I was an adult woman without children when I first started holding space for Women in Circle, trying to find my path in the world after experiencing the brutal violations of the Maiden, processing these experiences and delving deeply into healing practises to soothe my soul and re-build my shattered self.
When I became a Mother, this huge, new and daunting transition blessed me with an abundance of other Women also navigating this relatively new journey of Motherhood, and together we set up the Red Tent Women’s Circles to share and support one another as we figured out how to raise tiny new humans whilst still trying to nurture our own needs.
We shared the joys and pains of the Mother, through pregnancies, childbirths, and toddler tantrums, often whilst trying to carve out or maintain careers and trouble-shooting our inter-personal relationships.
And then the wheel of life turned again…
My next chapter brought huge external life transitions; immigrating for the third time in my life to a different country and culture, losing my partner and the father of my children, first to alcohol, drugs and other women, and then to suicide, I find myself at the precipice of my final Female Rite Of Passage, that of the Crone or Wise Woman.
And my soul yearns to sit in circle once more with other women taking this next step of the journey.
To bare our souls, to speak the words that we never speak in any other place other than a sacred circle of women, to hear and resonate with the stories of other women, to laugh and cry, share and support. Opening ourselves once more in this vulnerable process of transformation, as we experience ourselves in the goo of the cocoon, no longer a caterpillar, but not yet a butterfly.
Learning to find the Zen in the goo has become a focus and aspiration for me!
Last month I bought a guitar.
I have never been musical in the slightest!!
But now I pluck the strings and transport myself into a place of peace while the world around me goes increasingly crazy. Sometimes I go a bit crazy too!!
Perhaps our Mother Earth is going through her own Rite Of Passage as well?
And as this idea bubbled of initiating a new Circle of women transiting into their Wise Years, I felt into what this gathering wanted and needed to be.
No longer satisfied with people flitting in and out of life, a deep desire for commitment and consistency arose.
Not a drop-in drop-out scenario, but a gathering of women who seek the stability and depth of a stable community that is regular and reliable, comfortable and dependable.
Where we can also distill the wealth of our lived experiences into Wisdom for ourselves, our families and our communities.
And where we can write new stories into our culture around what it means to be a Wise Woman Elder.