The Spiral Goddess Collective Radical Careworkers Coven

Some History and Vision and a Platform for Future Developments

Once a month we gather together radical careworkers at The Spiral Goddess Collective to network, socialize, and talk about what we do and how we can support each other. We also share our gifts and offerings with each other through the opportunity for an embodied practice and/or activity. We welcome anyone in our community who identifies with this category of work--radical careworker. This blog is a short overview of the origins of this group and how we define ourselves and our work.

When I first started thinking about The Spiral Goddess Collective, I brainstormed it as a Mutual Care/Scholarship Program that I would create to provide scholarships for people who could not afford to take yoga and conscious dance classes in the Bangor area. I also intended to eventually provide training for dance fitness instructors. I was basically going to use my own money and maybe think about getting others to donate and maybe think about starting a non-profit.

Fast-forward a bit as I continued to build my skills and became a JourneyDance guide (which brought me some woo-woo powers and perspective!) …

After putting this idea out into the universe and starting to run this idea by people for feedback, I was looking for space to teach JourneyDance (the YMCA was okay, but it felt limiting to the potential) and very suddenly had an opportunity I had only dreamed about for most of my adult life–SPACE! Space to offer my version of “fitness,” a mind/body approach, an embodied approach.

Within a few months, and with the help of friends, I opened the doors to The Spiral Goddess Collective, a Center for Mind/Body Movement on the 4th floor of the historic building at 16 State St. in Bangor, ME.
I imagined a collective, but I didn’t know how that part was going to happen! Slowly, the space started to gather people to it… I knew some people; other people found me and started curating offerings. 

One day, I connected with Shannon Charette and we talked about our work and we both had the desire to connect people who were passionate about multimodality healing, getting beyond talk therapy, getting into the body, etc. It took some time to get the first gathering of Radical Careworkers together…

I found Sen Wilde or Sen Wilde found me or both and we talked about all of the things that could happen in the Spiral Goddess Collective space. Sen helped me when I was about to collapse from trying to do all of the things to keep SGC going. They took up the labor of cleaning and maintaining the space, and daily Facebook posts, and so much more.

I have created and fostered and supported the parts of my vision that I have the skills and talents to build (though I had to learn a lot about “business”–that is not my skill set!)... and I have supported the work of other people–curators, guest curators, and community partners–but I also wanted to create a larger collective, a network of providers… what I envisioned as a Radical Careworkers support group.

This group is inspired by my work in the emerging field of Embodied Social Justice: Literal and figurative movement (mind/body, cultural/social) toward justice, healing, and transformation of individuals and communities, systems and structures, and the earth and all its beings. It is radical in the way that Angela Davis explains, “grasping things by the root.” Radical encourages growth. Radicals are pathbreakers and deviate from the status quo. Radical work does not just treat the superficial symptoms, it makes big changes to entrenched structures. (I love this article about what radical is from Teen Vogue)

The Spiral Goddess Collective Radical Careworkers networking and support group was an attempt to bring us together because we complement each other, and as a network, as a collective of radical careworkers, we can support each other as well as the people we care for.  We have power, purpose, magic, and superpowers.
So it is fitting that we decided at our second meeting to call this collective of radical careworkers a coven!

Coven is an apt word for a variety of reasons. Of course, it has the connotation of witches, who have been mostly women, though not exclusively. In the past, witches were targeted by state violence, seen as threats by men who feared the powers of witches–which were often powers of knowledge about the human body, herbs, plants, remedies, and connections with the earth and natural healing. Witches were often the glue of communities; their power undermined the status quo of patriarchal society.

In her book The Spiral Dance, Starhawk describes: “A coven is a group of peers, but it is not a ‘leaderless group.’ Authority and power, however, are based on a very different principle from that which holds sway in the world at large. Power in a coven is never power over another. It is the power that comes from within. . . . One person’s power does not diminish another’s; instead, as each convener comes into her own power, the power of the group grows stronger.”

“Power,” Starhawk explains, “depends on personal integrity, courage, and wholeness. It cannot be assumed, inherited, appointed, or taken for granted, and does not confer the right to control another. Power-from-within develops from the ability to control ourselves, to face our own fears and limitations, to keep commitments, and to be honest. The sources of inner power are unlimited.”
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We are powerful. What we do matters. And what we build together can transform individuals and our community and so much more….