Women’s Circle
The culture of women gathering together has roots as old as human history, and with good reason. Gloria Steinem once stated: “Groups run by women are our psychic turf; our place to discover who we are, or who we could become, as whole independent beings. Somewhere in our lives, each of us needs a free place. A little psychic territory.” December marks the one year anniversary of a Women's Circle I helped to co-create, and it has become, as Steinem posits, a place of genuine discovery and wholeness.
We have explored the themes of vulnerability and connection, choice and comparison, intuition and ego, confession, mother-daughter relationships, letting go, inviting in, contentment and complacency, and our stories. Our stories, told sitting around a candle lit circle, infuse every gathering whether they are the focus of, or the vehicle for, discussion. Above all our circle is a place for un-masked sharing--with no pretense of perfection.
And the result is a kind of perfection--a kind that looks like real women, experiencing all of the devastating lows and enlivening highs that life offers. Real women permitting access to their inner sanctums of crazy and divine so that others can bask in the knowledge that crazy is in fact a shared experience and so that we can revel in each other's light.
A guiding question for our first gathering, December 2014 was: "What do YOU want from this Women's Circle?" My answer from a year ago stands--I want, and have gotten, a community of truly remarkable women.
We close each of our gatherings with the following song:
Woman who loves herself, though she may be broken
Woman who loves herself, will never fall.
Woman who loves herself, though she may be shaken,
Woman who loves herself, will never fall.
And I wanna sing a song about our healing
And I wanna sing a song about our wholeness
And I wanna sing a song about us,
I wanna sing about our love.
With profound gratitude for the wonderful women I have as mentors and friends--may the practice of self-love replace our cultural norm towards self-denigration and may the practice of women gathering continue in perpetuity.
