Curiously exploring the magic of tender, resilient connection.

If you're anything like us, you're a messy and adorable human.

We all belong on this planet, and we're interconnected. How can we learn to get along and enjoy life together?

If you also have faith in learning and yearn for authentic, kind, joyful, considerate relationships (internally, externally, and even with other species), you've found your people! 🎶 We want that, too!

(p.s. Scholarships available, learn more at the bottom of this page).

We’re bringing humans together to learn and practice what it means to belong to each other. And have fun along the way!

Are you kinder when you feel safe and loved? We are!

We wholeheartedly believe in humanity’s capacity to learn the skills of kinship tending, that we can re-socialize ourselves to live fully and authentically, love deeply, level up our social skills for a better world.

We are a diverse group of lifelong learners, ourselves, and we are onto something big here: the synergy of bringing tender hearts together is magical!

We're Here to Help Each Other Fly

We are an emerging collaborative, creative, loving, action-oriented, trauma-informed online space that dreams big.

The secret recipe for safety and satisfaction in life is not competition, it's kinship! We are interconnected on this living planet. When we help bring out the best in each other, we all do better.

We're here to learn how to do our part for our collective nervous system, to connect people to each other, and learn pro-social skills.

The capacity for tending to kinship is inherent in us as humans, and the good news is that even if we missed out on kinship tending skills in our families of origin, they're teachable! We're a diverse set of learners reclaiming kinship to one another: sharing songs and stories, learning how to support each another in grief, and connecting authentically in service of bringing our gifts to a community bigger than our individual selves or are identity groups- in fact, bigger than just our species.

To move forward as a global community, we need spaces for grief and the skills to notice how our actions influence other's thrival. We can also remember how to play together and have fun without competition, and community singing, dance, platonic touch, and art are wonderful for that.

We all need belonging like we need oxygen. Welcome!

  • Who is this for? Anyone who is craving connected, tender, resilient community, especially if educating or holding space is part of what you do professionally. Song leaders, grief tenders, coaches of any kind (including dog trainers), therapists, ritualists, activists, school teachers, event planners, and more.

  • A learning-oriented space to make deep friendships you can count on! ❤️

  • Lots of education and opportunities for self care.

  • We are here to learn in community, a global village to help us re-member and collaborate on big ideas.

  • Events are led by folks at the growing edge of change. They are fun, kind, heart-nourishing, and carry diverse identities.

  • Subject areas will include song circles, song leader support, becoming an elder (and not just older), somatic practices (being in your body), community grief circles (online and in person), grief tender support, living your purpose affordably, reclaiming play, sustainable gardening, delving into your own ancestral lineage, cross-cultural collaboration skills, community social skills, we-tonomy, nurturing your gifts to community, creating systems of care, transformational conflict in couples and groups, and other relational skills to co-create a world in which we all want to live. These are practical, actionable, classes with big vision. We also have collaboration spaces to help nourish your own vision and bring it to joyful fruition.

  • Stay tuned for volunteer opportunities on our Kinship Tending team (checking in on people, conflict transformation, affinity group educators, chat support during Zoom, etc.) and Collaboration Team (hosting student-led discussions).

  • The base of this online village is a school for dog trainers, so you get all those classes!

Butterfly Council

This team of kinship pollinators tends the heart of Stellar Village. We collaborate on policy, bring content, network to bring presenters to the village, and make a space that nurtures belonging and magic from the ground up. Listed in alphabetical order.

Touch Activist, Butterfly Council member

Aaron Johnson

Aaron Johnson is a facilitator, public speaker, and touch activist who practices closeness as a way to break down barriers between people. As co-founder of both Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action, Aaron takes the time to hold the stories of Black people around homophobia, transphobia, internalized racism, and those that are Chronically UnderTouched.

Grief to Action is a semi-mobile camp with a land-based community in the Mojave Desert. The community holds space on the land and with the land for deep grief and rage that gives birth to the creative solutions we need to resist and end oppressive systems. The land and sanctuary are Black-owned and Black-led, centering the needed grief support for African-heritage folks and all People of the Global Majority.

Interrupting four hundred years of the Black Brute archetype. Tender, caring, platonic touch between Black men, the Chronically UnderTouched (CUT) Project’s short film, Dark and Tender, drops Fall 2024.

Because oppression is a part of historical and present American culture, the long term impact of those trauma stories should be acknowledged and held as a map for our collective healing.

Aaron Johnson practices and invites various methods of moving through these stories, such as the communal listening ear, sound healing, meditation, and closeness to the earth.

Alyx Somas

Alyx Somas is a Native Northern American with roots from multiple Detribalized Peoples whose lineages have been living upon Tongva Lands for four generations. Their primary work is within movements of Collective Cultural Re-Indigenization, partnering alongside cultures of Belonging, Reciprocity, and Restorative Action.

Their community organizing is in service with Indigenous Knowledge Systems, supported by their training in group facilitation and somatic healing. They have spent the last decade working in education and organizing collective spaces for expressive arts, healing, de-colonization, honoring ancestry, connecting with the land, communal grief and prayer, and rituals of initiation. They especially find joy in decentralized spaces of ceremonial song, dance, and counsel.

They are on a journey of Initiation, training to be a Good Elder. All of their work holds heart in the belief that "we all come from peoples who gathered around fires storytelling, dancing, and grieving together." They are gently composting generations-old colonial wounding; resourcing in prayers that dismantle inner-supremacy, disengage from cultures of shame, blame, and carceral action, and offering prayers towards the unfolding of a multicultural peoples living out restored relations, in devotion to Inter-Dependence and to the ancestral ways of reverence for all that lives.

Their labor is for the world coming, where we gather together over the open flames that birth reciprocity from the fertilizer of our decay, united in our Praise and Grief towards the expression of our true nature — Reciprocity and Deep Beauty. You can connect with their work on their budding website https://thecollectivityproject.my.canva.site/landingpage and the IG @collectivitypr oject. Reach them at [email protected] for collaboration.

Artist, Gardener, Grandmother, Butterfly Council member

Dani ❤️

I was born in 1947 in the USA. Three years after World War ll ended. The America I grew up in (from my perspective as a white female) was giddy with new possibilities and the lack of war. We hid our grief & PTSD, valiantly tried to stuff the women who had been operating the country during the War back into high heels and kitchen aprons, and effectively lost track off whatever cross racial, gender, nationality, and religion community we had achieved in times of crisis.

It worked with variable success up until the 60’s when folks including my generation, the Boomers, started to seriously question things and rock the boat a bit...

The US (and from what I can see of it, the World) is a much different place today. Issues are now coming to light that were not even considered thinkable, let alone public conversation. I look upon the present day with awe and sincere appreciation. I do feel the human race is gaining! It may not always seem like it, but to my over three quarters of a Century mind we are making fantastic progress! Not that we don’t still have far to go, but progress none the less. Step by step (sometimes painfully) we are learning to play well together and work through the myriad vicious “isms”.

Throughout my life, music has been one of my great salvations. Singing with my children and singing within a group is a wonderful and healing part of my life. I am grateful to be able to help in some small way to make singing and all we are working toward here at Stellar Village readily available. Myself, I hope to be able to reach people my age. We sometimes lose track of how important community is.

For the last 36 years of my life, I have been fortunate enough to be living my dream life with my best friend / husband. Now, through Stellar Village—and technology we would have considered magic as youngsters—I can communicate with so many lovely people from diverse backgrounds all over the world, all from a cabin on a mountain, off the grid! Thank you for this opportunity to get to know all of you! :)

Social Media Coordinator

Diane Redding (they/them)

Diane Redding (they/them) is the Social Media Coordinator alongside doing admin tasks for Stellar Village. They are also the insightful and curious co-host of the podcast The Lesson is Love.

Diane is also a doula in training for various life transitions including birth, death and gender exploration. As someone who has witnessed and experienced the struggle of navigating the manifestations of multiple systems of oppression, they are are dedicated to offering low-access-barrier support to marginalized communities, especially people of color who hold other marginalized identities.

Diane holds many identities but most notably is a mixed Black and white, queer, nonbinary, and neurodivergent human.

Dog Trainer, Author, Singer-Songwriter

Grisha Stewart MA, CPDT-KA, KPACTP

I'm a collaborative dog trainer, author, international presenter, singer-songwriter, and keynote speaker of European ancestry (best guess based on DNA and some genealogy is Scotland, "England & Northwestern Europe," Wales, "Germanic Europe," Ireland, and Norway). I've been helping people and dogs professionally since 2003. My passion projects are grief tending, community singing, and woodturning.

I'm fascinated by animal behavior (including humans), somatic awareness, spirituality, psychology. My work is directed at wholehearted living for all beings, including dogs with a history of aggression, frustration, or fear as well as puppies and my other favorite species: humans.

My Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT 2.0 book and BAT 3.0) is used worldwide to help dogs gain confidence and social skills. Well over 200,000 people have learned about BAT so far.

Diane Redding and I co-host a podcast called The Lesson is Love.

As an outgoing introvert, I refresh my batteries by singing, expressing grief in community, and savoring life with my husband (Tom), Labrador (Joey), cat (Garbanzo aka "Adventure Kitty" and "Baby Panther"), and Little Brown Dog (Zuki). I identify as a queer (pansexual), neurodiverse, middle age, white, raised in poverty and now of middle class, and US citizen, spiritual non-Christian leaning toward neo-Druid (but raised in Christian culture). My pronouns are she/her. I am still wrestling with living on the stolen river watershed of the Siuslaw people, who are part of the CTCLUSI.

Butterfly Council member

Justice Johnson

Hey hello all! My name is Justice June Flores. I hope this bio intro finds you well.
I am a person (they/she) who is somewhat dislodged from a traditional family system and have been seeking to build safety and chosen family in this world. In this quest, I have sought home in a community. I am a member of an intentional community called Alpha Farm. It is a community not centered around any religious or ideological beliefs but rather centered around the idea that collaboration and consensus bring a community together. I have now lived there for almost half a decade, and in that time have learned a lot about what being a human in relationship means. In relationship to each other, our selves, the outer community, the earth and the land. The stolen land we cohabitate on is the rightful land of the Suislaw peoples.
This community is the oldest intentional community in Oregon, having been founded in 1972. We live, play, collaborate and learn together in Deadwood, Oregon; which is where I found a place to stay still and build connections.
Other salient/relevant identities I hold are that I am a latinx, nonbinary trans feminine human being. I am also a partner, a Buddhist, a sibling, a lover of nature, and an artist. I enjoy playing with art of all kinds: music, painting, glass art, and woodworking.
I look forward to learning in community here at Stellar Village, and to see what it blossoms into.

Ethnographer, Empathy Coach, Butterfly Council member

Karen Faith

Karen is an ethnographer, strategist and CEO of Others Unlimited, an empathy training company specialized in the advanced skills of curiosity, non-judgment, and self-awareness. Her work has guided teams and initiatives at Google, Amazon, Indeed, The NBA, The ACLU, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and The Federal Reserve Bank, among others.

Her TEDx talk, "How to talk to the worst parts of yourself," has received over 1M views.

Karen also did one of my favorite interviews on our podcast, The Lesson is Love.

Student, Songwriter, Butterfly Council member

Lance ❤️

Lance's bio is coming soon!

Dog Trainer, Butterfly Council member

Miguel Gonzalez CPDT-KA

Born on March 20, 1973, to Dan and Annette, I have two sisters, Ana and Renee. I am a father to Nicho, Alexander, Isiah, and Bishop, and a husband to Sara.

I have been involved in dog training since 1999 and have been a certified CPDT-KA since 2010. Previously, I served as the Director of Training for All Breed Rescue & Training and worked as the Canine Behavior Manager for the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region.

I no longer practice any religion after leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses as a teenager. I identify as a messy American with indigenous roots, and my pronouns are he/him.

p.s. You can learn more about Miguel's dog training business in Colorado Springs at Tava Dog.

Singer-songwriter, songleader, Butterfly Council Member

Osprey (they/them)

I am a nonbinary singer-songwriter and song leader (using they/them pronouns) descended from Scotch-Irish and German settler colonists. I write quirky, authentic lyrics about love, healing, community, justice, and our relationship with the planet.

My songs (such as Grief and Praise) have taken flight all over the U.S. through the community singing circuit. My catchy tunes go deep and stay in your head for days, but it’s all good because they hint at answers that are relevant to now.
A blend of queer-folk-pop (with a hint of 90’s R&B), the songs I write are genuine, heartfelt, and easy to sing along to. See ospreyfliesthenest.com for more info.

Vocal Empowerment Coach, Butterfly Council member

Sheniqua Trotman

Sheniqua is an activist, singer-songwriter, community leader, mother, and vocal empowerment coach based in Brooklyn, New York. She's also the host of online community singing with songleaders at Stellar Village.

Sheniqua’s sessions go beyond simply singing together; she creates a holistic journey of self-discovery and connection. Through intentional breath work, gentle stretching, and guided meditation, she helps participants release tension, center their minds, and open themselves up to the full potential of their voices.

Sheniqua creates sessions that culminate in the joyous expression of collective harmony, where seasoned vocalists and complete beginners alike come together in a non-judgmental space to share their voices and connect with others.

Whether you're seeking vocal empowerment, community connection, or simply the joy of singing, Sheniqua welcomes you to join the transformative experience at ElevatedExpression.net.

Preview Aaron Johnson's upcoming film: Dark & Tender

Aaron will be teaching in October and we'll also be screening his film at some point. We encourage you to consider hosting a screening near you.

Meet Saro Lynch-Thomason

Songs that Speak: Cotton Mill Girls (from Saro's YouTube). Saro will be leading a song circle Nov 13, hosted by Sheniqua Trotman.

Meet Some of Our Core Collaborators

We invite you to take a moment to drop into these interviews with Aaron Johnson and Karen Faith. These are from our podcast, The Lesson is Love (Grisha Stewart & Diane Redding as hosts):

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What's the Inception Story for Stellar Village?

    Grisha will answer this one: I have been actively chewing on the next phase of my contributions to the world. A moment of clarity came from a lucid dream. I realized I was dreaming and that I could fly, but I kept getting dragged down by people who insisted that I couldn’t.

    To remember I could fly, I needed to be alone or around people who believed it was possible.

    When I woke up, I realized the beautiful metaphor of this dream. I realized it was time to expand my school, so that visionaries for a kinder world could collaborate and learn from one another online. I am bringing my very favorite kinship tending visionaries to the school to teach their skills.

    In 2016, I saved the website StellarVillage.com, awaiting the day when I had a project big enough for the name. The time has come! All beings are made of stardust, and we humans are ready to learn the skills of being in village together. I have a butterfly in the logo because I think of kinship tenders as folks who are like butterflies, transforming themselves and also pollinating the world. So this school is part of an answer to the question, "What can I do to grow butterfly food?" in the metaphorical and real sense. (Fun fact: that's also a line from one of my songs).

  • Who is behind the scenes?

    Grisha will answer this one too:

    The core office team that's been behind the success of the Grisha Stewart Academy since 2020 is now supporting Stellar Village, along with some additional folks.

    For the dog school, I have been the main visionary, and I've brought in many talented speakers for webinars and events (here's my bio. Stellar Village includes the dog school, and is all about community, so it’s essential that I’m not the only person at the root level of this project. As a neurosparkly (autistic), pansexual, middle-aged woman from the US, white-bodied and of European descent, I have a certain perspective, and I don't necessarily even yet know what I don't know.

    The Butterfly Council, Stellar Village's diverse advisory team, brings their collective wisdom to bring presenters to teach lessons we never got in school - what dreamers really need to help bring this vision of cross-cultural, cross-species, intergenerational kinship and joy to fruition. We're still working on getting all the photos and bios to go on this site, so stay tuned, but their names are above on this page.

    Together, we are continuing the sacred work of our most visionary ancestors, for all beings and all future ones.

  • How do I take classes and song circles and such?

    We are working on that right now. The current plan is to have a new membership called Butterfly for Stellar Village, where most classes, song circles, and grief circles are included. There may be special events that Butterflies get discounts for, like grief circles with special guest grief tenders.

    Diamond members of the GSA dog school get access to the same classes as Butterflies, as well as a listing in the Dog Pro directory
    Sign up for the mailing list on this page to learn more as we know more about Stellar Village.

  • I have more questions

    We have a big FAQ for the school here. Or please contact our office if you have specific questions about Stellar Village or want to suggest a topic or collaborator.

  • Why singing? What if I'm afraid of singing?

    There's a reason that harmony from singing also means peace. Singing together is one of the most amazing things we do as humans.

    It's behavioral synchrony and it can soothe the nervous system and remind us we are not alone

    We may be afraid of singing, but singing is not afraid of us. Fear of singing is a culturally conditioned problem, and we can turn it around just like we address dog reactivity.

    You literally get your voice back when you sing. I'm so excited to share this with you. And good news - because our song circles are in Zoom, your microphone will be off unless there's a time when you want to share a song. So it's less scary.

    We're hoping you'll have the confidence to sing with other people in your community at some point, and/or invite others into our song circles in Zoom. We have a class in December about Mindful Singing with Heather Houston that is a great on ramp for singing, and will help you fall in love with your voice.

  • What's the expectation of event attendees?

    With everything at Stellar Village, people are at choice. We're big on that. ❤

    In community singing, the songleader role is to teach a song that they've written or learned. We will bring in professional songleaders/songwriters for a monthly session, and we'll also have separate open-share sessions, where attendees teach their own songs to each other.

    People who aren't leading (teaching) a song will be singing with their microphones off, so the singing itself won't be heard by others. You can have people in your physical space if you want to sing together. It's great to have cameras on, so we can all see each other and it's playful. But anyone is welcome to have their camera off if even that is too much.

    This is a soft introduction to community singing because of how we do it in Zoom. 🙂 These sessions are also recorded so you can sing along without time pressure or rewind to your heart's delight.

    Another opportunity to participate is in the breakout groups where there are discussion prompts. People can always choose to not be in the rooms by either raising a hand or putting a comment about that in the chat (public or private to the host). For folks who might feel safer with specific people or identities due to marginalization, etc., we have options. Breakout groups are not recorded.

    We plan to have discussions after most webinars and song circles, and people can also opt out by signing off before the "dessert" of the discussions.

    Yet another opportunity is the Facebook group, and people can choose to participate at that or not.

    Grief circles are participatory, and you're at choice still, but the general expectation is that you'll feel comfortable enough with the container we create (confidentiality, etc.) to share within that group in response to prompts. Only attend them if you're feeling comfortable sharing your grief experience with others. We will have some group shares and some breakout rooms. We'll explain more about those on the event page for grief circles. Grief circles are not recorded.

    A final way is our Collaboration Zoom sessions, which, again, are optional. Basically those are chances to talk together about a specific topic or with a certain theme, like crochet/knitting while talking (mostly community-led discussions) or to just simply be in a space and doing something separate like organizing your kitchen, training your dog, or doing taxes, with occasional pauses to talk (Parallel Play). These will all be community led events, meaning they're initiated by people in Stellar Village who want to connect. Collaboration Sessions may or may not be recorded, at the choice of the person/people leading the group.

  • What's the role of grief circles here?

    Grief is a human experience that bonds us all together and it's part of the core of Stellar Village. It's a shared life experience. We carry grief from the loss of our dogs and other family members, and we also have grief when we lose a job, or get a job, or have a baby, or get married, or get divorced. We also carry intergenerational grief, sorrow in empathy with the world, and grief from things we never received in our life, but should have (Francis Weller).

    The work of liberation and equity is not possible without delving into grief. And also life can be wayyy more fun and authentic when you get the skills to grieve.


How do I get in on the fun and learning Stellar Village?

Many events and classes can be purchased separately, without a membership. Or get ALL* classes and our yummy members-only activities (like online community song and grief circles) with a Villager membership.

Members get full access to the online village: classes, song circles, grief circles, collaborations, and on-demand sessions.

We have a scholarship program (100% free for life for all PGM/BIPOC and a need-based scholarship, too). Villagers also get the massive library of classes at the Grisha Stewart Academy.

  • Live Online Classes

    How do you connect to community, yourself, and to something bigger than both?

    Relational skills workshops and panel discussions with a diverse set of experts will help you find a home for your authentic gifts.

  • Online Song Circles & Somatic Community Grieving

    Singing together is “behavioral synchrony” that feeds community joy and makes a space for deep emotion.

    We grief circles for sharing and transforming personal and intergenerational grief. We all carry grief. It’s not just from death and loss (though as dog people, we have plenty of that).

  • Unique Perspective

    This is a place for lateral thinkers. We are inspired by the lenses of neuroscience, social psychology, behaviorism, and more, but also looking into our own ancestries, sitting in nature, and learning communally.

    Science and spirit can play well together. We're here to spark insight and connection, however they can happen!

Holding Complexity

We would like to name that those of us in the US live on stolen land. Some of our ancestors came here fleeing oppression, some came because of it, some came for opportunity.  Ancestors of colonizers have a history of violently preventing healthy community practices like singing together, gathering, respecting elders, tending to one another, and tending to the land. We acknowledge that colonizers and their ancestors have also rebranded indigenous practices for profit and that Stellar Village is currently a project of Empowered Animals, LLC, which is owned by Grisha, a white / European-heritage person in the US.  The Butterfly Council collaborating to bring this project to life is a diverse group. Collaborators are compensated financially as part of the energy exchange for labor.

We name that speaking of song circles, kinship tending for all beings, and tapping into ancestral wisdom runs perilously close to being cultural appropriation. Our facilitators create original content and practices, delve deeply to reclaim our own ancestral practices, take care to be aware of and name the lineage of any practices we carry, and practice reciprocity for anything not of our ancestral lineage, whenever possible (or, ideally, we bring in facilitators directly from that lineage). We also acknowledge that we will make mistakes, that we continue to learn how to best do this, and that we are open to feedback.



We travel this edge together because community singing, grief, and understanding kinship between and beyond humankind are also practices of our own ancestors. We believe that the technologies of community singing (teaching songs and singing together as an activity, not in a performance), grief, and tuning into kinship with all beings create systems of care and liberation that are exactly what is needed for all beings to thrive. These practices settle the collective nervous system and address many of the problems of the world at the root. 

These were practices of all of humanity at one point in time, back when each of our ancestors were intimately connected to the land, before we were (often forcefully) de-indigenized, and by discovering the practices in our own lineages, we meet the needs of spirit and community and disrupt the practice cultural appropriation.

Choose from one of two memberships: Village membership or Diamond membership (for dog pros)

Members get full access to classes, song circles, grief circles, collaborations, on-demand sessions, and more. After each session, you also have the option to briefly meet other villagers in breakout groups for authentic conversation.

Most events and classes can also be purchased separately, without a membership, but membership is the better value and the only way to get all the community events.

p.s. We also have a scholarship program (100% free for life for all PGM/BIPOC and a need-based scholarship, too).

  • $29.99 / month

    $29.99 / monthStellar Village/GSA Library Card Membership

    Full-access Village membership! Villagers can access to all live events, community song circles, recordings, co-working & collaboration sessions, etc., everything in Stellar Village online (except for the bonus features Diamond membership for dog trainers). [Learn More]
    Sign Me Up!
  • $39.99 / month

    $39.99 / monthDiamond Membership All Access Pass

    Dog Trainers! Diamond members are villagers who also get bonus perks: a free professional dog pro directory listing, the dog trainer Facebook group, and the ability to apply for the CBATI Certification assessment. This is the best choice if you are a professional or aspiring dog trainer and are looking for an empathetic, kind community experience.

    Note that regular Village members still get to take all the dog training classes you want.

    [Learn More]
    Sign Me Up!