Your Attention Feeds Your Belonging, Every Time
When women gather in community, it is dangerous.
When we come together in community, one that supports us in our wellness and in our wounding, we begin to question the narratives that have us feel less-than or in competition with each other. We become dangerous to the stories that have been handed to us by a culture that thrives on our disenchantment and cynicism. Almost immediately, we begin to question the assumptions, rules, and messages that have so much power over us when we’re sequestered from each other. We begin to see that the world does, in fact, have a place for us – that we belong.
This past weekend, we gathered 22 women from around the globe and cast a circle of Eros, Ceremony, and Belonging. Our group ranged from experienced ceremonialists and women’s community leaders to those who were stepping into both for the first time. We supported each other with our wisdom and held each other in our pain. We leaned into each other’s visions with curiosity, picking up forgotten threads and weaving our necessary strands into the community basket of remembrance and belonging.
In between our time spent together, we enacted our own self-designed ceremonies, each an expression of our personal prayer and connection with the more-than-human world. We spent time listening to our soul speak, honoring our own unique way outside of the confines of the linear, the logical, or the well-behaved. Mine was an elaborate process of shifting my relationship with the home I live in from ‘ownership’ to ‘stewardship’ so that I may better tend the land that’s holding me at this time. Others enjoyed simple acts of self care, a holy gesture in a life otherwise dedicated to work and family. There was no ‘right way’ or ‘wrong way’, the invitation was simply to find ‘our way’.
After our solo time, we came back together to listen with great care and support each other to harvest and integrate what’s possible now, on the other side of our ceremonies. By sharing our experiences of presence and magic, of embodiment and synchronicity, lessons and insight, we move closer to the truth of our gifts and what’s ours to do with our ‘one wild and precious life’ (thank you, Mary Oliver). We feed the belonging so many of us have forgotten in our separation from the natural world and from each other.
This is what makes us dangerous. When we know our place in the earthly and cosmic web, when we feel supported by a tribe of people, we give up our subordination to the stranglehold of alienation and replace it with loving participation for the benefit of all.
If this feels like a balm for your soul, we’d love to have you join us the next time we offer Eros, Ceremony, and Belonging during the Summer Solstice weekend, June 17th - 19th. We’ll be in person, safely distanced while camping under the vast Colorado sky. We invite you to save the date! If you’re interested, leave your name on the pre-registration list and you’ll be the first to receive an invitation once we have the details finalized. We can’t wait to breathe with your live bodies once again.
In the meantime, you don’t have to wait for a weekend retreat to bring the sacred into your everyday life. Your favorite song danced as a prayer, morning journaling with a cup of tea, even brushing your teeth can be a ritual of presence and care. Your attention feeds your belonging, every time.