there are parts of me only women can hold

Image captured at retreat by talented @laurilavie

I’ve arrived at a point in my life where I understand why women used to gather. Why there were separate spaces for men and wome

n, and why women would retreat to the red tent during their bleed tending to themselves while the world carried on without them.

And while I know we live in a different time now, and our bodies, our rhythms, our ways all adapting t

o modern life, there’s something that doesn’t quite let go. Because every time I sit in ceremony, whether alone or with other women, I feel the longing in my bones. The remembrance in my blood. Almost as if I’m missing a life I’ve once lived, and maybe, in some way, we all are.

For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me, because the only moments I truly felt like myself were the ones I spent alone. When I let myself drop beneath the surface and really feel everything that was there. When I danced in the candle lit darkness of my living room naked. That was the only place that felt like home.

Even before I had the language for it, before I felt connected to myself in any conscious way, I remember sitting on my windowsill late at night, watching the full moon take up space admired by the stars around her. Earphones in (just like now as I write this hehe) listening to music that touched something deep within me, yet something I kept hidden the rest of my time.

I would cry under the moon and somehow that made me feel alive. Free.

I was mourning something I didn’t yet understand. Maybe a part of me that had gone numb, maybe the part that wanted to live between trees, to belong to something wilder, something softer, something more feral ;)

Even back then, I would wander into the forest alone with my dog, leaving my phone behind (despite being a social media addicted teenager), letting my thoughts unfold in that in-between space. Still I couldm't bring myself to be radically honest to myself... that I was living a life not meant for me, putting a mask never meant for me. So I avoided it, only allowing myself to dip into that depth in fleeting moments.

I would cling to people and to connections, letting my emotional state depend entirely on how much attention I received in return. Group settings overwhelmed me (and, if I’m honest, sometimes they still do).

That "clingy" pattern led to heartbreak, again and again and again. And each time, it only deepened my anxious attachment. So I became more co-dependent in relationships, losing myself in them, unable to stay rooted in my own energy (and let's not start with group settings..)

But after my last breakup, I had a wake up call. I can’t say if it was the ending itself, or something within me that was already ready to change. It was when I was at the worst mental space in my life after I had moved to Austria after traveling for nearly three years, when everything I had pushed down caught up with me. But in those most painful moments, I always see the portal for transformation. Always.

So for the first time, I developed a kind of healthy and loving independence in love that didn’t feel like detachment. I started prioritising my friendships with women again.

I remember telling a sister recently, half-joking (but also completely serious lol):

“Women should live together and only meet their husbands every other moon.”

Because as much as I love my partner, as much as I love sharing life with him, there is something about being with women that can never be replaced. Not by a man, not even by the most loving partner (which I have)

We need women.

We need spaces where we can release, where we can speak freely, because speaking moves what is stuck inside of us. And yes, men need men too. It’s the same principle. BUT there is something uniquely woven into the way women meet each other.

Through our cycles.

Our wombs.

Our bleeds.

We understand each other in ways that don’t need explaining. It lives in our bones, because for as long as women have existed, we have gathered. And maybe that’s also why it was lost. Imagine the power of women gathering fully in touch with who they are then, and especially now (after all that we know about our bodies and beings today).

And yet even with all of this awareness, there is still the sister wound.

Every time I enter a new circle of women, I feel the repeated hesitation and the doubt. A loud part of me wondering if I should just stay home and do the ceremony alone (as that's what I am used to). And sometimes, that is the right choice. We need solitude too so we have enough space to recharge, to be with ourselves, to regulate and integrate.

But I also know that this fear doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from the deep longing to be seen, held, and loved by other women, and the vulnerability that it requires. And it’s important to say: not every space is safe. Even the spiritual world carries its own distortions.

So yes, listen to your body and your intuition. Always! But also, give yourself time.

Women have intimidated me for so long. Not because they are unkind, but because they are powerful, so beautiful, so deep, so expansive, that sometimes I don’t know where to place myself in their presence. And yet, they carry the same wounds. The same doubts.

They question themselves as their bleed approaches. They wonder if their bodies are enough, if they are loved, if they belong.

They know you.

And you know them.

It’s that vulnerability that opens that door.

So yesterday, I met with a group of women by the river. We hadn’t seen each other in a year, and still it felt like no time had passed. We shared what we had been carrying since we last sat in circle. We drank cacao, and we held hands in a circle, humming softly to the Earth, to each other.

And in those simple yet powerful moments I was reminded that this longing to gather, to dance, to sing, to cry and laugh together, to hug, it isn’t some fantasy, and it isn’t something distant or unreachable.

It is our natural state. It is remembering.

Remembering our hearts, our wombs, and always our mother, the earth. The one who holds us, nourishes us, teaches us how to be.

She is there, every time we gather.