UGLY WORDS SERIES
6-week Online Transformative Writing Series from October - November 2023
HOMING
A coven of collaborative animist-esoteric practice, relational care, and power of the communal.
“Powerful, illuminating, and deeply transformative, Mimi’s work expands beyond the realm of oracular wisdom. Through her own unique lens, she shares a wealth of accessible and practical doorways through which we can learn to unlock even more forms of sacred living, as we are guided to connect with the beautiful mysteries of the unseen.”
— Danielle Noel of Moon Child Tarot
Meet Your Emotions,
Exorcize Your Pain,
Share Your Voice,
& Make Yourself As Your Art
The Ugly Word Series invites each of us to approach endings (and returns) with willingness and openness to what the shadowy parts of the literal and symbolic autumn and winter seasons may present us with. Relating with the animated word, these allies take us places that are unfamiliar or do not yet exist, and can also return us to sites that need reconciling or tending. Words spoken aloud or silently written allows us to surrender, decompose, and re-create our identity that ultimately fertilizes our heart-minds, our art, our finances, our career, our intimate relationships, and the greater world.
Words are living beings. They live in us, with us, and through us. The Ugly Words Series welcomes us to make kin and ritualize the necessary themes of ugliness, decomposition, rot, grief, and endings, and their intersections with written and shared word, animacy, and the supernatural with clarity, tenderness, and tenacity. Through embodied writing practices that both exorcise what is no longer desired and bring deep healing, we remember our humanness, renew the capacity to freely relate with the Seen and Unseen, make art of who we are, and divine where we are headed.
The Ugly Words Series dispels the perfectionism or other unattainable aspects of wellness and spirituality, and instead, grants focus for context and process, supportive writing techniques, powerful esoteric tools, and active collaboration with our intuition and Mystery that is deeply rooted in the realities of daily and big life stresses, pain, and loss, and as a way-through to joy and living creatively.
The series is for those...
who are ready to sit with decomposition, rot, death, and endings;
who love writing
and for those who do not;
who are feeling receptive or connected;
who are feeling unsure or blocked;
who doubtful or fragmented;
who are curious and hopeful;
who are rooted in;
who are hanging on by a thread;
who rest with ease;
who are restless.
AREAS OF UGLY WORDS EXPLORATION
Ugliness is Sacred
- Pathways To the Holy Uglies
- Meeting Our Many Endings and Deaths
- Perfection as Evil, The Rotten as Divine
- Lusting After Decomposition
Reclaiming the Rot
- Rot as Presence
- Hone the Art of Channeling Creative Rot
- Grief and Celebration
- Our Home As Our Witness, As Our Cave
- Rot Rituals
Reading and Witnessing 1
- The Hanged One: Unfamiliar Perspectives
- Drawing Lines
- Ugly Together, Beautiful Together
Decomposition in a Capitalistic World
- When You Feel Unmotivated, Discouraged, or Hopeless
- Time and Ugliness
- Clarity Through Mess
- Guarding Your Energy
From Endings to Create and Re-Create
- Ugly Texts, Ugly Poems, and More
- Fantasy as Healer
- The Ugly as Ugly, the Ugly as Beauty
- Risk, ‘Failure’, Rejection
- Finding the Voices You Don’t Yet Speak
Reading and Witnessing 2
- The World: I Was Here, We Were Here
- Filling in the Colours
- Crowns of Chaos
“We need spaces for our mascara to run like waterfalls,
To find ourselves, and each other, in those pools of rot,
And rejoin with and reconfigure our fragments,
In the messy tangle of pain and joy.
I’m interested in writing as punk, and I know some of you also are.”
— Mimi Young
DATES + INVESTMENT
DATES
This workshop series will be held once a week over the course of 6 weeks spanning October and November 2023 on Sundays from 5-7PM PST. Live Zoom attendance is encouraged, though recordings are also available. The specific dates are:
- Sunday, October 15, 2023
- Sunday, October 22, 2023
- Sunday, November 5, 2023
- Sunday, November 12, 2023
- Sunday, November 19, 2023
- Sunday, November 26, 2023
INVESTMENT
- Sliding Scale: $398-550 USD
- By-donation for Homing Coven mates (email me to arrange!)
- Folks enrolled by September 30 are entered into a draw to receive a copy of my artist’s book, A Tea Stronger Than Death as a gift (can ship within North America).
Note for Canadian IP addresses, tuition will convert to CAD.
GST is applicable for all transactions.
FINANCIAL ACCESSIBILITY
Partial Scholarships are available in limited amounts, with priority given to folks who are Black, Indigenous, of Colour, queer, trans, non-binary, folks who are neuro-divergent, have disabilities (different abilities), or are single parents in need of support. Please email Mimi at info@shopceremonie.com to inquire. Proof of financial hardship will not be asked.
“Mimi Young believes there’s a powerful creative current running through us… Learn how to tap into that energy.”
— goop @goop
“Powerful, illuminating, and deeply transformative, Mimi’s work expands beyond the realm of oracular wisdom. Through her own unique lens, she shares a wealth of accessible and practical doorways through which we can learn to unlock even more forms of sacred living, as we are guided to connect with the beautiful mysteries of the unseen.”
— Danielle Noel @daniellenoel.art
“I was down to try just about anything to feel a little chiller. …I felt more reflective, aware of my own feelings, and, most surprisingly, secure and confident in those feelings.”
— Harper’s Bazaar @harpersbazaarus
“Something that is interesting is how [Mimi] mentions plants being individuals.”
— Alex Elle @alex_elle
WELCOME
WELCOME
Meet Your Facilitator
Hello, my name is Mimi Young. I am a Taiwanese Canadian Wu animist spirit medium, writer, and founder of Ceremonie. I see my diverse career background in design, education, clean tech, and my current work, as data points into an intersectional, contextual, and relational and spiritually-forward, human with more-than-human expression.
Through Ceremonie, my aim is to impart extensive ancient and practical wisdom so you can restore your connection to the Unseen within your inner and outerworlds, actively receive the support of your spirit allies, break unhelpful patterns, and celebrate your path with confidence.
Writing has always been a medium for me to engage in magick of all forms, whether it’s for inner healing and pattern releasing, materializing dreams of my heart, for dying to hindering identities and re-creating new ones, or for showing up as a parent. My writing has been described as emotive, deeply coherent, and having the capacity to capture the Unseen in splendorous ways. I’ve recently participated in a 5-week creative residency at the Banff Centre for Arts + Creativity, where I birthed A Tea Stronger Than Death: Poems of Hurt and Healing While On Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain (a limited run artist collection of poems and tea cyanotypes), and also envisioned the Ugly Words Series.
Written works can be found on my Substack, IG, and various written / editing contributions in hospitality, wellness, emerging music and DEI spaces.
Folks who have worked with me describe me as welcoming, deepening, integrous, and transformative.
As I say in my unconventional WORKING WITH MIMI TERMS,
Walk with me with respect, and you will be met with honour.
Walk with me with willingness and openness, and you will be met with an open heart and open arms.
Walk with me with honesty, and you will have my heart.
Yours,
Mimi
testimonials
Yvette Lalonde
goop
Vanessa Lindsay-Botten
Flory Huang
Mary Sandstrom
J. Beyer