THE WORK BEFORE US
Why This Moment?
We are living through a period of ecological instability, social fragmentation, political uncertainty, technological acceleration, and profound cultural transition. Information is abundant. Wisdom, attention, and trustworthy relationship can feel scarce. Cure + Era begins from the belief that some questions cannot be answered through expertise alone. They require time, embodied listening, moral imagination, ancestral and intuitive ways of knowing, rigorous thought, and relationship with the living world. The Council creates a temporary commons in which women can practice these forms of discernment together — not only for ourselves, but in service of children, communities, the wider human family, and the more-than-human world.
We are not gathering because we already know. We are gathering because the questions deserve company.
What the Council of Questions is
A practice of discernment in company
The Council of Questions is a small, intentional gathering for women who feel called to sit with the questions that shape a life, a community, and the future we are making together. It is not an audience gathered for answers. It is a circle of attentive people willing to listen, speak honestly, and let understanding take the time it requires.
A council asks something different of us: that we bring our lived knowledge, our uncertainty, our capacity to notice, and our willingness to remain in relationship with what is not yet resolved. Together, we will practice the kind of conversation that can make wiser action possible.
The work before us
Why women are gathering now
We are living through ecological instability, social fragmentation, political uncertainty, and profound cultural transition. Information is abundant; wisdom, attention, and trustworthy relationship can feel scarce. The Council makes room for women to meet this moment without pretending that speed is the same as clarity.
We are not gathering because we already know. We are gathering because the questions deserve company.
Feminine discernment
Alternative ways of knowing
Feminine discernment does not set intuition against rigor. It asks us to recognize the intelligence carried in the body, in memory, in land, in silence, and in the conversation between people who have learned how to listen. It honors thought while refusing the fiction that thought alone can know what a life requires.
Discernment is less a decision made alone than a way of becoming answerable—to one another, to place, and to what comes next.
The questions that convene us
What are we here to ask?
The Council will not arrive with a prewritten conclusion. It will be shaped by questions that ask how we may live with greater courage, reciprocity, and fidelity to the futures beyond our own. We will make room for questions of relationship, vocation, care, inheritance, governance, and the places that hold us.
What must be protected? What is asking to be changed? What wisdom becomes possible when we refuse to hurry?
Correspondence, return, friendship, stewardship
A gathering with an afterlife
The days at Trout Creek are a beginning, not a sealed experience. We hope the Council will continue through correspondence, return, friendship, and stewardship: through notes sent after the fire has gone out; through the practice of remembering one another; through attention to the places and responsibilities that call for our care. What is begun in company can become a durable way of moving through the world.
Lead facilitator & midwife of the gathering
Dr. Roksana Badruddoja
Dr. Roksana Badruddoja is a scholar, teacher, and spiritual leader whose work joins rigorous thought, embodied practice, and relational transformation. As lead facilitator and midwife of the gathering, she will help tend the Council’s shared container—guiding its practices of inquiry, reflection, spacious listening, and honest conversation.
The invitation
Who this gathering is for
Invitations are extended with care to women whose lives reflect wisdom, courage, intellectual curiosity, generosity, humility, and a deep capacity for relationship. There is no single profession, age, or ideology required. What matters is a willingness to contribute one’s presence to a shared practice of listening—and to receive the lives and questions of others with the same care.
If this invitation feels like a place where your living question might be held with care, we welcome your response.
ONE INVITATION TO SHARE
Extend the Circle
The Council begins with women personally known to Chel and the current Board, but we also want to leave room for intuitive and relational expansion beyond our immediate circles. You are invited to share this invitation with one other woman whom you feel belongs in this Council. Consider the woman whose wisdom, courage, way of knowing, or relationship to the living world should be present in the circle. Please invite her personally and ask her to contact Chel directly by September 1 so that we can welcome her thoughtfully, answer questions, and confirm available space.