Seeking Fire’s Wisdom for our Burnout and Inner Winters

(A Signature Ceremony)

at a private residence; Front Royal, VA

November 8th, 2025

4:30-7:30pm ET

Exchange: $88

Our Premise

“My spark’s just… gone. I feel so burnt out, empty. But also, like, pulled in a million directions and stuffed to the brim with tracking everything for everyone else.”

Yeah. I get it.

“And it sucks, too, because I used to feel so juicy, so alive, so passionate. I used to feel lit up and vital and full of energy for my work and the people I love. If only I could get back there… but I can’t seem to find my way or get anyone else to understand and I don’t love to admit it but I’m actually sort of deeply afraid my spark is gone for good and can’t even come back…”

I hear you.

Truth time?

You’re not broken. And your spark absolutely can come back.

I know because I’ve been there.

See, burnout isn’t the problem, it’s the symptom - a soul-deep exhaustion from fighting to stay connected and caring in the face of dehumanizing forces and extractive relational dynamics - basically, a society that views us as resources and wants us to keep up with machines.

Which means burnout recovery won’t work long-term if it’s preparing you to go back to business as usual.

Your soul is actually inviting you into territory currently unfamiliar to you, in ways that might feel uncomfortable: an inner winter, an initiatory Descent - all to become more human and more vitally alive.

And in an initiatory Descent, it’s normal to not be able to see your way out of where you are. That disorientation allows things to be rearranged in your relationship with yourself, other humans, your ancestors, the natural world, and your connection to Spirit.

While that can be scary, it seems even more overwhelming because we don’t have elders and cultural protocols to follow, handed down through the generations. We feel rootless, like we have to blindly forge our own ways - a seemingly insurmountable obstacle when we already feel tapped out.

But what if we don’t actually have to make it up or source it complete from an isolated sense of self?

What if there’s more animist and ancestral cultural practices stored in our deep memory than we realize? What if there’s a wider web of kin available to support us and teach us - including fire itself?

And what if, with their support, we can come out the other side feeling more juicy, connected, creative, and powerful?

A Possible Path

Now, it’s not really in the scope of a single ceremony to bring you to the other side of your initiatory deepening and into “recovery”.

But ceremony was how our ancestors helped rectify individual and collective disconnections and relational ruptures with themselves, each other, and the Otherworld.

So practicing ceremony together, in an animist and ancestrally-informed way, can help reawaken some of those deep memories of not being completely alone and abandoned on a cultural and community level.

One ceremony may not provide all solutions, but it keeps us moving ahead on the path and nourishes us deeply while doing it.

So fire ceremony, especially when we bring to it our questions and wounds around burnout, can be a space to:

• begin repairing our relationship with fire as ancestor, elder, and initiator;

• reconnect with the necessary protocols for being fully alive, initiated humans;

• and use the metaphor and cultural memory of fire-keeping to guide us in how to better steward our inner flames.


See, fire is deeply and inextricably interwoven with human survival and development. Our connection with it is both primal and spiritual. In many ways, it’s one of our most meaningful elders and ancestors.

So invoking fire as elder and teacher offers us a way to:



Listen to the voices outside of our over-culture narratives - voices of elders and wisdom keepers from more intact cultural lineages; the voices of our ancestors; the voices of our beyond-human kin.

And remember - remember these skills of tending fire, these protocols for being fully alive and wildly human; remember how to practice collective rupture and repair; remember how to relate, rather than exploit; remember how to drink deeply from the well of a richer and more nourishing culture; remember how to hold ourselves with immense tenderness and honor our inner flames for the sacred sparks they are.

And then reanimate those memories by bringing them with us into our modern lives.

We can let fire teach us how to be in rhythm with wild, sacred Aliveness.



After years of being caught in cycles of burnout, the most sustainable shift I found was through a return to animist practices and ancestral wisdom. It was through developing meaningful relationships with beyond-human kin like fire; and through the potent medicine of old stories. 

I’d love for you to join me, if this speaks to you.

You’re most welcome around the fire.

Our Practice

We’ll use story, ceremony, and shamanic practices to get us out of our heads and into contact with the Otherworld -

the place of the sacred, the place where animist and ancestral memory lives on. We’ll lay our modern questions and struggles at their feet and let them teach us, remind us, call us back to the wisdom of initiations and the protocols for being human, all in service to a world where Life, where aliveness itself thrives.

We’ll gather outside, around the fire -

they say it’s the land that initiates us. And I suspect it’s because the land is one of the biggest stakeholders in us being human in a good way. Ancestors around the world have always practiced some form of animism - the belief that everything has a consciousness. So we gather outside, around the fire, as a way of inviting our beyond-human kin to join us and to receive the benefits of our practice alongside us.

We’ll align our practices with the season -

to be human is to live in rhythm with the natural world, as well as our own personal and communal rhythms. Our gathering is happening around Samhain / the Day of the Dead / All Saints Day/ Ancestors Day - a time when we deepen into the dark half of the year and the Otherworld overlays itself much more closely with our day-to-day lives. It’s a potent time to call in protection and connection. A great time to honor, remember, and prepare for the deep rest of winter and to rekindle a meaningful relationship with fire.

Things to Know (Logistics)

Note: this is not a passive workshop, it’s a living transmission and an opportunity to actively witness and engage. There are no promised outcomes because ceremony is always co-created and somewhat out of our control. You may feel messy and emotional during it, or even starting from when you register and stretching into the few days after it; but you’ll also feel soul-nourished and leave with a deeper sense of connection… and probably even aliveness.

We’ll be gathering Saturday, November 8th around the fire pit at a private residence outside of Front Royal, VA.

Payment and registration must be completed before we share the exact address with you. Confirmation emails will also give you more details about how to prepare and what to bring.

Ceremony will begin promptly at 4:30pm and plan to wrap by 7:30pm. You’re welcome to arrive as early as 4:00 for tea and hot cocoa and to get settled in. After ceremony, there will be grounding snacks/ charcuterie to help bring us back more solidly into this Middle World before you depart and drive. You don’t need to stay for that bit, but you’re welcome to.

Exchange: $88

**NOTE: once you say “yes’ to an offering like this, your energy begins weaving itself into the portal of the ceremony. because of the level of preparation, care, and space-holding that begins from the moment you register, please understand that no refunds can be offered. thank you.

About Kate: