Broken Open to Belonging

Altar at my recent Broken Open - Tending the Gifts in our Wounds Workshop - August 2024

I'm home now, in my little nest in the tall trees. Settling in and resting after an eventful and beauty-soaked week, learning and facilitating at the Temple of Belonging Women's gathering here in Oregon. Imagine this, 230 women, acres and acres of pristine forest, Douglas fir, cedar, big leaf maple, a diverse and beautiful forest. Bubbling brooks, clear streaming water, and even a waterfall. Delicious meals, new friends and old friends, ceremony, prayer and song. To say my heart is full would be a vast understatement. I feel satiated in a bone-deep way.

We humans really are tribal creatures, even in this time of great forgetting, this time of isolation, and the poverty of terminal aloneness, we still need each other. Women need each other. To be gathered in with company such as this, able to freely express our beauty and uniqueness, our longing and our hunger for life, our tender truths, is such an incredible gift. And that doesn't mean that it's all easy, or fun and games.  For me, learning to belong, allowing myself to belong, and showing up as my full self is a work in progress. My prayer before leaving for the gathering was that I would allow myself to belong, that I would be able to remove all of the barriers to love inside of my heart, and be open and willing to the possibility of what this gathering could bring into my life. My prayer was answered.

I was honored to be able to offer a workshop during the gathering, a council circle with an element of time on the land. I called my offering Broken Open – Tending the Gifts in our Wounds. 20 beautiful women joined me in the sanctuary space, a gorgeous old Chapel with wooden floors, a wooden roof, and those old glass paned windows that almost look like they're ice, patterns swirling in the light. We came together with a collective prayer to share our hearts, our wounding, and the beauty that arises when we are able to turn and face ourselves, in our truth. Suffering truly is the doorway into the soul. Each one of these women came with  tender truth and with courage that was stunning to witness.

As a circle facilitator and ceremonialist, it is always a privilege to be able to hold women in this way. As I step deeper into this path it's such a joy to realize that there is honestly nothing that I would rather do. Being able to create space for women to feel safe enough to bring themselves fully forward fills my soul with a sense of purpose. Ceremony is the place where my gifts are most alive, and what a precious treasure it is to be able to share these gifts with the world.

In each circle there is a magic that happens, the right women show up. It has never failed. We gather and the stories that are shared have synchronicity, one woman needs so much to hear what another shares. We find a thread of connection and we know we are meant to be there. There is a palpable hum of aliveness in the space. What is this wonder? I can’t know, but I can guess that it has something to do with our spirit kin, our ancestors, and the spirit of the depths that calls us at the right time to say yes to our soul’s longing. Our showing up brings the magic, it is our creation and it is also a gift.

I spent some time in my preparation for this workshop sorting through my collections of poetry and finding poems that felt resonant with the work that we were going to be doing. You can see them in the image above, rolled into scrolls and tied with a lovely green silk thread. As our circle came to a close I asked each woman to go to the altar and take a scroll, open it , and then tie the silk thread onto the wrist of their neighbor, as a symbol of our togetherness, of what we had created together.

I rub the silk thread on my wrist as I write this. I feel these women with me. I hold their sorrows, and the earth holds their sorrows. We grew stronger together, and the wonder of that beauty is enough. We are enough. Ceremony is enough. We were born for these wild and turbulent times and together we find our way. We belong to each other.

Many Blessings,

Marianna