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