The Poetry Apothecary Collective
A Chicago rooted and globally connected sanctuary for women ready to come home to themselves.
A steady place to reconnect with your voice, your center of gravity, and the parts of you that have been buried beneath years of holding everything together.
March Gatherings: Spring Awakening
Each month, we root ourselves in a single, guiding theme. Every gathering and writing salon gently circles back to it.
-
Sunday, March 8th | 1-2:30 pm CST | Zoom
Join us for an intimate feminine salon inspired by the powerful myth of The Skeleton Woman from Women Who Run With the Wolves — a story of thawing the frozen heart, reclaiming aliveness, and allowing warmth to return after seasons of loss, survival, or silence.
-
Tuesday, March 10th
Online: 12pm CST
Chicago: 7pm CST @ Kibbetznest
-
March 12th | 6:30 - 8 pm
Pink Couch BooksJoin us for an intimate feminine salon inspired by the powerful myth of The Skeleton Woman from Women Who Run With the Wolves — a story of thawing the frozen heart, reclaiming aliveness, and allowing warmth to return after seasons of loss, survival, or silence.
-
Sunday, March 15, 2026 | 1–4 pm
Le Loft (Chicago)
Together, we’ll move through a curated arc of embodiment, creation, and reclamation, including:
A Persephone-inspired embodiment and creative writing workshop with Dana Marie
A grounding, sacral sound bath activation with Ashley Logan
A playful DIY boudoir photo workshop with Maggie Rife Ponce, reclaiming your gaze and your image through your own eyes
-
Wednesday, March 28th | 7-8:30 pm CST | Zoom
For our final March gathering, we enter the world of Hamnet — the novel by Maggie O'Farrell and its film adaptation — a story of love, grief, and the quiet endurance of the natural world.
This story broke my heart and stitched it back together in the most beautiful, organic way. It returned me to the forest — to something elemental and deeply alive within myself.
I’ve been so moved by it that I feel called to gather around it, to write inside its themes of love, grief, and the natural world. And there is no more fitting time than March — our month of Spring Awakening — when the earth itself is softening and coming back to life.
I created this community because it’s what I needed when my life fell apart.
In 2021, I left an abusive marriage.
For years, I had slowly lost my center of gravity. My world revolved around trying to love someone who could not love me back. I poured all of my energy into holding the relationship together, believing that if I just tried harder, cared more, or gave more of myself, I could make it work. Instead, I lost myself.
I took a torch to the lifeless life and opened a new chapter.
Writing brought me back to myself. Not overnight. But as I returned to the page, time and time again, I began to hear myself again. I heard my voice, for the first time. And began a new love story.
The practice of journaling, writing poetry and songs became the place where I gave voice to all the scattered pieces of myself and invite them to come home.
And I realized:
There must be other women walking through this same kind of unraveling — women who have spent years holding everything together, anchoring themselves in others, and slowly losing touch with who they are.
This Collective was born from that knowing.
Because no woman should have to find her way back to herself alone.
Come alive through creativity
Come alive through creativity
A SANCTUARY FOR RECLAMATION
Writing and creativity are simply the doorway.
What we are really doing here is:
Learning how to stay connected to ourselves again.
Like a nervous system that has been trained for years to orient outward — toward others’ needs, expectations, and approval — we gently retrain ourselves to come back inward.
Not through force.
Through practice.
Through expression.
Through witnessing.
Through community.
Because you cannot reclaim yourself in isolation.
Join us as a founding member at the lowest membership cost.
WHY A CREATIVE PRACTICE CHANGES EVERYTHING
When you return to the page regularly, something profound happens: you slow down and begin to pay attention. You find safety in your inner world. You begin to respond instead of react to life. You stop feeling the need to perform and start telling the truth.
Over time, this changes everything. From how you make decisions, to how you trust yourself to how you relate to others.
This is why Audre Lorde famously wrote, “poetry is not a luxury.”
It is a pathway back to aliveness.
THIS IS FOR YOU IF…
This Collective is especially for women who:
Feel like they’ve been living on the edges of their own lives
Have spent years holding everything together for others
Sense something inside them is stirring — but don’t know what yet
Long to feel more alive, expressed, and anchored
Crave depth, real connection, and meaningful conversation
Want a steady place to come back to themselves
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
A simple, steady rhythm that supports your return to yourself:
✨ Monthly themes that help you explore and expand your inner world
✨ 2x/month live (over Zoom) guided writing salons each month
✨ An intimate community space
✨ Tools for embodied expression and emotional grounding
✨ Optional in-person salons, gatherings and ways to connect live in Chicago