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| Our circle - Sandy Hise, Concetta Antonelli, Bess Piñon, Mary Frances Taunton, Olivia Oso, Gail Morse, and myself - at our annual weekend beach retreat | |
We All Need Caring Community
Four years ago tonight our women's circle gathered at my home and met for the first time. There were eight of us in the beginning and now, for over three years, there have been seven. With each passing year, our roots of love and trust, honesty and vulnerability, and shared tears and laughter and growth run deeper.
It is hard to find the words for my love and gratitude to Bess, Concetta, Gail, Mary Frances, Olivia, and Sandy. What we have is such a treasure! Deep, deep bow of gratitude!
Sharing this kind of intimacy and deeply heartfelt and soulful support is also something that is rare for many of us. I envision a time when women's and men's groups will increasingly emerge, creating a depth of connection, caring, and community that we all need. I imagine a diversity of ways in which we will heal the loneliness and isolation and sense of separation that is all too common in American culture.
*****
This is not my first circle to sit in. I've actually been part of many women's circles, ceremonies, and gatherings over many years now. I bow in gratitude for each and every experience. All have helped me to grow stronger, wiser, and more honest, healthy, happy, and whole. At the same time, over these many years and experiences I've also become more and more clear of what I am looking for and needing in a circle of women today.
It takes community to heal the wounds we experience in our lives - our childhood wounds, the losses and betrayals, the ways we've been taught that it is not okay to be who we are. Many of us have learned how not to trust and be vulnerable. Many of us are also stuck in anger, shame, fear, and unresolved grief, or in denial that we carry buried grief, shame, fear, and anger. Finding safe space, belonging, understanding and compassionate connection is what we all need to allow ourselves access to more of the wholeness of who we are and what our genuine truth is. At least this has certainly been my experience.
I'd not been in any women's circle for a while when I became more and more inspired by my husband's men's group. Ron's group of six men have been meeting twice monthly for twenty years. Yes, 20 years! And it is the basics of their format that I sought to share with other women in my life. I sat on this yearning to form a circle for some time before I finally began to reach out and ask several women if they were interested. The answer again and again was YES!
Over the years, I've also encountered many others, both women and men, who have expressed this yearning I had felt for establishing a safe and strong small group which would meet regularly and endure the challenges which are guaranteed to come over time whenever the intention is to build trusting honest relationships where we seek to go deeper together.
My earliest beloved teacher, Judith Duerk, describes this process as "the naming." In her book Circle of Stones, Judith writes: “To discover who she is, a woman must trust the places of darkness where she can meet her own deepest nature and give it voice…weaving the threads of her life into a fabric to be named and given…sharing it with the women around her as she comes to a true and certain sense of herself.”
While men and women are certainly different in some distinct ways, we also share more in common than many of us realize. The truth of this can be found in the men's group my husband has participated in for the past 20 years, which has a very similar format and intention as our women's circle. And they, too, have their weekend beach retreat every year. They are such great guys. ❤
*****
For those who may be interested in forming a women's or men's group, this is what has worked for us, which is similar in content to Ron's group. These are just ideas, which can certainly be changed or altered.
- Everything begins with one person setting an intention and beginning the process of inquiry as to who else may be interested in meeting.
- We met the first time and began the discussion of intentions, visions, hopes, needs, and what would be most important in the process of establishing trust and a safe and caring space.
- We established an approximate number of people we wanted our group to not go over. Once we had met for a month or two, the group was closed.
- We determined that we would meet twice monthly, on the first and third Thursdays of the month from 7-9pm. We take turns hosting at our homes.
- We arrive at 6:30-6:45 and share snacks and tea and some initial catching up. At 7:00 we sit in circle, smudge, and then sit in quiet meditation for 10 minutes. Candles are lit and often there is a small altar in the center of our circle.
- After the meditation, the host then sometimes offers some initial thoughts or a poem or two. The circle is then opened. A talking stick or stone or some sacred object is provided by the host to hold when each women chooses that it is her turn to speak into the silence. There is no cross talk. There is no leader. There is no agenda.
- We each wait and listen inwardly to whatever it is that most needs to be spoken to and shared in this safe and supportive space. Because there is no cross talk, there is no one trying to fix anyone else or intervene when someone is going deeper into their experiences and their wholeness.
This is what has worked for my beautiful sisters and myself for the past four years, and also basically what has worked for my husband and the wonderful men's group he has participated in for the past two decades.
*****
This is a sacred process of connecting, of building relationship with ourselves and others, of deepening in trust and vulnerability and honesty, and of getting into the marrow of our lives that many find very difficult to experience without the safety of sacred shared space. There is a bond that happens and a going deeper in the process that has a life of its own. Grace happens when the intention is to support ourselves and each other in becoming more who we most wholly are. It is magical. And beautiful.
I share this because I am acutely aware of the ways that our American culture is unhealthy and lacks in that which connects. Rather than a deep sense of support and belonging, so many live with vast loneliness, with taboos around vulnerability, with unseen shame and anger and pain that gets projected onto others, with engaging in the war of us against those Others. Sitting in circle breaks all that apart. It pushes us outside of our comfort zones, outside of what is familiar and seemingly safe, beyond the world we've thought we've understood as "reality," and gifts us instead with this wondrous process of gradually dropping the pretenses we make to ourselves and everyone else. What freedom!
It is truly amazing how powerful it is to simply be heard. To be listened to and truly heard. To have other eyes meet ours with compassion and caring and love. To not have anyone try to fix us or somehow by accident imply that we should just get over it or move forward or some other message which, one more time, takes us out of ourselves and what our true experience and our true needs are. When the intention is to allow and support ourselves right where we're at - with all the messiness of buried shame and anger, fears and tears, and unclaimed strengths and gifts and joy - we find the sacred ground needed to claim our noble and beautiful selves, foibles and beauty and all.
And this is what we all need and what our world needs. For us to find the path and the support and the safety to become who we are.
So tonight I share with whoever may stumble onto this blog piece about our sacred circle. Because, if you aren't already part of one, and if this speaks to you, please know that this is possible for you to have, too. Intentions are so powerful. The Mystery works in mysterious ways. The impossible can become possible. May we all find the support and belonging we need.
*****
These are two poems that I
shared in circle for our 4th anniversary:
I Am a Woman Finding My
Voice
Did I first lose my voice when I learned not to cry too loud or make too much
noise so I didn’t wake up Daddy? Or was it when I learned that talking in
church was a sin (unless it was to a priest)? Was it the first time I didn’t
say what was inside of me because I didn’t want to make someone mad, or was it
the first time that I said what wasn’t true because I didn’t want to hurt
someone’s feelings? No matter now. Now, I am finding my voice! I am laughing,
screaming, crying, and cooing! I am making delighted sounds and angry sounds. I
growl and moan, and I sing and chant! I offer soft and sweet words of comfort
and passion and I speak loud, clear words of outrage and opposition. I am
making holy noise and I am keeping holy, holy silence. Finding my voice means
that I claim my freedom to express myself. It means that I speak only what is
true for me, and that I will never be silenced again. I am a woman finding my
voice!
***
I Am a Women Bathing in
the Bliss of the
Company of Other Women
Sitting in a circle of women, women beside me, women across from me; women
around me; women listening to me; women embracing me; women understanding me;
women appreciating me; women admiring me; women comforting me; women
laughing with me; women keening with me; women celebrating with me; women
outraged with me; women creating with me; women allowing me to create my
own way. Women healing each other; women healing the world; women longing for
peace; women uniting for justice; women choosing love and forgiveness; women
visioning; women in the world; women in the home; women mothering children;
women tending men; women nursing parents; women running institutions; women
struggling; women overcoming; women growing; women dying. Women, huge and tiny,
bold and shy, wide and full, long and athletic; wise, strong, tender,
compassionate, vital, brilliant, magnificent, multicolored, multi-talented,
multifaceted, sparkling, glimmering, holy, light-giving gems of Creation,
women! I am a woman bathing in the bliss of the company of other women.
*****
Deepest blessings to us all on our journeys...
❤
Molly
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