Roots & Rupture
Return to Wild: The Spiral Year Cycle 1 of 3
(March to June 2026)
A Return to Wild through Story, Memory, and Earth
There are moments in a woman’s life when something ancient begins to stir.
A longing for home that has no clear address.
A grief that feels older than this lifetime.
A quiet knowing that the way we have been taught to live is not the way our bodies remember.
Roots & Rupture - our first cycle for The Spiral Year explores the fault lines that shape us, and the moments when those stories crack.
Through three powerful novels by women of the Global South, we will journey through exile, resistance, and ecological remembering.
We will trace how women carry history in their bodies, how courage is born in the face of violence, and how the land itself holds our stories long after they have been silenced.
THE ARC OF THE CYCLE
Across three books, we move through a shared journey:
Remembering — Salt Houses, Hala Alyan
We begin with memory and diaspora. This novel explores how women carry home across oceans, wars, and generations. We will listen for what has been broken, what has survived, and how the body becomes a living archive of longing.
Resisting — In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
We move into voice, sisterhood, and resistance. This story of the Mirabal sisters shows how ordinary women become forces of transformation in the face of tyranny. Here, grief becomes courage and love becomes rebellion.
Re-rooting — In the Name of the Trees, Merlinda Bobis
We end by returning to land. This novel brings us into forests, ancestral soil, and the wounds held by the earth itself. Trees become witnesses to war, colonialism, and survival. Healing is not only personal, it is ecological.
Threaded through all three is a central question:
What does it mean to return to what is most true and alive in us after rupture?
Returning to wild does not mean leaving the world behind.
It means remembering:
the ancestral threads that run through us,
the instinct that knows when to say yes and when to refuse,
the grief that keeps us human,
the love that keeps us tender; and
the courage that keeps us awake.
Wild -
is integrity.
is memory.
is the part of us that cannot be fully domesticated by silence or fear.
WHAT YOU WILL GAIN
By the end of the cycle, you will have:
walked with three powerful works of literature across exile, resistance, and return
reflected on your lineage, memory, and relationship to land
practiced listening to story, body, and the living world
held space for grief, courage, and collective healing
clarified what a return to wild means for you in this season of life
More than a book club, this is a journey of remembering.
WHAT WE WILL READ
Over the season, we will read:
Salt Houses — Hala Alyan
A multigenerational story of Palestinian displacement, memory, and longing for home.
In the Time of the Butterflies — Julia Alvarez
The story of the Mirabal sisters and their resistance under dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
The Mango Bride — Marivi Soliven
A haunting Filipino novel of forests, war, and ancestral grief, where the land itself becomes a witness to history and a keeper of memory.
Three different histories.
One shared meditation on women, power, survival, and belonging.
HOW WE GATHER
Each book unfolds over four sessions, held in a gentle rhythm of inner work and shared witnessing.
Sessions 1 & 3 — Guided Inner Work
You receive a digital workbook with reflective prompts and invitations for slow reading and journaling.
Discussion continues in our private Whatsapp forum, where you can share insights and questions at your own pace.
Sessions 2 & 4 — Live Circles
We gather in real time to speak, listen, and make meaning together.
These are not lectures, but guided, collective conversations held with care, depth, and respect.
This structure allows you to move between solitude and community, reflection and dialogue.
THIS CIRCLE IS FOR YOU IF YOU:
feel drawn to stories of ancestry, memory, and belonging
sense that history lives in your body in ways you want to understand more deeply
are willing to sit with moral complexity rather than easy answers
prefer slow, thoughtful reading over rushing
long for a heart-centered literary community
You do not need to be a “serious reader” or an academic.
You only need curiosity, openness, and a willingness to listen.
YOUR INVITATION
If you feel the pull of home, the weight of history, and the whisper of your own wild knowing, you are welcome here.
May these stories become mirrors.
May they become thresholds.
May they help you remember what is still alive and untamed within you.
I look forward to reading, listening, and remembering together.