Women Who Run With the Wolves
AN ONLINE READING & STITCHING CIRCLE FOR WOMEN
Ten Sundays on Zoom · January 10 to May 16, 2027 · Shrine Kit included
Gather in circle. Tell the old stories. Stitch the wild woman into being. Remember who you truly are.
Text and textile grow from the same Latin root, texere, to weave. This winter and into spring, we weave both. Over ten Sundays we read Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ epic book of myths and stories that has called women back to their instinctual, creative, untamed selves for more than thirty years.
With our hands, we stitch what each story stirs awake.
Each gathering opens as we check in with one another. Then one sister tells the story aloud, so we hear it with our ears and feel it in our bones. We follow the themes that rise in the circle and carry them home. For the two weeks between gatherings we live the story, noticing where it surfaces in our relationships, our bodies and our days, and we bring what we discover back to the circle.
All the while, the needle moves. Gathering by gathering, you build your own Wild Woman’s Textile Shrine: a small folding altar of cloth, thread, charms and keepsakes that holds the symbols, memories and intentions each story leaves with you. By May you hold a living artwork made entirely by your hands. Women of all ages and every level of stitching experience are welcome.
This circle is a remembering. It is an invitation to reclaim the parts of yourself you set aside to become capable, dependable and good:
The creative one. The instinctual one. The Wild one. The girl who made things simply because her hands wanted to. Here she finds room, company and thread enough to come home, and you step more fully into your life with courage and creativity.
Women Who Run With the Wolves meets LIVE on Zoom every other Sunday from 2 to 4 pm Eastern.
There are ten gatherings, running from January 10 to May 16, 2027.
$333 CAD includes all ten gatherings, your Shrine Kit with shipping, a welcome package with the reading schedule and embroidery references, and a private online space to share your work between gatherings.
Our circle is held by shared group agreements. The storytelling portion of each gathering is recorded, our conversation stays in the circle, and photographs are shared only with your consent.
Your Shrine Kit
Shrine comes from the Latin scrinium, a case for keeping books and precious papers. Fittingly, yours begins as a box at your door. Before our first gathering you receive everything you need to begin: a fabric foundation cut and ready for your folding shrine, a curated bundle of fabric scraps and textured remnants, embroidery threads in a chosen colour palette, needles and sewing tools, felt, lace, ribbons and trims, beads and buttons, simple stitching instructions, and a welcome letter.
Keep your box sealed until January 10. We open our kits together in the opening circle, feel the textures, and set an intention for the season ahead. Along the way, bring your own treasures too: a scrap of a beloved garment, an inherited cloth, a photograph, a feather, a handwritten note. We provide the threads. Each woman brings her own story.
The Closing Circle
We open our boxes together in January. We admire our shrines together in May.
On our final Sunday, each woman unfolds her shrine on camera and revisits the elements she has created over the season. Together we hold a virtual exhibition of everything our hands have made, reflecting on our individual and shared experience. With your consent, photographs of the finished shrines are gathered into a digital gallery, a collective visual journal of our circle. Each woman takes her shrine forward as a tangible record of the journey: an object that continues evolving long after our final gathering.
Dates (all Sundays, 2 to 4 pm Eastern)
January 10, 2027 (Opening circle: we open our kits together)
January 24, 2027
February 7, 2027
February 21, 2027
March 7, 2027
March 21, 2027
April 4, 2027
April 18, 2027
May 2, 2027
May 16, 2027 (Closing circle: we open our finished shrines together)
“We gather the scattered pieces of ourselves, and through the slow act of stitching, give them a place to belong. The Wild Woman’s Textile Shrine is an invitation to explore our stories through our hands, honour our instinctual nature and experience the quiet power of women creating together, even when we are physically apart.”
Your Hosts
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Ananda Quadros
Textile Artist/Designer/Educator/Wild Woman
Ananda Quadros is a Brazilian-Canadian textile artist, designer, and educator whose practice weaves together the sacred feminine, ancestral memory, and the transformative power of making. Through embroidery, fabric manipulation, and storytelling, she explores the threads that connect womanhood, identity, and the wild, intuitive self.
With over a decade of experience in art and design education, Ananda sees textile-making as a ritual of remembrance, a way to honour our stories, embrace our scars, and reclaim the parts of ourselves that have been silenced or forgotten.
Inspired by the wisdom of feminine archetypes and the healing power of collective creation, she invites women into spaces of connection, self-discovery, and transformation, where every stitch becomes an act of remembering, reclaiming, and becoming.
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Esther Kalaba R.P.
Art Therapist/Depth Psychotherapist/Textile Artist/Wild Woman
Esther Kalaba is an art therapist and depth psychotherapist with over 25 years immersed in the symbolic realms of story, myth and image. A registered psychotherapist in Ontario and Quebec, she works with fairy tales, archetypes and creative practice as living doorways into the psyche, in the tradition of Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves.
She trained as a textile artist, and her love is working with fabrics as the memory keepers of a people. In her hands, cloth and thread carry what the body remembers.
Esther is the founder of The SEED Lodge, a creative wellness retreat centre in Ontario’s Grey Highlands near Georgian Bay, and has hosted the Women Who Run With the Wolves women’s circle since 2025. She creates spaces where women remember the old stories and reclaim their creativity, courage and wild knowing.
FAQs
What is the Women Who Run With the Wolves Reading & Stitching Circle?
It is an online women’s circle of ten gatherings, rooted in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ classic Women Who Run With the Wolves. Every other Sunday we meet on Zoom to hear one story told aloud, follow the themes it stirs, and add a new layer to the textile shrine each of us stitches over the season. It is a reading circle, a creative practice and a sisterhood, woven into one.
Do I need to have read the book?
Come as you are. Each story is told aloud in the circle, so first time readers and longtime lovers of the book meet the material together. We encourage you to have your own copy at hand for reading between gatherings. Many of us have read it again and again, and every reading opens something new.
Do I need sewing or embroidery experience?
Beginners are warmly welcome. Every technique is demonstrated on screen, the stitches are simple, and your kit holds everything you need. Your shrine grows in your own visual language, so whatever your hands make belongs there.
Is this circle therapy?
This is a creative and reflective circle, a respectful and inclusive space for personal exploration and community connection through story and thread. It is not therapy nor is it a substitute for therapy.
Can I join for a single gathering?
This circle unfolds as a full season of ten gatherings. Each shrine builds from one story to the next, and the circle deepens as the same women return each time, so we ask you to commit to all ten. But if you are unable to at this moment, please do reach out to us and you would be welcome to come and join when you can.
When will my kit arrive?
Book early to receive your kit in time for the first circle. If for any reason you ordered a kit and did not receive it, please email us at arrive@theseedlodge.com.
What if I can’t afford the cost right now and would love to join?
If cost stands between you and the circle right now, write to us at theseedlodge@gmail.com. A few community places are held at a reduced rate. We would love to support everyone to be able to attend.