to be silly, messy, confused, scared, joyous, sad - however they authentically are. As girls begin to transition from children into the mysteries of the feminine, they have a developmental need for a larger village to surround and support them. In a culture that has forgotten what healthy thresholds look like, Girls Group is an embodiment of our longing for our youth to feel that they matter and they belong. We create a bridge between the wastelands of despair and chaos, and the promise of a bright new dawn.
Through the groups the girls learn how to develop healthy social selves and be in right relationship and integrity with themselves and those around them. By creating continuous support through these formative years, the groups form a structure and foundation that holds them through immense changes and emergence into their authentic beings through adolescence. We cultivate hope and possibility in a time of great disruption, infuse Beauty into their lives and support integrating the grief of this world. We offer a place to explore who they are, what they like and dislike, what they are drawn towards, what is their place in their community and wider circles, what feeds their creativity.
The time of a girl growing from girlhood into womanhood is a potent time of growth, possibility, and impact. What she learns about herself during this time, healthy or not, stays with her the rest of her life. Girls Group creates a space to come into right relationship with her spirit, her body, her heart, during the time that is of the utmost importance for the woman she will become. The stakes are high! An important force in this time in a girl's life is her fierce heart and rebellious spirit. We honor the rebel prayers, who have so much to teach us, including how to imagine a new way of being and forge pathways to get there. This is the crucible for creating a world we want to live in.
A note from Summer...
“At the very heart of ‘belonging’ is the word ‘long.’ To be-long to
something is to stay with it for the long haul. It is an active choice we make to a relationship, to a place, to our body, to a life because we value it. Even knowing
that it may not be all that we hope it to be, we are keeping the long view
of what is possible, and our life becomes an offering to making it so.”
― Toko-pa Turner