REGISTER

There comes a time in the life of a field when we stop tending toward what might grow and begin to notice what is already there.

What took root.
What surprised us.
What flourished and what didn't.
What has fed us and others.
What is ready to be gathered.
What can be returned to the earth.

Harvesting Your Life is a six-week contemplative writing journey into the landscape of our lives, exploring what we've inherited, what we've tended, what has grown through us, what we've lost, and what may continue beyond us.

Together, we will allow the reality of our mortality to accompany us — not as a problem to solve or a reason to hurry, but as a presence that can help us see our lives differently.

 

A Different Kind of Life Review

So many of the questions traditionally asked about legacy begin somewhere around:

What do you want to leave behind?
How do you want to be remembered?
What has your life meant?

Beautiful questions — and often useful ones — but they can also turn us immediately towards summary, accomplishment, and the story we think we're supposed to tell about ourselves. Harvesting Your Life begins somewhere different. Instead of focusing on what we imagine our legacy to be, we will tune to what is actually here.

In this exploration, we won't require our lives to add up neatly. We can experiment with what happens within us when we don't assume our losses should have made us stronger, or that the trajectory of our lives must make sense.

We'll practice noticing the raw material of our lives: the ordinary, the unfinished, the beloved, the difficult, the things we chose, and the things that chose us.

We will let the aliveness of life speak to us from the center of things, and listen for what emerges.

 

A Season for Gathering

In this exploration, we will partner with Nature herself by beginning near the Autumn Equinox, when light and darkness meet in relative balance, and travel together toward Samhain ('sow-when') — the ancient seasonal threshold at the threshold of October/November marking the turn toward winter. This space of liminality is traditionally associated with remembrance, mortality, and honoring those who came before us, offering us a rich backdrop for our inquiry.

As we gather weekly, each of us will be situated in our own landscape, watching the pace and purpose of nature in our own particular corner of the world — ripening, releasing, returning, carrying seed forward — just as what emerges on the page will belong to our own particular inner landscape.

And together, we'll move through the same seasonal passage.

 

The Six-Week Journey

Week One — Walking the Field

Encountering the landscape of your life

We begin by wandering rather than inventorying. Before deciding what our lives mean, we notice what's actually here.

 

Week Two — What Was Planted in Me

Inheritance, lineage, and what came before

What was already growing when we arrived? We'll turn toward what we've received — chosen and unchosen — and become curious about what has happened to it in our hands.

 

Week Three — What Grew

The ordinary evidence of having been here

Beyond accomplishments and credentials, we'll look toward what we've tended, touched, loved, shaped, and participated in simply by living our lives.

 

Week Four — The Compost Pile

What didn't become what we hoped, and what can be returned

Not everything needs to be redeemed. We'll make room for what failed, changed, hurt, remained unfinished, or simply wasn't what we'd imagined — and consider what we might be willing to return to compost without first deciding what it meant.

 

Week Five — What Wants to Travel

What moves through us and beyond us

We'll explore transmission without requiring ourselves to manufacture a legacy, becoming curious about what came through us, what we've given without realizing it, and what may continue beyond our knowing.

 

Week Six — What Remains in My Hands

Gathering without needing to summarize

We return to the field. Not to make a final tally, but to notice what remains after six weeks of looking, listening, gathering, and releasing.

 

What to Expect

Each two-hour gathering will follow a familiar rhythm:

• a contemplative grounding or meditation to arrive and set our circle
• three generous rounds of guided writing, each opening a different doorway into the week's exploration
• spacious transitions and a short break
• a closing practice that brings us back into relationship with the lives we're returning to
• a simple invitation to notice, listen, or "walk with" between gatherings

Note that a writing circle of this sort embodies the spirit of process, not product. It is less about producing polished writing, and more about being willing to explore our inner landscape. No contemplative or writing experience is necessary — just a willingness to engage and explore your own experience.

Likewise, there is no expectation to share what you write.

That said, there will be an optional invitation during our final gathering to place a sentence, image, fragment, or passage from your harvest into the circle.

 

The Circle

While the writing itself is personal, we won't be doing this work alone.

For six weeks, we'll gather in a small circle of no more than 12 people — ordinary humans, each with pen and paper, traveling side-by-side, listening to our own life.

There is something unique that becomes possible when we explore this way in the presence of others, not through comparing what we discover, but through companionship. We become witnesses to the willingness of others to look, listen, wonder, and stay.

The field we create together becomes part of what holds the exploration.

For that reason, Harvesting Your Life is designed as a live experience. Sessions will not be recorded. I invite you to register with the intention of being present for all six gatherings, knowing, of course, that life happens.

Because we'll begin each gathering by intentionally setting the circle together, please plan to arrive on time and remain with us for the full session whenever possible.

 

What This Is — and Isn't

Harvesting Your Life is a contemplative writing experience offering a sustained encounter with mortality as an essential part of life, within a carefully held space for curiosity, honesty, imagination, and deep listening.

It is not...

• a writing class focused on craft or publication
• a traditional life review or legacy planning workshop
• an advance-care planning course
• a grief-support group, or
• a substitute for professional mental health care

You are always the steward of your own experience and are invited to honor your capacity, pace, and boundaries throughout our time together. Nothing here requires you to push past yourself in search of an insight. Your life is the authority here.

We show up as willing and curious listeners.

 

The Details

Harvesting Your Life
A six-week contemplative writing circle exploring mortality as companion to life

Wednesdays (6 weeks, no session 10/21)
September 23, 30
October 7, 14, 28
November 4, 2026

3:00–5:00 p.m. Central
Online via Zoom

Limited to 12 participants

Inaugural Circle: $333
Payable by Venmo, PayPal, or check. Payment details provided upon registration.

 

JOIN THE CIRCLE by filling out the form on this page.

Questions? christy@tendinglife.com

 

Come walk the field of your life.
You don't need to know what you're looking for.