MOVE YOUR PROJECT FORWARD IN REAL TERMS. GIVE YOUR LOVE FORM.  

RHYTHM, SANCTUARY,DEDICATION, MENTORSHIP, CREATIVE KINSHIP

A virtual residency of creative catalyst, shelter, support and focus for the projects closest to your heart. 

A 12 month virtual-residency program rooted in the Gateless Method

$300/month- 118 hours of formal support

FALL COHORT IS FULL and UNDERWAY

SPRING COHORT OPENING IN MARCH 2026. DATES TBD.

Contact Sarah with your interest.  

 12 person cohort. 10 spots available at full price. Two 10% equity discounts.  Please ensure that you fall within my SLIDING EQUITY SCALE by reading the page HERE. Special codes for this space limited offering is at the bottom of that page. 

What would happen if you committed to your creative project, mission and vision for an entire year? 

This is a space to nurture and partner with the innate intelligence of your specific creative project and calling. A space to move your project forward, in real terms, in the likeness of your own emergent impulse and guidance.  A space to build trust with the contours of your personal creative process. A space to move leaps and bounds into the magic of creative life when it is supported, fed, and given a container inside of which to gestate and grow.

This residency is a space for writing, artistry, craft, vision and creating. For writers and multi-disciplinary creators who are shepherding a body of work, project or vision- writers, visual artists, change-makers, activists, dissertation writers, business-builders, makers of any craft/body of work that needs a dedicated space to grow. This is sanctuary, support and focus for your work.

YOU are the only person inside of the heart of your work- this is a space to consult and move from that heart.

THIS IS A PLACE.

To: CLAIM your work and your goals/visions/dreams for your work. AMPLIFY the inherent intelligence of your creative muse and process. QUIET the influence and noise of inner and outer critics. LISTEN to your project/work and hear where it is guiding you next. ADMIT what you’re up to and all of the wild emotions you have about that fact. Be SEEN and REFLECTED in what is powerful, what is working and what has energy about your project, thereby growing the agency of the inherent genius that will guide you to the next horizon. Be JOINED by creative colleagues and peers in what is often ( and unnecessarily ) a solitary and lonely creative journey. MOVE your projects forward in tangible ways. STEP OUT of capitalism’s stranglehold on our creative works and move in the truer rhythm and purpose of your creative life. Have your VULNERABILITY held well – This space honors the vulnerability of the projects that are born out of our personal bodies and lives, of those in our community, and includes that vulnerability as a crucial part of the creative process. To feel LESS ALONE, LESS SCATTERED and more energetically supported and walked-with. To share in the STEADY, LONG-TERM love and labor of artistry and the creative act, to GATHER our individual fires toward a collected hearth that can warm, feed and further our lives and the world in this moment of colossal shift. 

This is a place to gather an intimate group of heartbeats who are traversing the deep water of their creative urge. A space to be witnessed and seen.  A space of deep listening.  An atmosphere of gathered attention that allows us to lean into the parts of our projects that are difficult to approach alone, exceptionally vulnerable, dense, intimidating . A space to feed fire, inspiration, companionship, courage, unbroken attention, visceral focus, and your own conversation with your muse, with your art. A space for the reflection of what has energy, what is powerful and brilliant rather than a space that breeds the havoc of critique, uninvited suggestions or unhelpful questioning of one’s project/art/words/ideas. A place to keep an ear to the ground in how our projects are being shaped, shifted, informed and transformed along their way.  A space of creative friendship.

RESIDENCY METHODOLOGIES AND GUIDING TENETS

THE GATELESS METHOD:  Gateless Writing, our primary mode of this methodology is a golden key regardless of your artistic medium. It the safest and most generative place your words will ever land.  Founded by Suzanne Kingsbury, this methodology is grounded in neuroscience, removes judgment to quiet your inner critic, unlocks authentic voice, and unleashes unstoppable creative flow. It bypasses the fear-based part of the brain that criticism triggers, freeing you to create from the intelligence of the work itself. You’ll experience only positive, strength-based feedback, which builds confidence, dissolves blocks, and unleashes a creative energy that carries far beyond the page. Gateless celebrates the strengths already alive in your work, calming the nervous system and igniting a powerful feedback loop of confidence, clarity, and flow. The result is profound: your inner critic softens, blocks dissolve, and you connect with a fearless, original voice that feels fully your own. You’ll begin to see that your work has a self-organizing intelligence and craft. Our twice a month salons will offer the undercurrent of generative material and wisdom that will shape your project, as well as melt you free from places of “creative-block”, paralysis, and doubt. We step summarily out of the “cult of the critic”  and comparing that is often present in creative circles. This isn’t just a method—it’s a reclamation of your voice, the birthright of your creative impulse, and the genius of the project that is coming through you. Sarah Byrden is a Gateless Trained Teacher and has written almost every word of her 1500 page first-draft manuscript in Gateless Salons over the last decade. 

THE STORY OF LA LLORONA FROM THE BOOK WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES: “The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have for it, those we are born with as well as those we dig with our own hands. We don’t have to fill them, we only have to build them...a woman’s creative ability is her most valuable asset for it gives outwardly and feeds her inwardly at every level: psychic, spiritual, mental, emotive and economic…” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Réyes from Women Who Run with the Wolves.

This residency is a bed…a delta for your river to flow into. 

Sarah has studied in-person with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Réyes (Dr. E) since 2014. The story of La Llorona from WWRWTW offers wise instruction, guidance and insight into our responsibility to keep our creative rivers clear and flowing, as well as a map to understand where our flow has been diverted, dammed, misused or poisoned.  When we are unable to bring our visions and projects to life, we must ask why?  Why are we stalled out on the ledge of creative blocks, unable to follow through and bring our ideas to completion, circling around the same dreams for years, poisoned by negative self-talk and an inner critic that will not let us move forward,  This story will be a wise and loving frame for our year together, supporting our creative lives to flow like a wild river, with the surge of eternal headwaters and healthy tributaries that know how to bring our dreams, visions, inspirations and to life in tangible ways.

CO-REGULATION AND SUPPORT: We aren’t meant to go it alone. We are co-regulating creatures, that need both the earth and each other to live well and thrive. When we enter a space with other creating and breathing bodies, inside of a deep belief in the inherent wisdom and intelligence of soul and muse, we can approach terrains that we simply don’t and can’t on our own, we maintain a level of attention and presence that is pulsing, tangible and lush.  We enter a “field” that holds and nourishes us, we are allowed to enter the deep listening and current of our creative solitude, in community, without unwanted ideas, commentary, criticism or opinion, which allows the spirit of our work and project to speak and soar. We will make a “community of solitudes” to use Parker Palmer’s language-a culture in which we are able and invited to commune more deeply with the necessity of our creative solitude, in the necessity of community… at the same time.

RHYTHM AND CYCLE:  Creative life rises and falls in cycles and tides. Our expression and fidelity to the pulse of cycles is quite literally the creative act.  In this residency, we will ride the tides of the changing seasons, notice that creativity does indeed move in shapeshifting waves, and stay long enough to learn and trust our personal cadence.  12 months.  …through a Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and into Spring again. The Spring Residency begins intentionally in March, as procreative Qi rises in both the natural world, and within us.  We meet weekly, with varying intentions and modalities, to nurture this rhythm. The schedule is ample and varied enough for you to feel like you can miss some sessions without missing out. There is flexibility, spaciousness, and reliability in this container.

ABSENCE OF CREATIVE HIERARCHY Artistry is both a child spirit and an elder. Creating a space absent of creative hierarchy allows us to admit that creative process is one of rhythms and tides, spirals… rising and falling, formation and erosion, a journey out and a return to nascent beginnings again and again.  Whether we are just embarking on a project or idea or have published works in the world, the muse of creation is always emergent.  Inviting residents at varied stages of creation allows us to learn from one another in rich and valuable ways.

RESIDENCY RHYTHM AND COMPONENTS: 

Each week, for the cycle of a full year, you will gather with this cohort on ZOOM, from your own home space, rooting you into a nourishing constancy. The rhythm and modules are designed to be spacious, nourishing, and allow for missing some without feeling like you’re missing out. They are designed to catalyze, nourish and galvanize multiple aspects of your project and creative self. 

5 hour Residency Sanctuary- 1 x month

This is the radical and thrilling act of hanging a “do not disturb”  sign on your proverbial fence for 5 full hours a month, dedicated solely to your creative project and process. This space is modeled after a group that I have created in my own life in Santa Fe that we call “Creative Spa”  due to it’s utterly delicious nature. Radical nurturance and creative co-regulation are the name of this game. You’ll set yourself up each month with some kind of ritual beauty- flowers, delicious beverages and snacks, a sweet space to work in, and we will gather to listen to the living pulse of our work. We’ll spend roughly 1.5-2 hours of this time in group process and sharing,  and 3- 3.5 hours for dedicated and uninterrupted flow with whatever your little heart desires toward tending your creative self and project- this could be taking a walk or bike ride so you can dream into things, active writing and planning,  napping (the muse loves naps!), researching, budgeting, organizing files, painting, watching shows that inspire your work, vision boarding, completing tasks-this time is YOURS.  Let the intelligence of your project and your intuition guide your time. Sarah will be available during this time for questions, listening and guidance.

Gateless Writing Salons- 2 x per month

The Gateless methodology has been Sarah’s creative mother and sanctuary for the last 9 years. She is a Gateless trained teacher, and has written 90% of her 1500 page first draft manuscript in Gateless Salons.   This work is revolutionary in the creative space- it holds true to the inherent genius of our creative intelligence, only highlights what is working, what has energy and what is strong in one’s work, which increases our movement toward an inherent and inner-guided wisdom that intuitively creates craft, timing and unique flow and originality in one’s own work. It is based on radical nurturing and deep trust of one’s own creative genius-no one outside of ourselves can tell us where our work is going or what it is trying to become. You can read more about Gateless here.

Residency Co-Working Nook- 1 x per month

This is a space to come and work in the presence of residency cohort participants for a dedicated 75 minutes each month. We’ll do a free write brain-dump for 5 minutes. Then clarify what we  would like to work on during the following hour. We’ll work in silence in a shared field of focus and co-regulation for an hour,  watering the life of your project in a rhythmic way in a container of support.

PREREQUISITES 

Participants must have the confidence, physical centering, and psychic anchoring to hold them in time and space

Self-responsibility and the ability to re-establishing coherence in the face of your inevitable edges is required. A clear sense of containment is required. This residency is not a fit for those who may be currently feeling destabilized, traumatized, struggling to heal, or in need of reestablishing basic nervous system or life coherency.

This is a container for nourishing creative process, not a therapeutic container.

Plenty of rich inner material will arise in this residency. What surfaces for residents will be reflected and metabolized within frameworks of creative process. Residents must possess self-responsibility for their process not seek to be rescued, solved or healed from this container or other residents. We will be nurturing the art of “being with”- each other, ourselves, our work, and what arises, and cultivating depths of trust in self, inner wisdom and the living intelligence of life. This kind of gaze will allow for a profound and intimate creative soul-self to arise.  Residents must also possess the capacity to “be with” another, trusting that person’s own inner wisdom.  This container is not a space for processing, healing or resolving issues or trauma as one might do with a therapist. Vulnerability is essential for our creative intelligence to arise and is welcome here. As are tides of emotion and varied states of being. You will be asked to hold your own vulnerability, and that of others, with respect and as a gift that needs no advice, suggestions or solving.  You will be “naming” much about your project and process out loud with each other, touching deep places in your own artistic soul and will be asked to hold all you hear in our sessions in privacy and confidence.  Should material arise that does in fact need a therapeutic container, residents are responsible for seeking that auxiliary support so that you can receive the gems of this container.

APPLICATION PROCESS 

The application process is designed to ensure that your creative needs and expectations align with the scope of this residency.  Creators of all levels, stages and abilities and genres are welcome. Once you apply through the form above, Sarah will reach out to schedule an exploratory call which is also a space to answer your questions.

SCHEDULE

FALL COHORT IS FULL AND UNDERWAY

**MARCH DATES TBA 

* Please note sessions will not be recorded. This is intentional. WE MEET EVERY WEEK, WITH ROTATING SPACES AND INTENTIONS. There is room for you to miss some spaces, without feeling like you’re missing out. 

RESIDENCY SANCTUARY TIME (12 total)

EVENING MONTHLY GATELESS WRITING SALON (11 total)

MONTHLY MORNING GATELESS WRITING SALON (10 total)

MONTHLY CO-WORKING NOOK- 75 min work space (13 total)
 

Dates by Month, for a different view and ease of calendar-ing

January: 

February: 

March: 

April: 

May:

June: 

July: 

August:  

September: 

October: 

November:

December:

Together we will make a place.

A space.

Pulsing.

Lush.

Intimate.

Held.

Rooted.

Soft.

Protected.

Gathered.

Alive.

Fresh.

Like honey.

Like a hearth that will sustain us and the heartbeat of our creative work all year long.