Welcoming Our Daughters Vision
I believe I am not alone in wanting to foster a place where our young girls can be held with good eldership to discover the truth of who they are and live with a sense of belonging.
A place where we can honour the thresholds in all of our lives with consciousness and awareness.
A place where our girls can come to understand the ebb and flow of their cycles and rhythms learning to listen to themselves, their inner voices, their truth and guidance.
A place where it is possible to heal patterns of separation in our communities and with nature.
As our girls approach their initiation into womanhood, how can we best hold and nourish them and ourselves at this transitional time? How can we foster the knowing in our daughters that it is magnificent and good to be a woman and fully live that in our own lives?
In all earth based traditional cultures, girls and boys were held through their initiations by elders as they grew up. Our culture has mostly lost this soul based practice which orientated and channeled life force in a healthy way and enabled young people to have positive and life affirming experiences as they transitioned into young adulthood.
How can we once again claim our potential to hold this space for the young people in our lives?
This process is about finding our own ways to support our young girls that are meaningful and appropriate for them. It is about tending to ourselves as women so we can bring more resources and self-awareness to our lives and to our children. This is about recognising and honouring the feminine journey as it is expressed through them and in us.
As we embody being true to ourselves and welcoming our own stories more fully, we nourish acceptance and trust in their unique journeys. We are all part of a culture that has aspects that may worry us concerning the pressures on young women at this time. We celebrate finding our authenticity as women helping our children absorb a healthy sense of what being a woman is about. In circle they can see other women other than their mums. This can be inspiring, and help them to find out about new parts of themselves.
If we bring more awareness to the wounds and stories of our youth we lessen the likelihood that painful things will be energised in us as our children mature. Our wounds can be our openings for healing. When we are held with love in those wounded places we have an experience which means we can hold something for our children because we have been held. This supports the healing of intergenerational wounds which may have been passed down for many generations. In a supportive environment, we can explore how to stay attentive to the unconscious and often powerful forces that can impact on what we pass down to our children.
Gently and over time we will examine our own transitions and our rites of passage as women.
How were we met at the gates of our births, our first bleeding, our childbirths?
How have these experiences influenced us, and the patterns that play out in our lives?
How might these stories block or stand in the way of our ability to support our daughters in their own process of transitioning into women?
How can we know ourselves more deeply and understand how our wounds have served us?
We will educate ourselves about the menstrual cycle as a path to self-mastery and knowledge, so we can bring that gift to our children.
We will learn about the value of the menopausal transition for a woman. It represents a profound opportunity to heal what needs to be healed and step into eldership, power and self-expression.
We will delve into what it is to truly experience our capacity for pleasure and sensuality and what stands in our way.
Regular womens weekends and evening gatherings are available to offer time and space away from responsibilities of child care for women to drop deeper and tend to things arising from these themes.
Carefully pitched the gatherings will offer time for mothers and daughters to be together. There will also be parts of the day that are working in separate groups, allowing different needs to be tended yet cultivating a rich shared experience. We will usually have a theme to do with reclaiming feminine power through reconnection with the women's mysteries and we will always connect the gatherings to the seasonal cycles. You are welcome to delve into or borrow books from an extensive library to do with these topics.
By gathering in this way we hope to resource ourselves to tend to our wounds and celebrate one another. Together we can create a supportive, honest and loving place of encouragement to explore, feel held, and grow. Since the dawn of time women have facilitated transformation for each other. As we build healthy community, this allows a strong circle to be available to our young women if they wish to lean into it.
Throughout drumming, song, meditation and abundant tea and cake will hold our time together.