Edit: Courses are now closed. Please stay tuned for upcoming courses!
Here’s one thing I know to be true: while I don’t know what it is, exactly, I know there is a greater meaning to our existence. I have a small part to play in it that is solely and uniquely mine. Only I can play it. And the same goes for you.
I believe that we best play our parts by listening to our intuition and to messages sent to us, whether internal or external, which are affirmed by our intuition. I believe that following these messages and affirmations is what helped our people survive, even while outside forces tried to destroy us.
This site and the offerings herein are space for you to explore your intuition, the messages coming to you, and the way these messages can guide your steps in this dance of Life.
I, personally, I don’t have the answers for your very special, very precious life. But you do. I hope to help you find them.
Ours First offerings will change and grow over time. You’re invited to check out this site frequently for new offerings.
Current Ours First Offerings:
The Ours First Out Loud Course Series
This series is designed to help participants better explore their intuitive nudgings and follow through in a small and supportive group environment. Consider these courses as support-and-accountability meetings for following your unique life path. Courses meet through a weekly videocall.
A week before each class meeting, participants will be given a writing/thinking prompt and will be encouraged to deeply consider the prompt in order to share their thoughts during class time (prompts may remain the same or change each week, depending on the course). While the class facilitator may respond to each participant’s thoughts, other participants are encouraged to constructively and lovingly respond as well — remember that, though this is individual work, we’re also in this work together!
To get the most out of each course, participants are encouraged to commit to the Three Asks:
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75 minutes alone preparing for the weekly meeting, considering the week’s discussion question:
The prompts for each week’s class are simply stated in order to give each participant lots of room for thoughtful responses. In order to give your responses the time and space they deserve, please reserve at least 75 minutes per week in a quiet and calming location, where you can be alone, to respond to them. I suggest you reserve at least 10 minutes at the start of your session to quiet your mind and settle into the work, and 10 minutes at the end of the session to give yourself the mental and physical time to transition out of that quiet place and into the rest of your day. Please honor those 75 minutes alone just as you would the 75 minutes you’ll be spending in class. This solo work is important!
2. 75 minutes with us talking/thinking/processing in group:
Our classes are intentionally small in order to allow each participant the time to share their thoughts about the prompt, offer responses to other participants, and to ask questions. Please plan to be present for each full class session, as consistent presence will foster the shared and safe space required for group-based self-exploration. Please also note that each class participant is expected to share their prompt responses and to respond as needed to their classmates’ responses. If such group sharing is not preferable, please consider other Ours First offerings when available.
3. Truth in all coursework:
In all work for this class, I ask for complete honesty. Your true thoughts and feelings are valuable and acknowledging them is necessary for this journey! Let go of the idea that you have to “sound good” or “sound right.” Writing and speaking from your own heart/spirit/soul/gut is enough.
Please also note that course expectations about honesty and safe space are not mutually exclusive. Remember that this course is based on each participant’s own self exploration, which is hard, complex work that requires honesty about one’s own thoughts, feelings, and expectations. That said, it is also vital that we recognize other participants’ own hard, complex work, and that the work is only helped when we are kind and careful with each other, particularly with our questions and criticism. Let us uphold a standard of care through truth and truth through care.
Interested in the series? Register for upcoming courses below!
Course 1: Intuitionwork
This first five-week course in the series starts with the easy but not-so-easy practice of recognizing and following our intuition in both big and small ways. While we will discuss our beliefs about intuition and how it shows up in our lives, we will also document our weekly practice of following where our intuition leads us, talking and supporting each other through our individual processes.
The purpose of this course is to grow our recognition of our intuition as not only helpful, but as primary and important guides for our lives.
Course 2: Stories of Our Pasts
*Enrollment priority to BIPOC participants.*
Those of us from BIPOC communities can often speak to witnessing the practices of elder community members in our lives, as well as the intuitive practices of younger people. While these practices seemed to have no rhyme or reason from the dominant perspective, they helped the practitioners survive and thrive within the larger oppressive context.
In this five-week course, participants will be asked to document and speak about these practices, as doing so can help us more strongly recognize these practices as based in long-standing and valid knowledge systems that have been otherwise hidden from us.
The purpose of this course, through documentation and speaking aloud, is to remind ourselves to trust and reclaim these systems, and to support each other in doing so. Our heads know that our knowledge systems exist, so this course is designed to remind our hearts and spirits as well.
Course 3: Younger You
Whether we understand our younger years as particularly joyful or particularly difficult, we can often recall our childhood moments alone, where we felt most joyful or most engaged doing something that completely made sense to us, even if its value was not recognized by the people around us.
In this five-week course, participants will be asked to think deeply and discuss those most engaging and joyful moments, as well as the experiences around those moments. What many of us find is that the things that we intuitively loved to do as very young people are some of the same things that call to us many years later.
The purpose of this course is to delve into those past experiences, explore how those experiences guide us now, and think about how those experiences may best guide us in the future. Consider this course as a place to consider present and future possibility based on past experience.
Course 4: The Group Where We Talk about God (or Whatever We Want to Call Her)
Despite our organized religion inclinations or lack thereof, and despite the numerous unsettling circumstances that surround us, many of us are having feelings or experiences that show us there is a Higher Power at work in our lives and in the world. While familiar religious and spiritual traditions may play a part in this recognition, they don’t necessarily have to. And while some of us experience this recognition from a place of complete newness and discovery, others already have prior knowledges that help inform what they’re seeing and feeling. Whether you fall into any of these categories or somewhere in between, this course is the chance to regularly share about those God-experiences (a working name; we can change it!) and to hear others speak about their own in a safe, open space.
Please beware: This group is not for those who feel like they can or should preach to others about their own Higher Power beliefs, nor is this a space for anyone claiming to be an expert or authority. Proselytizing, conversion, convincing, or persuasion efforts are not okay here. Rather, this course offers a consistent, protected space and time to be with others who want to speak aloud about their Higher Power experiences and what those experiences have meant in their lives. Think of it as a support group for spirits living in bodies.
If you ever feel like this body-living-thing is real weird and that, as a great friend of mine says, “Nothing makes sense but God” (or whatever you want to call Her), this course four-week is for you!
Let's talk about contingence. 