2026 THEME
This year we embark on "Your Body as a Channel"
You are an instrument designed to receive messages: from your environment and from the beyond. If you are listening. How do you develop that capacity, especially when the world is already so noisy? How do you awaken your body? Many spiritual practices believe in transcending the body. Not here! Each month, we focus on a different area: for example, feet, belly, hands, mouth, etc. We tap and transform your history with it, edges, nervous system patterns, belief systems, cultural mythology, and outdated or maladaptive collective agreements. Then you begin to hear the messages it is communicating, and the antenna your body is as a whole.
How do we practice? Alongside each other, we synch to LISTENING DEEPLY to the stirrings and whispers within. The Loam is a place of belonging, re-wilding, intentional slow, creation, sharing, discernment, cyclical-living, rituals, growing, mystery, and un-learning. We are a vibrant global community grounded in the shared exploration of age-old story making and nervous system science. Nothing about our process is prescriptive. Our space is brave, playful, no bullshit, loving, electric and subterranean. We spend the concentrated arc of a year together and most continue on for the following year.
We come together to liberate ourselves from no-longer-adaptive programming and to recapture our own artistry and attention in a rapid and often distracted 21st century world. How do you rhythm (yes, it's a verb) yourself and your life? Let's undo the over-doing culture. Let's inhabit our true creative aliveness. Enter then: the very real ripple effect, a deep collective reclamation.
Loam [lohm]: a fertile soil consisting of a mixture of sand, clay, and decaying organic material.
The Loam is 1) the actual soil of earth, 2) the ecosystem of your people and place 3) and the particular divine essence within you. It is the source, from where we make, compost and renew/restore. If we develop our relationship with it, we grow in all directions: upward, downward, forward, backward, inward.
Your mammal-self knows how. In the company of others, you attune to nature's seasons to track your particular internal, external and ancestral rhythms. Anyone living anywhere can do this. We use the non-calendar frame of the equinoxes and solstices because it is familiar to all land-based cultures (which means all) across time. The fire stays continually lit at the circle/feed (aka "Loam Home") where we share, reflect and see one another. Of course, you could explore this process alone. But, growth and learning amplifies in community! What transpires? Real deal traction, accountability, impulse honing, preference-building and growth.
What if there was nothing to catch-up on? Truly.
What if you could access your unique deep impulses and dance with them?
Does your life (do you) crave ceremony?
Are you tired and disillusioned by grind culture?
Do you want to live in accordance with nature (no, this doesn't require living in the woods)?
Photo taken by Blair Speed when I was saying one of many goodbyes to the land I inhabited for 15 years.
Where does this practice originate?​
From Molly: I am part of a lineage (as are you) of people who once aligned their lives to natural cycles. The Loam is rooted in old and current knowing of first peoples everywhere. My particular synthesis and lived-experience of it comes from my Northwestern European forest-dwelling heritage in pre-colonial Ireland and England, a reckoning with my matrilineal colonizing ancestors on the Mayflower and my patrilineal ones who, as metallurgists, partook in the earth-stripping copper mines of Chile, my childhood living in 5 countries surrounded by cultures different than my own, an inborn intuitive "hearing" of the botanical world, my early adulthood immersion into menstrual and moon cycles, a continued Gen-X watchful eye on how technology and social media are shaping our collective attention, a deep, decades-long creative and professional practice and teaching of story alchemy, the humbling and honor of continued shadow/revelatory work in motherhood and longterm partnership, a hardy 3-year education in nervous system resilience building, and a reverential 15 year-long relationship with a vast triangular plateau where I once dwelled, and now a deepening relationship with our new home on a treed sub-ridge up against the mountains in the Gallatin Valley of Montana, unceded land known as Ahkoto waktai Sakum ("Many Come Together Country") or "Valley of the Flowers" a place once shared as common gathering, hunting and ceremonial ground for 11 American Indian nations, on which I am now a modern-day White settler. That's the short story in a long-form sentence. This is how it comes through me; now, how does it come through you? What is the terrain of YOU?
Who is this for?
You want to be embodied! Being a mammal excites you. You are curious about natural rhythms and exploring them alongside others who, like you, may identify as a rebel, or with the archetypes or real-world identities of wild one, healer, seer, witch/wizard, creative-maker, space-holder. You desire a map of sorts, a check-in place, one of self-accountability and growth, a shared space in which to track, witness and be witnessed. You are dedicated to collective liberation. Though it can feel hard to find another way, you know, in your bones, that the modern busy crush of life isn't the answer.
The Loam is for those who identify as women or non-binary. Why? You've been the consistent base and majority drawn to my work. I offer my best magic in that environment, at least for now.
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**Southern Hemisphere dwellers? I structured The Loam in rhythm with the Northern Hemisphere because 1) I live in it and 2) it is the origin place of my ancestors. 3) most (not all) of my workshop participants live north of the equator. You are welcome to join, knowing that we will be in opposite seasonal exploration of what you are living. Only you will know whether that could be fruitful. :)
Our space is intentionally minimalist, quality-over-quantity and founded on the truth that traction comes from slow and sustained doing.
Just like all our ancestors, we use poetry, art and music. A lot.
Everything is recorded so you can watch anytime.
What do we DO
Tuesday is our day!
Every live event happens then. We vary the time each week so different people from different places can attend.
Though we have a Mighty Networks feed for recordings, sharing wiring and conversations and resources, 90% of what we do is live.
Here is our rhythm for 2026. It's small so it will fit. Helps people determine what they can attend:
EVERY WEEK
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10% tracking tool
It continually moves the needle for people.
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EVERY MONTH
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2-hour Workshop
We explore our monthly theme with writing prompts and survival physiology exercises.
Out loud story-sharing and responding.
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1-hour Teahouse
We deepen our monthly theme with a cozy and connecting Q&A.
1-hour Sow + Tell
We ignite our monthly theme exploring inspiration from within and without .... led by Saadia.
1-hour Community Gathering
We broaden our monthly theme by building our resilience.
A space for sharing how we are bringing this work/play into our local communities.
A space for uncomfortable conversations regarding current events and world issues.
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EVERY SEASON
Wilderness Map
A visual tool to track your process.
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Seasonal Transition Ceremony
We take stock of what unfolded and make space for what is next.
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Playlist
It captures the moods (+ the moods within the moods) of the season.
It offers your body an external stimuli in which to learn about your mammal preferences.
How is The Loam different?
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It's not a faceless membership. I am THERE.
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It's global and those with shared geographies have met up in person! People have called The Loam, "magic, a safety net, a hug, a cauldron, a landing spot and a reappearing place, a deep aquifer of realness."
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I actively encourage participants to weave The Loam into their local communities. An online space is never a replacement for or in lieu of real contact with people you can touch. world.
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Creativity is very organizing for our human bodies because "making” anything artful actually soothes and organizes our nervous system. Research has also shown that expressive writing is linked to improved wellbeing, mood, and less stress. You fall into a trance-like quality and focus, much like meditation. This ability to access this kind of "presence" and creatrix wellspring is critical for our saturated era. We are born for this moment.
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What you won't get (on purpose): A massive archive of old workshops to sift through, 10 or 1,000 bonuses, worksheets for days, clutter or anything that initiates a feeling of “I must do more.” I believe in undoing the 'too much' of modern life.
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Ashley Dedin
I am so grateful for this community. Together, with Molly's guidance, we are creating a new way of being in the digital space that feels vibrant and connecting. I carry the prompts, workshops, comments and inspiration with me in all that I do.
Andrea Engi
I come here for realness. To connect with real people who feel real life in all its hard and messy and beautiful. I find inspiration. No one knows me but everyone knows things about me that no one in my life does. It’s a place of complete acceptance, where there are no boxes around me, where no one expects anything of me. The door is always open and I come and go at will.
Adley Vanderhyden
The Loam is like a hot cup of miso soup on a cold and cloudy day. I don't have to show up perfect or put together. Somehow through time and space, I am transported into a place of connection and belonging. A place where I feel seen and heard. I listen to others' stories (and feel so much less alone).
Roxanne Matthews
The Loam feels essential! I’ve created more ceremony and meaning in my life with this necessary, fertile ground where I can lay down, stomp, rage, sit or wonder in being human. And our group feed has the quality of ancestral landscape or folklore or mystery or psyche; somewhere that walks with you always, reliably present for the next dive in.
Who is your guide?
MOLLY CARO MAY
I’ve taught and facilitated personal story workshops for 15+ years—as space-holder, listener, weaver, and playful spark-plug. I am trained in Somatic Experiencing, a 3-year study of trauma resolution as developed by Dr. Peter Levine and run by Somatic Experiencing International. That said, whole indigenous cultures, not one man, are the creators of somatic healing. I dig the unvarnished, tactile, honest life as it is the one I make with my partner love Christopher and our two bright-eyed children. There's more, of course. Many past workshop participants have told me that building community is my wheelhouse. Some still meet up and continually say: "I've met some of my best friends in your spaces!" SO, let's do this. Let's make something mythic together.
I’m a biracial Pakistani-American educator, born and raised in Brooklyn, NY/Lenapehoking. I am a mother of two daughters who make my world spin, partnered with a tender tender of plants, daughter of a Punjabi immigrant poet and a steadfast Southern-Italian-Brooklynite, the spiritual descendant of an 11th Century Sufi saint, and the middle strand in a braid of sisters. I grew up straddling cultures and continents, always feeling like I existed in the “between places.” What I quickly came to find was that the between places are full of incredible stories. I’ve spent my life and my career tending the seeds of my own stories and creating spaces for others to tell theirs. As an educator for over 16 years, I’ve worked with children, young adults, and adults in many different contexts and capacities, inside and outside of traditional classroom spaces, and always, always in co-creation. I believe that learning can and should be liberatory and that liberation happens in community. I believe in abolition. I am in a committed relationship with hope. I am fiercely tender. I laugh and cry copiously. I love enormously. I live for stories. And I am so honored and elated to co-create these spaces with all of you.
Meet Saadia Khalid
Facilitator of Sow + Tell
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