In 2014, after the birth of my fourth child and in the midst of my second tumultuous marriage, when I personally hit rock bottom, through Facebook and Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s Women Who Run with the Wolves, I found Women’s Circles.
Through the healing and magic of Women’s Circles, I found Goddess and Earth based spirituality. I had to work through the dogma of my Catholic upbringing to give these philosophies any credence: the notion that the Earth was alive and deserved to be treated as such and the notion that divinity can and has taken a feminine form.
In other words, my world view expanded exponentially.
From my static, priest-led weekly Sunday masses that I grew up attending, watching the dust motes float through the air, listening to the choir, meditating my mind, people-watching, and occasionally coming back to consciousness to usually wonder what the fuck the Priest was talking about in his Sermons.
Most of the time, the sermons did not make a whole lot of sense to me or seemed pointless and didactic. Sometimes, I just plain disagreed with them.
But I set them aside on a shelf and accepted that this was the one time when my family got together.
Afterwards, we would stop at Luby’s Cafeteria, and I would always get my favorite meal: roast beef, rolls and chocolate pudding pie.
Fast forward to my life falling apart in my 40’s.
When I found Women’s Circles, I was tapped on the shoulder to start the divine feminine app as I quickly saw there needed to be a directory to find these Circles.
And through the divine feminine app, I started finding gatherings and organizations filled with Life.
She is the Life/Death/Life force, she is the incubator. She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multi-lingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.
She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory. She has been lost and half forgotten for a long, long time. She is the source, the light, the night, the dark, and the daybreak. She is the smell of good mud and the back leg of the fox. The birds tell us secrets belonging to her. She is the voice that says, ‘This way, this way.’”
Pg. 12 Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Find Her. Free Her. Love Her.
This Way. This Way.
Through the divine feminine app which has blossomed into a community of almost 12,000 [mainly] women world-wide with thousands of Circle hosts, events, retreats and Sacred Feminine resources, I have made friends all over the world.
And I have gone to events all over as well.
When I first started going to events and healing, I would notice this phenomenon at the beginning of an event.
We wear armour in everyday life: a protective shield to keep away the pain.
When you go to these events, you must remove that armour to receive. You must allow your vulnerability. You must trust the group consciousness enough to truly allow yourself.
As an astute observer of people and life, I would feel my aloofness when I first got to events. ‘Well, they’re doing that wrong.’ ‘Look at them.’ Snort.
Judgements. Criticism.
All of these accoutrements we have garnished to survive through the politics of the workplace, the dysfunctions of our families and the ‘dog-eat-dog’ness of the world.
What if there was a place to lay them down?
For years, I went to the Gather the Women annual events. I vividly remember arriving and having to work at dismantling my daily armour.
The reward? Oh my. Gather the Women would put us in small circles where you got to know the others in your small group and then had large Circles with the whole group.
I remember one of them led by my good friend Dawn Gandalf. I still see her in my mind talking about it being time to jump and fly. I have many of these moments from various circles, events and retreats imprinted in my mind from the past decade. They buoy me through rough seas.
I remember that particular climatic Circle arriving at this point where Well Being coursed through my entire body as a tidal force.
Do you know what I am speaking of?
If not, you should.
You should actively work towards that.
All is well.
And surely this is the way we Heal the World.
And this is the best part. When you learn how to dismantle that armour, trust others and slip in that juicy well-being and healing, you can take that back into your ordinary, every day life.
Imagine.
Imagine being strong enough that you do not need daily armour.
Strong enough that you understand completely who you are: your strengths and challenges. You feel supported and cared for by life. You see others with their armour, and you forgive them. You accept them as well. With boundaries of course.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear Her breathing.” – Arundhati Roy.
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