Medicine Circle Collective: Reimagining Human Development as a Way of Being

Hello and welcome to Medicine Circle Collective. This is a space where we explore what it truly means to grow as whole, dynamic, and evolving human beings.

Miriam & Heather

We’re Heather and Miriam: best friends, business partners, and lifelong human development nerds. Together, we’re diving into the complexity of being human in all its messiness, mystery, and multidimensionality that shape the ever-unfolding and delicious journey of the self.

If you’ve ever felt like growth doesn’t always make sense: we see you. You are definitely not alone. If you’re ready to embrace your own evolution in all its beauty, confusion, and transformation: we are so glad you’re here. Let's walk this path together.

Why Medicine Circle Collective

Our society has a bad habit we want to challenge and even rewire here. It's the insidious pattern of finding what is wrong with us as humans, our pathology, the list of things we must fix in order to be happy. But within this Circle, we take a different approach:

We subscribe to a more holistic framework; from a human development lens, which is not about fixing what’s broken, but understanding what’s unfolding. Our paths are not a linear journeys toward perfection; they are spirals of remembering, and of returning to the wisdom that is already within us.

When we perceive our experiences as part of a living curriculum, growth becomes less about self-correction and more about self-awareness and appreciation of all the twists and turns we encounter. In this way, every challenge, emotion, and breakthrough becomes an invitation to wholeness and growth..

Human Development as a Way of Living

Between us, we hold advanced degrees in Human Development and decades of experience studying the patterns of growth across the lifespan. Yet, what we’ve discovered extends far beyond theory: it’s a way of living. It is lived, breathed, embodied. It includes every part of our being: our physical, emotional, relational, mental, spiritual, and environmental dimensions.

While psychology focuses on the mind, human development invites us to see the full ecology of the self; the inner and outer worlds in dialogue, shaping how we grow. When we understand ourselves as whole systems, we begin to appreciate that healing and evolution are natural processes. Life itself becomes a sacred opportunity to be experienced; a playground to be explored - not a problem to be fixed.

The Inner and Outer Worlds of Growth

Our society tends to glorify the outer world of the Self - like how accomplished we are, our achievements, our productivity and appearances. Our inner worlds are often silenced. Many of us have learned to quiet our emotions, numb our discomfort, or distract ourselves from our deeper truths and complexities in our systems.

But in this Circle, we find our inner worlds to be sacred. It is where we listen to our own rhythms, learn our language of emotion, and discover the wild and layered intelligence of the body and heart. When we learn to tend to our inner landscapes, we no longer need to be afraid of our own depths. What once felt chaotic or confusing begins to feel meaningful — alive with possibility and benefit.

Shifting from Pathology to Curriculum

So we ask ourselves: what if every mistake, heartbreak, and moment of confusion were not evidence of failure but initiations into deeper wisdom?

Human development teaches us that each experience is a lesson within the greater curriculum of being alive. Through this lens, nothing is wasted. The pain, the missteps, the moments we wish we could erase - all of it becomes the sacred compost for our evolution.

Growth is less about perfection and more about participation - saying yes to life’s unfolding, messy up-and-and processes. And when we give ourselves permission to grow at our own pace, we re-enter the natural rhythm of development, the way children do, where they are open and curious about the world around them, without all the judgment about what is right and wrong.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

We are deeply grateful for the theorists and thinkers who have illuminated the field of human development, including Erikson, Piaget, Vygotsky, and so many others. Their work provides a foundation as the field - and humankind - keeps evolving.

Medicine Circle Collective is about honoring what we know about moving through life as humans, weaving together ancient wisdom and contemporary insight, integrating psychology, neuroscience, spirituality, and lived experience. The question we hold is: What comes next? How can we, as conscious participants in this moment of human evolution, refine our understanding of growth and bring more coherence, compassion, and resonance into how we live? How can we optimize the human experience as much as possible?

The Joy of Becoming

And at the end of the day, Medicine Circle Collective is about joy. The joy of realizing we are not behind. The joy of seeing that growth doesn’t have to be linear to be meaningful. The joy of knowing that our unfolding, in all its weirdness and complexity, is sacred.

We are each living technologies, refining our patterns of being, relating, and creating meaning. When we learn to harmonize with our development through our body, mind, and spirit, we discover that our curvy evolutionary process is not something to fix or fear. It is something to celebrate in all its wisdom and wildness.

So here’s to the journey - to the spiral of growth, to the remembering, and to the medicine that lives within each of us.Here’s to becoming, together, in Circle.

We're so glad you're here. ✨🦋💖