The name Gathering Bones was inspired by La Loba, the bone-gathering woman presented by Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run with the Wolves. In the story, La Loba walks the desert gathering bones and sings them back to life.
What follows is my own reflection on the story and the way it informs this work.
There is an old story about a woman who walks the desert collecting bones.
She gathers what has been scattered.
What has been discarded.
What has been left behind in order to survive.
She does not rush.
She does not force.
She knows the shape of what she is looking for.
Bone by bone, she assembles the structure.
And as she works, she circles back —
returning to places she has already searched,
seeing what she could not see before,
finding pieces she was not ready to carry the first time.
This is spiral work.
Not linear improvement.
Not sudden transformation.
Return.
Recognition.
Reassembly.
Bones are what remain when everything ornamental falls away.
They are structural.
Honest.
Essential.
Gathering Bones is the practice of walking your own landscape
and collecting the parts of yourself
you set aside to function inside systems that rewarded disconnection.
The voice you softened.
The instinct you overrode.
The boundary you swallowed.
The pace that never belonged to you.
We do not add more.
We gather what is already yours.
And as the structure rebuilds
steadily, deliberately
life returns to it.
Not because we forced it.
But because it was always there.
Gathering Bones is an invitation to walk your own landscape and gather what has always been yours.Explore the Mentorship
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