The Power Of Women Who Come Together
These words flow with the still present vivid feeling of what it means to sit in circle with other women and hold their presence and their stories.
I hold Women Circles, specifically Mother Circles. I love them.
They fill me with a newfound and yet extremely old familiar feeling of power. Not the power that comes from domination, from fear or from a misguided sense of superiority.
No, it’s the power that flows softly, yet determined, the power that births and holds together, the power that comes from connection, presence and intention, the power that comes from vulnerability.
This is the sense of power you gain when you sit in circle with other women, knee to knee, womb to womb, heart to heart. The power of women gathered together.
So why is it that whenever women gather together in a sacred, intentional space like a circle of women, they leave changed? What happens in the circle that alchemizes parts of themselves they thought lost, forgotten or lacking?
The circle is and always has been in many cultures, myths, folklore and symbolism a representation of life, of continuity, of cyclicality and openness, of eternity and softness, of the origin of things and of connection. So, infusing a space and a gathering with these meanings, automatically gives it power, it gives it weight and meaning.
As women, we ourselves represent many of these qualities and are a reflection of them through our very nature.
Our wise inner cyclicality that we experience month to month, ending with our bleed is a reflection of nature itself, of life itself.
Each month we prepare to bring forth a life, we orchestrate our system, nurturing our womb to the peak of ovulation, of maximum bloom, for it to possibly be the home of a life. If that does not happen, then our bodies reflect the ebb and flow of nature, slowing down, hormones dropping, our uterine lining preparing to be shed, to be composted and transformed through menstruation, when we experience a death/rebirth experience, meant to prepare us for a new beginning, a new cycle. Month after month. We are amazing.
As women who are mothers, you carry an even deeper power and reflect even more strongly the symbols of life, completion, connection, cyclicality, eternity.
The circle provides women with a sanctuary to remember.
To remember their nature, their feminine, perfect, amazing nature.
To remember their wise cyclical nature, their enoughness, their wholeness, their amazing power to birth worlds, their fierce and forgotten power to create anything, their connection to themselves.
To remember what it feels like to be surrounded by women and feel safe.
To remember what it feels like to be seen, held, acknowledged, honored.
To remember what it feels like to be free, to experience and feel, to sit relaxed and unapologetic, to be revered for your uniqueness.
To remember what it feels like to allow yourself to break patterns that keep you small, contained, cut to fit expectations.
To remember what it feels like to let go of voices who tell you this is taboo, you shouldn’t do this, you’re not allowed.
To remember what it feels like to be witchy, witchy meaning wise, healer, intelligent, intuitive, connected to all nature and her elements, possessor of the biggest power of them all, the power to birth worlds.
When women come together in circle they break free and they break loose.
When women come together in circle they forget the faded, people pleaser, good girl conditioning and they tap into their authentic, grounded, embodied selves.
The circle does not actually do anything but provide us with a space and time set aside intentionally to come back to ourselves.
We do the rest.
Looking back to the image of my last circle, with a beautiful center piece honouring mothers, matrescence, the power of life, cyclicality in ourselves and in nature, the rhythm of life and her wise phases, I know that when I hold a circle, I am just remembering.
The women who did this before me.
The women in my family, the women before them.
The mothers, the sisters and the daughters.
The women who gathered in red tents.
The women who gathered under the moon.
The women who gathered, even though scared.
The women who gathered, even though punished.
The women who gathered because they knew if they didn’t, they would be lost.
Goosebumps. Chills. Remembering.
Savage Daughter Ekaterina Shelehova
I am my mother’s savage daughter
The one who runs barefoot
Curses sharp stones
I am my mother’s savage daughter
I will not cut my hair
I will not lower my voice.
We are all brought forth out of darkness
Into this world, through blood and through pain
And deep in our bones, the old songs are waking
So sing them with voices of thunder and rain
We are our mother's savage daughters
The ones who run barefoot
Cursing sharp stones
We are our mother's savage daughters
We will not cut our hair
We will not lower our voice.
✨
holding space for you, mama,
Simona