A Celebration for A Place of Women

It’s Celebrate The Small Things Day. Something I’ve achieved each week, no matter how small. If you’re interested in doing the same thing sign up here at Vicki’s blog. And once again, it’s a biggie I’m celebrating. And it hasn’t even happened yet!

On Monday, I will reconnect with a group of women writers I met on Facebook last year. It all started when Deborah Batterman, the New York founder of the group mentioned that  she was flying to Los Angeles to visit her daughter, how about meeting in person. And just like that, five of us headed for an agreed upon meeting place, a restaurant in Santa Barbara. This was a 150-mile journey for me. You can read all about it here. That’s us above with the waiter.

Same deal, only this time we’re meeting at the Aroma Coffee and Tea Company in Studio City, near Hollywood. And this time, instead of just looking forward to meeting women I admire, I will savor every single moment I get to spend with them. To paraphrase Judith Duerk from her book, “Circle of Stones,” I will rejoice in that place of women where I am sustained and steadied.

Connection

I left my house at 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning for a meeting with my tribe—five women writers—in Santa Barbara, three hours away up the coast. I didn’t return until 9:45 that night. And then I couldn’t sleep for two hours because I was so wound up. I also had a sore tongue: a tiny rip on the right side from all the wagging it did. I didn’t shut up the entire time. Neither did they. It was a love fest. And I had never met them, well except for Britton, the gorgeous blond on the left in the photo below, who drove me from Laguna Beach.

You can read all about the actual meeting, on Jayne Martin’s blog, injaynesworld. There’s no way I can top her brilliant account, except to tell you what I took away from the meeting, other than fun, camaraderie, and encouragement: connection. It’s what I needed on the cusp of sending forth my memoir. A circle of women, strangers even, supporting each other as only women can do with their intrinsic thrust to support and nurture.

How might your life have been different if there had been a place for you? A place for you to go . . . a place of women, to help you learn the ways of woman . . . a place where you were nurtured from an ancient flow sustaining you and steadying you as sought to become yourself. A place of women to help you find the ancient flow already there within yourself . . . waiting to be released . . .

A place of women . . .

How might your life be different?

~Circle of Stones, Judith Duerk