Beginner’s Grove
A Place to Practice Belonging
I’m Diane.
For most of my life, I taught women how to be fierce, independent, and self-contained.
Now I’m practicing something different.
After decades as a therapist, retreat center founder, and devoted partner, I find myself in a quieter season — rebuilding connection from the ground up. Not as an expert. Not as a guru.
As a woman learning how to belong again.
Beginner’s Grove is where I document that experiment in real time.
Not how to transcend the world —
but how to stay in it.
Not how to go it alone —
but how to build a “we.”
If you’re tired of the Solo-Flight…
if you’re curious about village in modern times…
if you want depth without performance and lightness without denial…
Pull up a chair.
The gate is unlatched.
S1:E1 Soft Signals From the Grove
Podcast hosted by Diane Adams Presents: Jess & Diane
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Meet Diane
(The Village Experimenter)
For thirty years, I worked as a trauma therapist and addiction counselor. I believed deeply in self-sufficiency, resilience, and doing the hard inner work.
Then life unraveled my certainties.
Widowhood. Loss. Burnout. Letting go of land, identity, and systems that once held me.
I thought I was building independence.
What I was really longing for was interdependence.
These days, I’m less interested in teaching people how to be fierce and more interested in learning how to be woven.
I’m experimenting with:
Ordinary belonging
Light conversation
Sweat equity
Local friendships
Reciprocity instead of performance
I don’t have a ten-step plan.
I have a lantern, a notebook, and a willingness to practice in public.
If you’re somewhere in your own unraveling — or rebuilding — you’re welcome here.
What Is Beginner’s Grove?
Beginner’s Grove is a quiet corner of the internet for people who are rethinking independence.
It’s not a self-help empire.
It’s not a personal brand.
It’s not a masterclass in enlightenment.
It’s a living experiment in belonging.
Through essays, podcast conversations, and small observations from daily life, I explore what it means to:
Build village slowly
Practice reciprocity
Stay curious in later seasons of life
Let lightness back in
This is not about fixing yourself.
It’s about participating.
On Reciprocity
I am no longer interested in one-way giving.
Beginner’s Grove is not a platform built on performance or extraction. It’s a place to practice mutual presence.
Reciprocity here might look like:
Reading and responding thoughtfully.
Sharing a post or episode with someone it might steady.
Bringing your own stories into the Grove.
Showing up lightly and often.
Supporting financially if and when you feel moved.