Welcome to the very first fireside gathering of The Ember — a space where we return to the quiet glow at the center of our lives and remember what it means to be human.

For our opening episode, we sit down with Dr. Brian Stafford, guide, depth psychologist, wilderness rites facilitator, and training director at the renowned Animas Valley Institute. Once an esteemed professor and endowed chair in psychiatry and pediatrics, Brian left the familiar world of academic medicine to follow a deeper call ~ one that led him into the desert, into wild consciousness, and ultimately into the work of helping others rediscover their own soul-rooted path in the world.

Together, around the fire, we explore:

• Why we are here individually and as a species navigating a time of unraveling and great turning.

• The sacred thread each of us carries the unique pattern of life we are born to embody.

• The longing for belonging and why so many of us search for it in relationships, achievements, careers, or spiritual highs.

• Mystical experiences that reawaken our ecological and ancestral memory.

• How the wild, the imaginal, and the soul speak when we become quiet enough to listen to their songs

• The journey into the inner desert, the dissolving of old identities and the unexpected guidance that arises when everything familiar falls away.

• Courtship with the inner beloved — the anima/animus as an initiatory companion, not a romantic fantasy.

• Finding our way back to authenticity in a culture that often pulls us toward conformity, rebellion, or numbing.

Brian shares luminous stories from wilderness fasts, encounters with the “more-than-human world,” dreams that change the course of a life, and the moments that revealed his deeper mythic purpose. His reflections invite us to ask the questions our culture rarely makes space for: Who am I, really? Why am I here? What is calling me into the next stage of life? And how can I follow this calling?

This first conversation is an invocation ~ a remembering of our mythopoetic inheritance and an invitation to reawaken the ember within each of us.