Re-Storying & Re-Storing Women’s Program

Makoa Quest’s is excited to announce a new collaboration with NewStories—two organizations united in our commitment to creating regenerative futures and systems that honor both people and place.

Our newest Community Outreach initiative is the Re-Storying and Re-Storing Women's Circle, a monthly gathering held at our living classroom and agroforestry sanctuary in Haiku—offered in partnership with Allison Joseph of NewStories. Emerging from the profound recognition that we cannot engage in Re-Storying—of ourselves, our communities, our futures—without Re-Storing our relationship to the Earth, this transformative program brings together women seeking healing, connection, and authentic transformation to alter the lens through which they see themselves, their relationships, and their challenges. Through ceremony, story work, somatic practices, and land-based healing, women support one another in designing new stories, patterns and structures that create tangible, meaningful change—weaving together a path toward personal and collective wholeness where healing our stories and connecting with the land becomes a mirror for restoring ourselves and our relationships to place.

Re-Storying & Re-Storing Women’s Program

Description

We live through stories—those passed down from family, culture, and media. Yet many of these stories no longer serve us. Like the air we breathe, stories are all around us, shaping our beliefs and our actions. We perceive our world through stories, and we use stories to change that world.
NewStories’ Re-Storying is the practice of imagining new, life-giving narratives that reflect who we truly are and the world we want to create. When we change our stories, we change what's possible. This transformative process helps you build capacity for regenerative futures—within yourself, your relationships, and your community.
Alongside this, Re-Storing invites us to heal and renew our relationships—with ourselves, each other, and the Earth. Together, these practices offer a path toward personal and collective wholeness and healing.

Each gathering is held within a carefully crafted container—an intentional, sacred space with clear boundaries, safety agreements, and skilled facilitation that honors the sacred feminine. This is a place for women to authentically engage with all parts of themselves while stepping into their authentic power and joy. The land and natural world serve as grounding resources and places of safety, anchoring our work in the wisdom and medicine of the Earth.

Facilitated by Ally Joseph in collaboration with an intergenerational collective of facilitators, activists, change-makers, and healers who bring their unique skills, lived experiences, and ancestral knowledge to each gathering.

The Container

What We Explore

Story Work & Narrative Healing: Recognizing the stories that shape us and consciously choosing to amplify, modify, or step into entirely new narratives that are more life-affirming.
Ceremonial & Land Work: Honoring transitions, cycles, and our reciprocal relationship with the natural world through meaningful land-based practices.
Shadow & Repressed Parts Integration: Compassionately meeting and building relationships with the parts of ourselves we've learned to hide, shame, or deny—embracing the truth that there are no bad parts.
Somatic & Embodied Practices: Connecting with our bodies as vessels of innate wisdom and learning to listen to our nervous system intelligence through movement, breathwork, and embodied awareness.
Collective Healing: Understanding how our individual healing serves the greater web of life, weaving together personal transformation and communal restoration.

Our Connection to Place & Purpose

We gather at Makoa Quest’s living classroom and agroforestry sanctuary in Haiku, where restoration is an active expression of care, respect, and responsibility. It is how we remember our connection to place and participate in the healing of both land and people. Here, we reconnect with ancestral knowledge, explore ancient stories, learn to embody life-affirming ways of being, and participate in Re-Storing the natural systems that sustain life on Maui.

Through engaging in meaningful land-based work, ceremony, and shared learning, we discover that restoration of the land becomes a mirror for Re-Storing ourselves and our relationships to place. This sacred reciprocity infuses our circle work with deeper purpose and grounding in the wisdom of the ʻāina.

Monthly Circles

August Circle

In August, we held sacred space for our inaugural circle, gathering the day after the anniversary of the Lahaina fires under the full moon during the Lion's Gate Portal. Together, we engaged in the tender work of alchemizing grief—rooted in Hawaiian cultural wisdom and kanaka-led pule. Women came carrying their own threads of story, landscapes of loss, and seeds of transformation. Through ceremony honoring the ʻāina and ancestors, the creation of a sacred earth altar, shadow exploration through dialogue and story work, somatic dance and embodiment practices, and ceremonial land work weaving ti lei, we Re-Storied our relationship to grief and Re-Stored connection to self, each other, and the land.
A blog post illuminating the sacred learnings and wisdom from this circle will be shared soon.
October Circle

Theme: Re-Storying and Re-Storing Our Bodies as Vessels of Innate Wisdom
This month we are opening a new two-day format—two complementary gatherings to deepen together in circle, body, and land wisdom. Please join us for one or both!
Day 1: Circle & Somatics
Saturday, October 11th | 11:00am – 2:00pm
Theme: Our Bodies as Vessels of Innate Wisdom
We'll move through guided Re-Storying dialogue, journaling, somatic practices, fascia release, breathwork, and circle sharing—creating space to listen deeply and integrate body wisdom. Together we'll Re-Story the sensations and feelings we carry in our bodies, remembering that our bodies speak an innate language of wholeness.
Day 2: Land Wisdom Day
Sunday, October 12th | 10:00am – 12:30pm
Theme: Creation is the Wisdom of the Feminine Body
Through movement, connection with the lunar cycle, hands-on land tending, and embodied reflection, we'll explore how our body's wisdom dances with the earth. We'll root in creation as medicine, discovering how the wisdom of the land mirrors the wisdom of our own bodies.
Exchange: Donation-based, suggested $25 per day (support Makoa Quest's programs)
This circle is an invitation to remember: You are already whole. There are no bad parts. Everything has its own story.
To RSVP: Please reach out to ally@newstories.org

Expanding Women's Programming

Makoa Quest is committed to expanding women's programming in 2025 and 2026 as a core priority of our mission. We are calling forward and inviting women who feel moved to step forward and create offerings—whether through facilitation, healing arts, cultural practices, land-based wisdom, or other modalities that support women's connection to themselves, each other, and the Earth.

If you have ideas for programming, would like to offer support, are interested in funding opportunities, or want more information about how you can contribute to this growing movement, please contact ally@newstories.org. Together, we are weaving a future where women's wisdom, healing, and leadership are honored and supported.