What Happens in a Women’s Circle
There is nothing more ancestral than a women’s circle. The coming together + gathering of women has been happening in one way or another since the very beginning of time. Some of my fondest memories are of me sitting on my grandmas kitchen floor while all of my aunts + older girl cousins sat talking while doing various activities. Sometimes it was them preparing for a meal, cutting + slicing veggies, other times it was hair day and we were sitting with conditioner while others were getting their hair pressed.
As normal as gathering/sitting in a circle is, I know some of you saw the word “circle” + felt something in you go mmm. To which I actually get. That word has become somewhat a buzz word in the wellness spaces as of late + has been sprinkled everywhere.
A women’s circle is exactly what it sounds like. Women literally sitting in chairs in a circle. That’s it. That’s the foundation of the technology.
Hierarchy doesnt exist in the circle. There isnt a head of the table. Everyone is facing each other, no stage, no front of the room. There isnt an arrangement in the seating where one person is the source + everybody else is receiving. In a women’s circle every woman can see each other woman’s face + their body language. That one single physical fact does more than anything that could ever be said out loud in the circle.
Women circles at my retreats always open with a question. One question, not a heavy one, not share your deepest wound with strangers. Something simple like: what did you leave at home to be here today?
Then one woman will answer. Then the next. All the way around.
The rules are short. One person talks at a time. Nobody interrupts. Nobody responds. No crosstalking, no advice, no oh girl, you should try + no fixing.
Nobody has to speak. You can absolutely pass. Passing is a complete answer + I will honor that choice. There are always 2 circles. One in the beginning + then one before we leave each other. Some women pass in the beginning circle + talk in the closing one. Some decide to pass both times + still leave changed in some way. Both options are perfectly fine + respected.
Truth Moment? The medicine that I have found in a circle isnt even the talking. Everyone always assumes that it’s the talking. And it’s not.
It’s being witnessed without being fixed.
Think about how rare that actually is. When you tell somebody something hard, what usually happens? They start trying to solve. They tell you about their cousin who went through the same thing. They ask questions that are really suggestions. There is always the have you tried.
For the most part this is how we have been conditioned to show up for each other. Trying to fix whatever “problem” someone we care about is having. But solving is also how we get out of the discomfort of just sitting with somebody. Advice is a way of closing a feeling instead of staying inside of it. So most of us go through our whole lives constantly advised + almost never witnessed. This is especially true for women + mothers specifically.
The circle removes the exit. Nobody is allowed to solve for you. So you say your thing + then there’s a beat of quiet + the women in circle with you hold it along side you + then we move on around.
The quiet moment is the whole thing. That’s what people are still thinking about on their way home + hours later.
I know it works because I’ve watched it in the hardest of rooms there are. I’ve spent about a decade in birth rooms + postpartum rooms + the thing that consistently changes a woman is not the information I give her. It’s the moment the room got quiet + somebody finally said a true thing out loud + nobody rushed to make it better.
Women say things in a circle they’ve never said. Not because anybody pressured them. But because for once nothing was going to happen to them for saying it. There’s a freedom in saying the thing out-loud without hesitation.
Now let me tell you what you will not have to do, because I do think that is important to point out.
I don’t do icebreakers. No name games. I don’t do the whole you have to stand up + say something about yourself. There isn’t the exercise where you turn to the person next to you. I would never ask anyone to disclose their trauma to strangers. For in-person gatherings, if you do not want to be touched, nobody will touch you.
Performative vulnerability is not my vibe. That’s not depth, that’s just a different kind of pressure + I want no parts.
Each circle ends the same way they open with one question, all the way around.
Can I tell you what typically happens in the second circle? Its literally my favorite part of any day I facilitate. The room sounds different. It feels different. The voices are slower. Folks are less careful with their words. A woman who gave a tidy two-sentence answer in the 1st circle, takes her time in the last one. Somebody who may have passed in the morning talks in the afternoon.
Nobody will make it happen. The circle. The gathering. The day makes it happen. By the time the day ends + we connect one last time, the armor’s already on the ground somewhere.
This is what I learned sitting on those kitchen floors when I was younger. It’s what I experienced 1st hand once I was old enough to sit at the table with my aunties. There is such power in a woman’s circle. Being seen + witnessed in such a beautiful raw way. That’s why anything I facilitate the circle bookends the time we have together vs being one activity in the middle. It’s a before + an after that you get to hear with your own ears.
The circle is ancestral. Nothing scary. Some chairs in a shape with a rule against fixing each other.
I promise you, it is something we have been mising.
XO
Denawa Deniece
