Moon Beams
We believe intergenerational mentorship, community, strong intuition, awakened creativity and a deep connection with the Earth provides the taproot of strength needed to weather the tests of life and young adulthood in a healthy way.
Being a young adult connected to the divine feminine is beautiful, powerful and worth celebrating! We believe you don’t have to come of age in isolation, unaware and in trauma, rather we rise connected, in tune and resilient.
This is the time to claim our passageways and make them reflective of the natural, wild and wise beings we are, as we feed beauty to the Earth and serve our families and communities.
Moon Beams is a tender and powerful circle designed to honor the sacred threshold between childhood and young womanhood. This program surrounds each girl with sisterhood, mentorship, and the loving presence of the Earth as she steps deeper into her becoming. Through ritual, creativity, nature connection, and honest conversation, we create a village of support around this transformative time in a young woman’s life.
Moon Beams Program Flow
FRIDAY
Tea Temple Gathering & Forest Bathing
We begin our time together in the Tea Temple, sharing a quiet tea ceremony to arrive, breathe, and ground. From there, we move into shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, allowing the trees and land to soften us into presence.
Rosary Crafting & The Red Tent
In the afternoon, we begin crafting our rose-petal rosaries — beads made from slow-cooked, dried rose petals, blended with crystals the girls intuitively choose. These talismans become lifelong allies, carried with them as reminders of their beauty, strength, and heart.
As we bead, we open our Red Tent space: a gentle, age-appropriate circle where we talk about our bodies, cycles, changes, and truths in a warm, grounded, shame-free way. Elders and mentors hold space for questions, stories, and sisterhood.
SATURDAY
Rosaries and Red Tent part 2
We return to our rosaries on Saturday morning, finishing these sacred pieces with intention and care. While we continue with our fun and interactive red tent offering with Ela one of the Mothers of our Red Tent at Spirit Weavers.
Water Ritual, Earthen Pigments & Anointing
In the afternoon we travel together to a special spot along the banks of the Illinois River-a quiet place just for the Moonbeams. Here we create simple earthen-pigment body and face paints, make offerings to the water, anoint one another with essential oils, and speak prayers to the waters as we set our sails for the threshold ahead.
Village Threshold Ceremony
Saturday evening the young women participate in the village-wide Threshold Witnessing Ceremony in the Wedding Chapel. Surrounded by community, they cross a symbolic threshold into their blooming selves, honored and held by the love of the village.
SUNDAY
Earth My Body Ritual & Plant Wisdom Walk
Sunday morning we offer Earth My Body — an elemental embodiment ritual where the young women learn energy tools, grounding practices, and ways of listening to intuition and the natural world. We close this arc with a gentle plant-wisdom walk.
Cacao Ceremony & Closing Circle
We complete our journey with a youth-friendly cacao ceremony, where each young woman is witnessed and honored by her sisters. We sing songs, share reflections, and close our circle with gratitude and blessing.
The Heart of Moonbeams
Moonbeams is a sanctuary: a place where girls and young women can explore who they are becoming, feel supported in their bodies, ask real questions, connect deeply with the land, express themselves creatively, and be held with deep care as they cross this important threshold into their womanhood.
The Moon Beams Program registration will be available on Saturday, January 17th with regular ticket sales. Tickets are $565
A note for parents and guardians: The sauna is for adults 18+ only. Please no unaccompanied Moon Beams in the Sauna at any point during the gathering. Thank you!
PROGRAM COORDINATORS
Lena Eastes – Moon Beam Facilitator
Lena feels at home here on our amazing planet earth. She’s one of those people who’s never met a stranger and although she travels the world, she finds family everywhere (including the plants and animals). She’s a Rainbow Dancer, a “warrior who risks it all for love.” Lena can be found singing with big groups of girls, holding ceremonial space, playing with her daughter, arranging flowers, submerged in a waterfall, or breaking it down on the dance floor. You may first hear her flute song before you see her coming. Lena was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Lena graduated from University of North Carolina at Asheville with a degree in Cross Cultural Sustainability. She has her Permaculture Design Certificate, and graduated from the Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness Program at the Regenerative Design Institute. She is the founder and director of Non-profit Earth Path Education, where we help grow a culture of listening to the earth as our wisest mentor and teach Nature Connection to children and adults and guide girls through their Rites of Passage into womanhood. Check out earthpatheducation.com. She has guided university students on trips to the mountains, rivers and caves of North Carolina and beyond, through the UNC Asheville Outdoors Program. She empowered youth working with Free the Children as the Regional Network coordinator for the Southeast–providing solutions that free child soilders, child sex slaves and child laborers. Lena is a lifelong earth and human rights activist and protector and uplifter of children. Lena fosters relationship and connection with the earth for hundreds of families from Silicon Valley to Louisville, KY to Western North Carolina. She provides guidance and facilitation for important thresholds in life from becoming a woman, to getting marriage marriages, and giving birth.
She has taught music, art and nature connection in Waldorf schools for the past four years. She leads Women Rewilding, a nine month earth skills immersion. She initiated and annually organizes (for the past decade) Soil Sisters, the young women’s program for the Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference. Through her flower farm and business, Blossoming Hearts, Lena grows and arranges ceremonial flowers. She is the founder of Earth Song Rising (www.earthsongrising.com), a four day singing gathering in Asheville, NC.
Lena has the joy of being mama to Naia Grace! Lena loves rainbows, swimming with dolphins, hummingbirds, kundalini yoga, prayer, planting seeds, foraging, running, dancing, working with clay, taking deep breaths, and bringing people together. She grows community, family and earth based spirituality at her home in Asheville, NC.