The place for building your modern-day village.
For women who aren’t going off-grid but know bottomless mimosas won’t buy the belonging they crave. Expect rituals, stories, and strategies for creating a life laced with magic, meaning, and mischief.A couple posts ago, I talked about Phase 0 of my re-villaging experiment and how I’ve taken small, but steady steps to building my village over the past year or so. Plus, the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Looking back at these small steps, I’ve realized they’re not random. There are pieces that form a kind of map for what re-villaging requires.
Out of my messy attempts came eight clear elements that can be seen as gateways into re-villaging and belonging.
Want to know the full map? I’ll give you a peek at the first two elements—Roots + Soil. But the next six are where it gets juicy: Place, Wildness, Rhythm, Interdependence, Thresholds, and Legacy. Together, they form the living architecture of modern-day village life. Without them we’re stuck in bottomless brunches that don’t quite fill the ache. But with them, we’re rooted, alive, and in deep belonging. Yummmm.
The 8 Elements of Re-Villaging
Element 1: Roots – ancestry, lineage, origin stories, blood + birth.
Roots are the underground mycelium of village life—the hidden threads that tie us back to where we come from. They hold our ancestors, our family stories (yesss, even the ones that somehow get even more dramatic and embellished with each telling), and our birth and bloodlines. They carry the songs sung late into the night, the recipes scribbled on index cards (or passed down only through muscle memory), the languages nearly forgotten but still rolling under our tongues.
Roots also live in our bodies. In the way our shoulders tense the same way our mother’s did. In the lullabies we hum without realizing where they came from. In the resilience, the survival strategies, the quirks and humor that carried our people through.
To re-village, we must remember and reweave our roots—not to get stuck in the past, but to be nourished by it. Roots remind us that we didn’t just drop from the sky, but we belong to a long line. We are descendants and we are also ancestors-in-the-making.
Reflection prompts:
What stories were told in my family of origin? What stories were never spoken?
Which traditions feel alive for me now? Which feel brittle, harmful, or in need of composting?
How do I honor my ancestors (known or unknown) in my daily life?
What new roots am I planting for those who come after me?
Ritual / embodied practice:
Choose one ancestral thread—a recipe, a song, a family story, a photograph—and bring it alive this week. Cook the meal, sing the song, write the story, or place the photo on your altar. Share it with someone (a child, a friend, a circle) as a simple act of re-rooting.
My real-life examples:
For me, this has looked like asking my grandmother about her stories, writing down my kids’ birth stories so they’re never forgotten, recording the silly quotes they say, and remembering that I’m not the beginning of the thread—I’m a continuation.
Element 2: Soil – cultural conditioning, inherited wounds, composting what no longer serves.
While our Roots are the underground threads that connect us to where we come from, our Soil is the substance we’re steeped in—the mix of nourishment and toxins that shapes how we grow. Another way to look at this is our Roots hold memory and lineage and our Soil carries culture and conditioning—the stories we’ve inherited, for better or worse.
Family rules, patriarchal scripts, hustle-culture, religious guilt trips, that little voice that says “you should be able to do it all on your own!!” Yep. That’s Soil.
Not all Soil is fertile. Some of it’s straight-up poison. But when we compost it, even the shitty stuff can break down into food for new growth.
This is the messy part of re-villaging: letting the myths of independence and productivity = worth, and “good girl” perfection rot back into the earth. Feeding the ground with new stories. Choosing which ingredients you actually want in your Soil going forward.
Because if we don’t tend the Soil, we keep planting the same old crops—exhaustion, disconnection, shame, etc. So compost the lies, baby, and watch how space for truth, play, and possibility open up!
Reflection prompts:
What cultural messages did I absorb about self-reliance, asking for help, or being a “good woman/mother”?
How do those beliefs live in my body today?
Which old patterns or roles feel ready to be composted?
What do I want to grow in their place?
Ritual / embodied practice:
Step 1: Write down one cultural script or belief you’re ready to release (for example: “I should be able to do it all on my own”).
Step 2: Take it outside. Bury it in the dirt, or tear it into tiny pieces and scatter them in the soil. Say aloud: “I compost this lie into nourishment for new life.”
Step 3: Then ask your body: What does my wild self want right now?
Move the way your hips want to move.
Speak the words you’ve been swallowing.
Follow one thread of curiosity, even if it feels impractical.
Notice what happens when you let truth, curiosity, or turn-on guide you for even five minutes.
My real-life examples:
This is the messy part. The stuff I inherited that doesn’t actually nourish me—or my family—needs to be composted. For me that’s meant attempting to burn down the hustle culture I bought into, letting the myth of “doing it all alone” rot back into the earth, and feeding the soil with new stories.
Want to learn how to bring Wildness back into your days, mark Thresholds with ritual, and create a Legacy that ripples forward? Become a paid subscriber and get the full map, reflection prompts, rituals, and real-life examples you can start weaving into your life today.