There are places where sound gives way to song.

Places that do not demand your loyalty, but invite your belonging.

Places that hold memory like tidepools—quiet, deep, alive.

For Emily and Dan, Martha’s Vineyard is such a place.

It’s a keeper of memory. A witness to arrival and return. Its shores carry stories shaped by wind and wave, presence and absence. It is land that listens. Land that remembers.

Dan has been nourished and nurtured by the Island since he was a boy. This fall, Emily and Dan sold their house in Providence, Rhode Island, and moved into a small rental house on Tribal land in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard. They are Island residents now. The photo above that Emily found for our upcoming workshop series recalls a sacred moment when Dan’s daughter Rosie first taught him about the gates of the heart.  

In 2009, forty years after his first summer here, Dan’s family rented a small vacation house in Chilmark. On a brilliant afternoon, Dan and daughter Rosie – age 14 – made their way to Lucy Vincent Beach—one of the island’s most breathtaking and iconic locations. A winter storm had calved-off a massive monolith of cliff face that stood apart from its bluff (photographed above). Erosion had sculpted it to look ancient, almost mythic. At ground level, the tide had carved a small opening —a hidden cave inside the clay pillar..

Rosie, being small and agile, slipped in first. Dan, larger and bulkier, crawled after her. Together they sat side-by-side inside this secret hollow, the roar of the ocean muffled into a heartbeat. They settled into stillness, 

Rosie asked, “I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you.” She continued, “Could you tell me about the gates of the heart?” Confused, Dan responded, “I don’t know what that is. What are the gates of the heart?”

Rosie explained:
“When I’m at school, if someone I love—one of my friends—starts walking toward me, I feel the gates of my heart opening, and my love radiating toward them. But if I see someone I don’t trust, someone who makes me feel uneasy, I feel the gates of my heart close to protect myself. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, but I can feel it happening. What is that?”

Dan was stunned. At 14, Rosie had named something he had never even considered—an intuitive, embodied truth. He told her, “Rosie, I’ve never heard of that before. But it’s so interesting, and I want to learn about it.”

That day, in the belly of the earth at Lucy Vincent Beach, a door opened for Dan too—the beginning of his journey into seeing with my heart. Over time, he learned to feel, open, and close the gates of his own heart, just as she described and now teaches the way of the heart in all that he shares with the world.

We can create magical places of reverence anywhere – simply by opening the gates of our heart. With this as their inspiration, Emily and Dan, joined by freedom Cartwright—a gentle, truth-telling guide who lives and listens with the land—offer a sacred workshop series devoted to ancestral healing, remembrance, and transformation on The Vineyard at Stillpoint.

Whether you walk this land daily or return to it as to an old friend, our Waves of Remembering workshop series is a place to honor that bond and tend what lives beneath it. It’s a deepening of your connection to the Island – a shared stepping stone into the space where lineage meets longing, and where the hush of yesterday hums with new possibility.

Rooted in the Seeing with Your Heart approach of Systemic Family Constellations, these monthly workshops invite you to walk gently into the ancestral field—where time bends, stories awaken, and the body remembers. Together, we will gather in circle, open our heart’s knowing, and allow what has been held for generations to begin its return to wholeness.

We will learn heart-led practices that invite us to… 

See, feel, and honor the intergenerational patterns that shape life on Martha’s Vineyard, including themes of migration, displacement, and belonging. 

  Explore the invisible threads of generational trauma carried across individuals, communities, and cultures, still asking to be seen, softened, and healed. 

Tend the unspoken agreements, exclusions, and loyalties that live within communities and families  and continue to manifest today and in the generations of tomorrow.

If the island is part of your story, through ancestry, community, or quiet devotion, we invite you to join us.

Join Us at Stillpoint, Martha’s Vineyard

Not Able to Attend this Month? Register for Next Month!

Monthly Circles from 5:30–8:30pm on May 7, June 4, July 30, August 20, September 10, October 8, November 19, and December 10

Contribution: 10% of profits will support the Aquinnah Cultural Center