NETTLE MOTHER RETREAT The Hearth of the First Mothers

A mythic weekend of story, ceremony, ancestral memory
and the ancient wisdom of nettle.

There's an ancient thread within us, waiting to be remembered.

Something rich and wild happens when story, land and body begin speaking to one another. When we allow them to reshape how we see ourselves, each other and the living world.

Nettle Mother is our guide.
Fairy tales are our map.

Nettle does not ask us to reinvent ourselves. She gathers the loose threads
of our being and teaches us how to weave them back into something
strong enough to carry love.

Together we'll journey into the ancient knowing of women and weaving, the wisdom of fairy tales, nettles, ancient bird goddesses, and the early grandmothers of Old Europe. Our bone memory of them all still lingers.


It’s a connection with the earliest mythologies of Old Europe. A lineage back to the Mother House of ancestral memory where the hearth fire still holds warm embers. All they need is our breath. 


This Spring weekend join us for a hearth gathering. Walking the land. Listening beside water and tree.
Presence.
Imagination.
Storytelling.

For thousands of years, women have gathered wild nettles from hedgerows and forest edges. Hidden inside those green, stinging stems lay long golden fibres that can be transformed into some of the strongest cloth ever woven.

This is slow, patient work.
Nettle must be gathered, softened, broken open, tended, untangled, spun and woven, until what once stung becomes what strengthens us.

We’ll trace the story of nettle’s transformation from wild green plant into strong thread, allowing that same journey to restore and reimagine something within ourselves.
   

We'll also be held by one of Europe’s great initiation tales - The Wild Swans, and by the mysterious lineage of swan women, bird goddesses and the first weaving women whose stories linger beneath the threads of our own lives. We return to the hearth of the ancient Mother House and ask for their blessing.

These tales of swans, devotion and enchantment woven with the threads of nettle, offer gifts that ask us to learn other ways of attending.

To gather what has been scattered.
To soften what has become rigid.
To release what no longer belongs.
To discover the hidden threads of strength already living in us.

Together they offer a map for these changing times, not by giving us answers, but by sharing ways of listening, of ripening what’s true in our being.  

Spinning words, spinning threads of our lives, connecting us and place and grandmothers. There’s magic in thread. Of warp and weft. Of spinning and spiralling and twisting, making once separate things cohesive, making new strengths.
                                          
Weaving wholeness.

Engage with stories in the old oral way and find them in the landscape.
Stories for now, for our longings, for what might be calling to us to listen
and weave us into a richer, deeper belonging.

We’ll be entering these tales. Living inside their skin. Letting them breathe and stretch us, according to their own wild wisdom, and reshape our own old stories, held under their wings.

Where stories are maps to psyche and soul.
Where imagination becomes another way of opening to soul.

What awaits us

• Storytelling in the old oral tradition

• Guided imaginal journeys, somatic movement and embodied integration

• Meeting Nettle as plant ally and guide

• The Wild Swans tale and what it evokes

• Swan women, bird goddesses and the mythic feminine of Old Europe

• Tracing the soul metaphors in spinning of nettle fibre

• Creative writing, drawing and reflective practices. Write. Move. Create. Rest.

• Earth connection and communion with the living land

• Ceremony with fire and water.

• Hearth gatherings and shared conversations

You may come away with

• A different way of seeing a story or pattern you have been carrying, with more space around it and more choice in how you meet it.

• A deeper trust in imagination, body and intuition as ways of knowing

• Greater clarity around what is asking to be gathered, released, strengthened or carried forward in your life.

• An embodied experience of working with fairy tale as a living map of guidance and wisdom

• A renewed sense of connection with ancestral feminine wisdom, the old stories, and the long lineage of women who gathered plants, tended hearths, spun thread and carried story.


A deep wild engagement

We are tracing an ancient mother line back to Old Europe, seeking the ones who can hold us. Ancestors big enough to hold our dreams.

The hearth was never simply a fireplace.
It was the place where memory stayed alive.

This weekend we return to that symbolic hearth, to listen for the echoes that have been carried forward. To tend what longs to live through us and be remembered. To be held among a small circle of women, story, plant and place.

To sit once more beside the hearth of the first mothers.

Following the thread placed in your hands.

Letting story and nettle mother weave something strong to hold us in these rapidly changing times.

NOTE: while we will be tracing the steps of nettle becoming thread, woven amongst story and ecomythology, we engage with it as metaphors for our own unfolding soul journey, not as literal weaving and spinning. Nettle thread will be available for cording though, and feel free to bring your own spindle!

COST including accommodation in single room, meals and all experiences at Karuna.
Please contact Jacqui if you would like to arrange a payment plan, for the registration form and direct deposit details.


 $795 supported
 $845 full, includes gst

Deposit of $350 required to confirm your place.

Karuna is a lovely natural bush property of over 300 acres, a short distance from Katoomba. There is an abundance of native trees with many walks and meditation spaces.

The retreat commences at 3.00pm on Friday September 25, 2026. We conclude at 3pm on Sunday September 27.

Accommodation is in simple single rooms or historic railway carriages.

Numbers are limited to a maximum of 14 women.

Please contact Jacqui Bushell with any questions, for the registration form and to hold a place for you.

TESTIMONIALS

Jacqui’s deep dives into story are transformational. This is true soul work, using a diverse variety of techniques to draw out who we are in our own stories. I emerged from her course with a new understanding of an old story, inspiration for a personal creative project, and a community of kindred spirits to travel with. Katie Carey, USA

Your workshops and classes are phenomenal and transformational!! I spelunked, grew, sprouted anew, and gained so much perspective on my own life and the world of story in your classes.  Karianna Rosenberg, USA

YOUR FACILITATOR

Jacqui Bushell helps people awaken their creative essence through deep connection with the earth, story, and the sacred in nature. Blending plant spirit alchemy, energy awareness, embodiment and profound journey work, she inspires transformational shifts in how we see ourselves and the world. Jacqui has been dancing with the mythic imagination for much of her life, through her love of the wisdom held in fairy tales and her work as a spiritual herbalist listening for the voices and stories in the land.

Weaving story and earth medicine to foster deeper connections with nature and each other. Jacqui has been facilitating experiential women’s circles, workshops, and retreats internationally for 30 years. She inspires people to live passionately and creatively, in kinship with soul, spirit and the living world.

FB Jacqui Bushell  /  jacquibushell@me.com

“Stories heal us because we become whole through them. In the process of writing, of discovering our story, we restore those parts of ourselves that have been scattered, hidden, suppressed, denied, distorted, and forbidden, and we come to understand that stories heal.”   Deena Metzger

I really look forward to diving deep with you and exploring the power of myth as a transformational agent in our lives and the world.