2026-27 Circle led by
Lauren Gucik

 
REkindling Ancestral memory was Founded
by Hilary Giovale and Elyshia Holliday

Eight-Month Community Circle

Each circle will be intuitively guided and will focus on topics such as...

  • Community-based ancestral storytelling

  • Embracing Earth-honoring, nonlinear, and unseen ways of knowing

  • Settler colonialism and whiteness

  • Rekindling ancestral memory

  • Building right relations

  • Making reparations

Acts of Healing

We will collaboratively engage in activities like…

  • Discovering and sharing ancestral stories

  • Respectfully connecting with the land where we live

  • Maintaining an ancestor altar

  • Listening to guest speakers

  • Writing an ancestral apology or forgiveness prayer

  • Participating in healing rituals

  • Developing a personal reparations plan 

Are you called to
this circle at this time?

This eight-month circle invites European-descended settlers in North America into a journey of ancestral reconnection, healing, and repair. Together, we will engage our lineage stories with curiosity, compassion, and a commitment to transformation—rekindling ancestral memory while practicing accountability and restoring relationship with land and community.

Through altar tending, storytelling, community dialogue, and the creation of a personal reparations plan, participants bring ancestral insight into meaningful action.

Why Focus on European Ancestry? What is the Connection to Nature?

This circle centers on European ancestry as a pathway to understanding settler identity, lineage healing, and accountability. Recognizing that colonization disrupts not only Indigenous lifeways but also severs many settlers from our own ancestral roots, this work invites reconnection through Earth-honoring, nonlinear, and intuitive ways of knowing. As we remember, we rebuild relationships with our ancestors, the land, and the communities around us.

For a deeper exploration of this connection, read more here.

“Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle has helped reignite and re-invigorate my ongoing commitment to living a life focused on actively undoing and healing the places racism and colonization live in my white body, and in the systems that run our country.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

“My experience with the Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle was profound and life-changing. I loved that we were encouraged to build a relationship with our ancestral lineages through both traceable research as well as through listening to our dreams and intuitive knowing.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

Circle Schedule

Circles are from October, 2026 - April, 2027

5:00 pm-6:30 pm Pacific Time/ 8:00 pm-9:30 pm Eastern Time

These sessions are not recorded.

October-December

Ancestral Altars and Ancestral Storytelling

We begin by grounding in connection with our ancestors, other ways of knowing, and sharing an ancestral story.

October 20           Opening gathering: orientation, introductions & altar creation

November 10       Altar tending, an introduction to story, and facilitator sharing

December 1         First community storytelling circle

December 15      Second community storytelling circle

January-February

Apology, Forgiveness, and Ritual

We continue our circle after winter break with guest speakers and a deep dive into apology, forgiveness, and a healing ritual.

January 12 Dissolving Dominant Structure

January 19‍ ‍Guest Speaker: Atava Garcia Swiecicki - Journey to Our Indigenous Mind

(TBD)               Optional hearthside office hour for continued story sharing

February 2        Explorations of apology and forgiveness; writing as offering

(TBD)               Optional hearthside office hour for reflection and support

February 23     Ritual Preparation

March-April

Reparations 

The final phase of Rekindling Ancestral Memory brings our inner work into the world and into informed action.

March 9     Reflection and the beginning of reparations work (I have a retreat March 16th)

March 30     Guided facilitation of reparations offerings

April 20         Closing, Reflections, Looking Forward

Request to Join the Circle

This class is open to members and affiliates of ONE and will be limited to 18 participants.

We ask that you tell us about yourself and why you are drawn to the circle at this time using the “Circle Request” button below. This will help us know you a little better. We will send you the registration link after we receive your circle request.

If you are not already a member of ONE you can sign up here.

Request to Join the 2026-2027 Circle cycle

Reparations

If you join the circle, registration is offered at three levels for the entire nine-month, 13-session cohort. No one will be turned away for lack of funds - reach out if none of these levels work for your circumstances.

  • $300 - Scholarship level

  • $600 - Sustaining level 

  • $1200 - Pay your way + someone else's 

Contributions are divided** as follows:

  • 30% goes to Lauren, as facilitator compensation

  • 10% goes to ONE to cover administrative costs 

  • 60% is distributed to the organizations doing reparative and healing work, listed below

Our guest speaker honoraria this year are generously subsidized by Hilary Giovale, separate from participant contributions, so more of the reparations portion goes directly to the organizations below.

This year's circle will return contributions to the following organizations:

Valerie Troutt Projects (VTP) builds music-based platforms that center Black Womyn and musicians, uplifting the music of the African Diaspora and supporting Black communities to thrive mentally, physically, and spiritually. Rooted in the practice of SongCare, VTP fosters intergenerational dialogue, live performance, and music education through programs such as Jazz on the Move, Find Your Light, MoonCandy Live House Music Ensemble, and the Valerie Troutt JazzSoul Project & Trio. Our mission is to inspire, empower, and create new frameworks for collective well-being that stand as healthy alternatives to the constructs of white America. Valerie Troutt projects is fiscally  sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center of San Francisco, CA

Indigenous Connections 1696: Offers workshops to K - 12th and adults. Focusing on capoeira, hoop-dancing and arts. 

Since 2020 Funds have been returned to these organizations:

“ I appreciated the integrity of how the group was facilitated, supporting me in taking an honest look at the colonial chapters of my ancestral history. Rather than approaching this history with judgment or shame, I was supported in approaching with an intention of reckoning and healing. This process was deeply impactful. I now feel more connected to my ancestral lineages and I also feel I have tools to continue on the journey of learning and reckoning with the past — both the beauty and the suffering.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

Meet your 2026-2027
Circle Facilitator

Lauren Gucik is a facilitator, educator, and creative who is dedicated to weaving connections between people, land, and ancestral wisdom. Of Polish, Hungarian, and Czech descent, she feels called to remember and practice the pre-colonial, Earth-honoring ways of her Slavic ancestors - carried forward through story, song, and food.

Lauren's path into this work began in anti-racism and DEI spaces around 20 years ago, where she first started reckoning with racial injustice and her own place within it. Over time, she came to see that generations of violence among European peoples preceded and paved the way for colonialism and white supremacy -  and that healing and manifesting justice require turning inward as much as outward. This realization reoriented her practice toward ancestral healing and accountability, and a transformation from within. She spent the 2025–2026 year deepening this practice as and apprentice to  Hilary Giovale and Elyshia Holliday’s during Rekindling Ancestral Memory, and now carries this circle forward with gratitude for the ground they've tended.

Lauren lives on the ancestral homelands of the Chochenyo Ohlone People, where her relationships with land, ancestry, and ritual continue to shape her life's work of cultivating more just and reciprocal relationships with the Earth and all People.

2026-27 Guest Speakers

Atava Garcia Swiecicki (she/her/ella) is guided by her dreams, the plants and her Mexican, Polish, Hungarian and New Mexican ancestors.  She studied Feminist Studies at Stanford University and received her master’s degree in the Indigenous Mind Program at Naropa University Oakland.  The title of her thesis was “Journey to my Polish Indigenous Mind.”

Atava has studied healing arts extensively for over thirty years and has been mentored by herbalists, curanderas and traditional knowledge keepers.   She works as a clinical herbalist and teacher and is dedicated to remembering the healing traditions of her ancestors and supporting others to reconnect with their ancestral medicine.   She also loves helping people build relationships with plants, whom she considers some of our greatest teachers and healers.  She was the founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal, Folk and Indigenous Medicine on Ohlone territory in Oakland, CA.  She’s currently living in Tewa Pueblo territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she recently published her first book called The Curanderx Toolkit:  Reclaiming Ancestral Herbal Medicine and Rituals for Healing. 

Her website is: www.ancestralapothecary.com 
IG: @curanderxtoolkit .
YouTube: @ancestralapothecary

Cindy Waszak Geary is a White settler descendent of ancestors from the Netherlands, England, and Germany who arrived in places now known as Virginia, New York, and Iowa. Eventually her maternal line all settled in North Carolina, where Cindy also has lived most of her life. She worked for nearly 30 years doing global public health research focused on reproductive health and gender before beginning to write about social justice issues through the lens of her personal life. She is co-author, with LaHoma Smith Romocki of Going to School in Black and White—A dual memoir of de-segregation (2017), and the author of Ancestral Landscapes—Searching for my place in the world (2025), In 2022, after she had begun excavating her family stories for Ancestral Landscapes, Cindy joined a Rekindling Memory Circle (and later the Tending Circle) led by Hilary Giovale and Elyshia Holliday and has continued to develop friendships with others (including Lauren!) doing similar work of reckoning and repair of ancestral legacies. She is a mother of a daughter and a son and the grandmother of one granddaughter. When not writing she is gardening, taking photographs, walking in the woods, and practicing yoga.

Link to her website and her book. 
IG: @cindywaszakgeary

Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Founders

Hilary Giovale is a community organizer, facilitator, and writer who lives on Hopi, Diné, Apache, and Havasupai land in Flagstaff, Arizona.  An American settler, she is descended from Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of Ancient Europe.  Hilary seeks to follow Indigenous and Black leadership in support of human rights, environmental justice, and equitable futures.  As an active reparationist, her work is guided by intuition, love, and relationships.  She divests from whiteness and bridges divides with truth, healing, apology, and forgiveness.  She is the author of the award-winning book Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair and a Bean-Ghlùine (midwife) of Sacred Land Alliance.  Learn more about her work at goodrelative.com.

Elyshia Holliday is the Executive Director of the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries, a Naturopath, community facilitator, and mother dedicated to restoring our relationship with Mother Earth.

She spent more than two decades co-leading a nonprofit devoted to repairing the human–Earth relationship, a path that grounded her in collective care, ecological restoration, and ceremonial practice. Elyshia now turns toward her own European ancestral lineages—Celtic, Germanic, and Nordic—seeking to rekindle the Earth-honoring ways of her ancestors and become a good relative in these times. Her current work is rooted in partnership with Trees and collaborative leadership.

She lives in Washington state on the ancestral lands of the Yakama people with her husband, youngest son, and their four-legged companions.

“I'm in awe of the journey Hilary and Elyshia guided us on. I have a new relationship with my ancestors and they are living through me. I've experienced healing and movement toward wholeness. Highly recommend this offering.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

“The care, depth and wisdom of Hilary and Elyshia wove a subtle but profound web throughout our circle that held each of us as we explored and discovered our histories and mysteries.”

— Past Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle Participant

Honored Elders from Previous Circles

With Gratitude to Past Guest Speakers

  • "Through digging back far enough and feeling into how my ancestors were also once deeply connected to the Earth, I've been able to soften some of the shame I've been carrying. The less shame takes up space inside me, the more room I have to be present and awake with energy to take action and make reparations in the now. I feel this shift on a visceral level."

    Past Circle Participant

  • "The Circle has been a beautiful, warm, welcoming container for learning and sharing. The practices, conversations, and speakers all generated potent heart-centered connection and action. Hilary and Elyshia guide the group with authenticity and a skillful mix of clear communication, joy, and their own lived experience in this lifelong work. So grateful for this grounding foundation for my ongoing ancestral healing and reparations commitments.”

    Past Circle Participant

  • "My awareness has expanded to see how much we all carry around with us from our family history. I am heartened to know that there are tangible avenues I can take toward healing the wounds that my ancestors inflicted and endured. I feel more connected to this path in myself and am excited to continue to let this path unfold, to listen to what needs attention and healing in my lineage."

    Past Circle Participant

Ancestry and Nature

Why is this Circle Focused on European Ancestry?

ONE's extended family has been a majority white community, and we long for the vibrant diversity of a healthy human ecosystem. At the same time, in order to avoid repeating the harms of our ancestors, European descended people must come together and explore our family stories honestly. We have an opportunity to open our minds and our hearts to meet the complex people from whom we descend.  We do this with empathy for their lives and circumstances and with the courage to transform their legacies.  

In this circle, we will explore our ancestors' stories as settlers on Indigenous land. In our experience - as well as in the collective experience - it has been helpful to begin this process within Euro-centered community spaces. This helps to eliminate projecting our ancestral traumas onto marginalized peoples. Together, we will practice becoming good relatives to diverse communities over time.

This circle is not an exclusively white space.  People of partial European ancestry who are interested in exploring their settler legacies are welcome and encouraged to join us.

What Does the Circle Have to Do with Nature?

Somewhere in each of our ancestral lineages, we all descend from Earth-honoring people- those who were intricately woven into the web of life. Over time, many of our ancestors forgot this innate knowing, due to trauma, migration, war, and famine.

Our legacies became empty.

In this process of forgetting, we began to see Earth and all her beings as nothing more than resources. This is part of colonization. The modern environmental movement emerged from this history. It has used archaic patterns to “protect the natural world,” rather than working with Nature as a loving partner.

In this circle, as we reconnect with our ancestors, we also begin to awaken the innate Earth-honoring knowledge that lives in each of us. As we heal our pasts, we become better relatives for our human and non-human family.