The Healing Powers of Women’s Moon Circles
It is a powerful force when women come together to support, embrace, and inspire one another as we move through life’s cycles. When women circle up, especially in conjunction with the new moon, we collectively harness our ability to intuitively create our path forward from a place of clear intention.
Women’s circles are an ancient tradition that have survived the fluctuations of society’s pressures to quiet our voices. Thankfully, we are currently experiencing a feminine-rising movement that is fueling women everywhere as moon circles and women’s gatherings become a mainstream trend, regardless of one’s spiritual beliefs or personal practices.
We are finding our voice and becoming more outspoken, listening to one another’s stories with honest reflection, and experiencing a deep remembrance of where we came from. We are healing our broken bonds amidst a scrolling culture of reality TV that broadcasts a disheartening imbalance of the feminine – filled with comparison, competition, and gossip. Yet such traits are not inherently feminine. They were learned over time, as we shifted away from how our greatest grandmothers lived, into a more linear wayof moving through the world.
Fortunately, the circle has reemerged.
The Empowering Benefits of Sitting in Circle
Women’s circles encourage the four C’s – community, communication, connection, and collaboration. As the bond of a circle deepens a feeling of equality and support is created, deeper healing is promoted, and our skills for manifestation are sharpened.
Gathering with women gives us the boost needed to return to our lives inspired and ready to start new, let go, keep going, accept change, shift perspectives, be seen, create more, slow down, or whatever it is that life may be asking of you.
Meeting in circle also teaches us how to sincerely feel and listen while dissolving any shame we may be carrying. Often times shame simply needs to be shared, or to hear itself in another’s story, so that we can be reminded, “I see you, I understand.” This honest reflection and acceptance is how we build confident beauty in its truest form.
No matter how intimate, sitting with women reminds us that it is safe to be vulnerable. It reminds us that we are linked, that there is power in receiving and giving support, that beauty lives in every shade of our being, and that our magic cannot be measured. This space allows us to be unapologetically ourselves through the tears and the laughter, while sharing our skills and our stories.
Moon circles also remind us that there is work to do, and that loving ourselves while reflecting that love back at the women who cross our path is a daily imperfect practice. When honored, this practice reaps huge rewards in all parts of our lives and on the planet.
Healing the Wounds Between Women
In both my work and personal life, I’ve experienced and have heard many women express how they struggle in their relationships with other women. Women can trigger women, heightening insecurity or competition. The reasons for this friction are endless. Yet it’s good to have an open discussion about it. Because simply put, imagine a world without it, where we are curious and inspired by her mystery and charm rather than comparing ourselves to it.
When women gather in circle with grounded openness, a container for healing and self-discovery is created. It gives us room to explore being free of habits and belief systems that drain our energy, or convince us that we’re not good enough or that we’re ‘too much.’ This container can guide us to embrace our feminine nature – emotional, creative, reflective, and flowing – and can heal our relationship with ourselves and our relationships with other women by dissolving judgement as we recognize ourselves in one another.
Recently I heard an inner voice in my meditation say, “Be the woman you want to be received by.” For me, this means to be warm and welcoming with other women because I know how good it feels when women are that way with me. When we welcome one another in, meeting each other exactly where we are, it helps each one of us stand in our power. And a well-rounded woman in her power is the exact medicine our beloved planet needs right now to balance the scale between the feminine and masculine.
For many of us this is a practice – to reach out and to be received in this way. Some relationships may require more work or boundaries than others, yet holding this truth in the center of our hearts will soften the edges and create healing internally and globally.
Spinning off of the old quote “happy wife, happy life,” I’d like to reframe that into “happy woman, happy planet.”
How to Find a Circle Near You
There are many ways to bring a women’s circle into your world. You can start your own, find a local workshop offering women’s events, or simply ask around until you find some ladies who are already in a circle that you can join.
Believe me, there are women in your neighborhood just as hungry as you for this connection. Keep in mind you can start your own circle with just one or two other women and let it evolve from there.
An easy way to keep it consistent is to meet once a month on the new moon. The new moon is a perfect time to dive deep into intention setting, new beginnings, releasing the old, and supporting one another’s dreams for the month ahead. Before you know it, the next new moon will arrive and your sisterhood will grow.
Start a group text or email thread to keep one another in the loop, schedule a handful of new moon’s in your calendars, and decide who is hosting (there can be a single host each time, or you can rotate who hosts each month).
How to Enhance the Magic of Your Moon Circle in Your Life
- Make your moon circle a monthly commitment, and attend other women’s gatherings or events that catch your eye
- When you can’t attend your moon circle, honor it in your own way at home by meditating on your intentions. Then, share your intentions with at least one of your moon sisters or in a group email thread for support and reflection. This will deepen the bond, hold you accountable, and give you a fresh starting point to work with each month.
- Each new moon, set 1-5 clear intentions you want to work with and write down the action steps needed to make it a reality so you can put it into practice. By the next new moon, you can acknowledge how far you’ve come and what next steps are still needed.
- Even if you only have 3 minutes a day, commit to a daily ritual that keeps you in a healthy self-care rhythm and nurtures your intentions. It can be a meditation, journaling, an oracle reading, chanting, or anything that puts you into a present calm space.
- Practice using the medicine from circles in your daily life by being mindful of how you give and receive from others outside of the circle. Little by little this awareness will grow. This
In Gratitude
We can thank the many women who have come before us thousands of years ago, all the way into the 60’s, and into modern times. They have paved the way with their legacy, granting us the tools to reclaim our right to sit in circle where we can channel our greatest gifts, heal and empower our spirits, and deepen our connection.
For women already in circle or leading circles, it’s especially important to keep these foundational truths at the forefront of our interactions with other women. It’s not to say there won’t be some ups and downs along with some tough reflections to face in the midst of a growing sisterhood. What we learn from one another and the space created in a circle can be woven into a more expansive perspective as we flow through life and navigate a new era for how we relate to each other regardless of our differences and in light of our sameness.
The deep bond created, especially in an ongoing women’s circle, swells with consistency and can become a powerful net for support that ripples into the many ways you show up in the world.
Lastly, as a side note, men, we love you too. There is a place for women’s circles, men’s circles, and coed circles. A different conversation happens in each and all are needed and have their place. So, allow the men in your life have their time as well.
About the Author
It is a powerful force when women come together to support, embrace, and inspire one another as we move through life’s cycles. When women circle up, especially in conjunction with the new moon, we collectively harness our ability to intuitively create our path forward from a place of clear intention.
Women’s circles are an ancient tradition that have survived the fluctuations of society’s pressures to quiet our voices. Thankfully, we are currently experiencing a feminine-rising movement that is fueling women everywhere as moon circles and women’s gatherings become a mainstream trend, regardless of one’s spiritual beliefs or personal practices.
We are finding our voice and becoming more outspoken, listening to one another’s stories with honest reflection, and experiencing a deep remembrance of where we came from. We are healing our broken bonds amidst a scrolling culture of reality TV that broadcasts a disheartening imbalance of the feminine – filled with comparison, competition, and gossip. Yet such traits are not inherently feminine. They were learned over time, as we shifted away from how our greatest grandmothers lived, into a more linear wayof moving through the world.
Fortunately, the circle has reemerged.
