Woman-Becoming Rites of passage

Restoring community – Sisters working together to hold their daughters.

How do we work together as sisters for the holding of our daughters?

How can we work in harmony to recreate the lodges of old where the women held the girls as they grew into women?

How do we all becoming the mentors our daughters need?

These are questions I had been working with when I met the community of women I am now circling with in West Wales. I was experiencing a calling to birth lodges for my daughters and my vision had always been that they needed to be community lodges, where all the women/mothers were collectively holding space for the daughters of their community. I knew that the girls needed to have a circle of empowered women to hold their daughters.

By this point I had been running my ‘Becoming Native’ project which for years had been holding children’s lodges. I had gained lots of experience in holding children whilst co -facilitating children’s Sacred Earth spaces in camps and festivals with my sister Hannah. She now runs the Avalon girls grove in Glastonbury.

Even though I knew deep in my being that the girls needed to hear the wisdom of all women, that all women have something to give , that we can all mentor our girls together, as that had been my vision , only now do I realise after doing this work that not all women are completely ready to do this.

Even though I can see the amazing wisdom of each woman in the circle and I can see the beauty they can share, from my experience of healing myself and holding youth in sacred space, I realise that there is preparation to do inside yourself and as a circle before you begin to work with girls together. If it cannot be done before circling with the girls then it can be done alongside the work with girls.

A pattern of work has emerged for me. This is the work I am offering in my online mentoring course and I will be sharing about this over my next series of blogs.

In fact before I start I have to say that this work I am sharing is only half the picture. I want to be clear about this. Our brothers, the men and our boys are the other half . We are a human family, a sacred hoop that is broken, fragmented and the working of restoring our community, mending the hoop takes all of us.

Sisters we cannot do it without the other half of our species..and why would we want to! How beautiful it will be when the time comes that we can all sit together in circle and share from our deepest hearts without fear and really , really hold our youth in strength, for our youth to be witnessed and seen by a whole and connected community who love and respect the earth, each other and each others unique and beautiful differences. The differences which are in fact the unique medicine of each individual, that is a vital thread of a beautiful new cultural tapestry that we can all weave together…

This part of the picture, the vision, the work is held by my beloved partner Shando and is profound but simple as it is so natural and truthful.

But for now dear sisters we somewhat put the cart before the horse and make a start together. I know we all feel a sense of urgency to hold our girls as the mainstream culture gets more and more distorted. We don’t have time to wait for the men to get together as our daughters are growing up now! And they are growing fast!

( if there are any men out there who are reading this and want to share about the work that is going on to hold our youth please let me know as I would love to hear from the men on this subject.)

So I begin to answer those questions.

Working together in groups can be tricky, even in circles of sisterhood issues can arise than cause conflict and upset ruining what could have been something really beauty full.

Ego gets in the way!

As we are strong women awakening to our own medicine and truth sitting in circle to discuss our daughters we all want to be heard, have strong opinions on what is suitable for girls, what is not and of course we want to share our own work with the girls.

If we are to gather as Wise-Women to bring our medicine to our daughters, to take responsibility for the holding of our girls and not just expect a mentor to be the one who knows, we need to recognise that now we are healing and are awake to our truth and medicine, that all we have to do is act from that place of truth and the girls will get all the mentoring they need. To hold the girls so they can become their true self, you have to be living as much a possible in the moment from that place. You need to be walking your talk. The girls need to feel your medicine, your truth and it will awaken theirs.

So what to we do with a circle of women who are awakening to their truth, who all want to share from that place , so we can harmonise together for the girls?

*We need to create the space so ego does not enter.

*We need to to create a space where they can relax back into the circle and feel the natural flow between each woman’s medicine.

*We need come from a place of connection to the land , all beings and each other.

*We need to heal so we do not project our past experiences onto the girls.

*We need to know our own medicine , what is our own unique path and we need to honour and value each woman’s own unique path in the circle.

*When we begin working with the girls we need to know how to leave our burden baskets outside the lodge. The space is for the girls and we women need to be fully present with that.

This is the work of restoring ourselves and restoring our communities.

The girls lodge you create will become a beautiful cultural treasure that will be handed down through the future generations. The girls in their own unique way will carry on the work your community gave them when they were young. In one of my lodges the girls very quickly began to talk about when they are older they will be running the girls lodges for their own daughters!… When I heard that I thought that’s it! Our work is done, I can die happy! It is what it is all about.

You can think of the lodge you birth as a seed that will become a forest years after you are gone.. this is the legacy we leave behind.

For the next seven generations

Eartha Love x