Nicole Nyhan

met a female dragon // had a fire conversation

It feels strange posting about my travels at a time like this, when unfathomable atrocities are unfolding across the world and when I, like so many other survivors, are repeatedly being re-traumatized by disclosures of violence against women & children by the predator class, teamed with the sheepish inaction and ineptitude of those in power who continue to fail our most innocent and vulnerable. These past few months have been some of the hardest I’ve faced in recent years. And still, I get to experience enormous privilege, abundant resources, loving connections, and more joy, delight, and fulfillment than I had ever accessed across the first three decades of my life. I think one of the things this moment is asking of us is to learn to expand into complexity. To hold paradox. To keep our hearts and minds open to our potential as agents of change, of love, of grace—while also bearing witness to the horrors. To feel through our grief and our rage and our trauma and fear. To integrate our own dark sides. To take aligned action wherever we can to help mitigate harm, enact justice, and facilitate balance in our lives and within our ecosystems. This retreat with @the_therapeutic_poet_ and @wadeyoga has offered me such a rebalancing. For the first time in 17 months I feel like I’m fully back in my body. My energy system is flowing. My vision is clear. My heart is buttressed by the warm interactions I’ve gotten to share with so many other amazing humans. And through this resourcing I can expand my capacity to feel more, to compassionately hold all that hurts and cuts so deeply right now. I want to keep posting beautiful memories here because it helps to remind me that, in spite of everything, this world is also, always beautiful. I want to remember that people are still worth loving. I want to be reminded that the Earth has so much to offer. That she is worth admiring and tending to and nurturing, just as she nurtures us. In spite of everything. I want to remind myself how good life can get. And maybe, leaving the footprints of my joy here could help someone else remember, too. As Amber offered in our practice: “Even on the darkest of days, there is light.”

Grateful for cutie pies 🥰

What a wild and gorgeous year it has been here at The Bridge. Since the apothecary opened on January 31st, 2025, we have hosted over 250 classes, workshops, and events and collaborated with more than 30 facilitators and organizations from within and beyond the Hudson Valley. We have meditated, moved, danced, breathed, sung, cried, laughed, created, experimented, hung out, shared tea and cacao, and feasted together. We have joined in ritual to release outdated beliefs and patterns and to seed new visions into our lives and the wider world. We have offered our energy, blessings, and healing intentions to ourselves, our ancestors, and this land. We have forged new community and fortified enduring bonds with one another, re-membering our inherent connectedness and weaving ourselves into an ever-growing, ever-more resilient and nourished human fabric. All of this has been made possible by your participation, support, and presence. For me personally, this has been an unprecedented era of expansion, abundance, and transformation. Of meeting and transcending growth edges, of discovering and enacting my creativity, of seeding inner visions and growing them in the outer world, of meeting challenges and responsibilities and exhaustion with ever more grace, softness, and ease. Of finally finding healing in community and transmuting so much deep pain into this joyous, ongoing evolution. To all of the facilitators, friends, and community members who have shown up and contributed your energy, creativity, devotion, time, and heart to this space—thank you, thank you, thank you. Here are a handful of highlights from this extraordinary first year in action. And join us on Saturday, January 31st from 8pm onward for an evening of dancing, lounging, communing, and vibes to celebrate the one-year anniversary of The Bridge! Cheers, Nicole xx

old stomping grounds, new worlds ✨

Fall in Montreal

It has been an incredible privilege and delight to get to help facilitate a portion of @kelliscarr ’s Greater Mysteries journey this weekend, both at her astounding performance of this potent new album at the Widow Jane Mine and for the nourishing integration dinner served by Tanya Himeji Romero of @woodlandpantry at The Bridge yesterday evening. For the past six weeks, under the guidance of the project’s Ritualist Mary Evelyn Pritchard / @toswingonthespiral , a group of priestesses have been gathering to create and tend to a sacred container to hold this experience for all. Rooted in the myth of Inanna and the initiatory rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, this immersive musical project has lead over 400 people through a journey of descent, transformation, and return. Both literally and figuratively, we have journeyed together into the underworld and emerged back into the light transformed. There were no cell phones permitted in the cave during the performance, but I did manage to capture at least a few shots of the preparations and our beautiful communal dinner. Thanks to Mary Evelyn, Tanya, & Kelli for including me and The Bridge in this glorious unfolding, and a big bow of respect to all who collaborated in realizing this dream, including Mythologist @drcsvehla , vocalist @odeyanini , the badass production crew, and all the tremendously talented musicians who helped to lead us deep into the underworld & back again.

Summer loves

Burlington you freak

Summer sounds 🍃

The sun departs. The sun returns.

Words can’t even