With Christmas fast approaching it seems this month’s theme of forgiveness in dark times is highly poignant and relevant across all communities. For at this time of year we often come against many situations with the potential for conflict and emotional tension, from the office Christmas do to reunions with family members we may not have seen since this time last year and still hold unresolved tensions. But as Cali, one of our red tent sisters, discusses this month in the sitting in circle piece, it is precisely this challenging division that can offer the opportunity to heal mistrust and the painful wounds carried around for far too long.
With this in mind the upcoming new moon on the 7th is the perfect opportunity to project our wishes for healing of old tensions with both personally and throughout the world, should we wish to extend our love far and wide. Forgiveness is essential to truly heal as holding on to the anger merely passes the power from our hands over to those with whom we have conflict. The upcoming winter solstice reminds us on the longest night & shortest day to celebrate the return of the life and warmth giving sun, making way for growth in the coming year.
Our red tent shared experiences of support, love and permission to feel all that’s bubbling up to our consciousness, provides the perfect platform to release what no longer serves us well. The guidance and counsel from our red tent sisters are often just what’s needed to face and forgive in order to mend all the broken parts. Come on in and cosy
Sitting in circle with Calli
A Red Tent has been a monthly feature in my life for 9 years now; a circle of women that has held me consistently as I have journeyed within. Through my dark times my Red Tent Circle has been a cradle of solace into which I have fallen, always assured of a gentle landing. Through my glory days, the love of that same circle of women has never failed to lift and encourage me further.
It has been a place of deep healing and growth. The stories, tears and joys of others have mirrored back questions to my own heart, enabling me to see my own shadows and feel my own strengths. Through my Red Tent I have experienced the power of sisterhood and know first-hand the vital importance of it to our wellbeing.
And it has also shown me the insidious mistrust between women that I have come to see as part of my own patterning as well as a reality woven deep into the fabric of our collective field. For the past 2 years my exploration of ancestral healing has called me specifically to the Burning Times. Through my research I have uncovered the roots of our broken sisterhood and the betrayal of women by women. As epigenetics is proving, we have inherited old ways of being that hold us separate; we are carrying painful wounds of disconnection from ourselves, each other and the land, which we continue to play out hundreds of years later. Red Tents are a place of deep and important healing in this regard and I am eternally grateful to Alisa Starkweather, my teacher and founder of the Red Tent Temple Movement, for her vision of a Red Tent in every village.
This month I celebrate a full year of not bleeding and the welcome of my menopausal crone energy. With the support of my Red Tent women, I am marking this rite of passage with a year of pilgrimage across my Celtic heartlands, guided to heal the wounds of the Burning Times as I go. For the next 13 Full Moons I am calling for women to come gather in ceremony to honour our witch ancestors and to heal our broken lineages. Each woman is invited to bring a silver medicine spoon which I will collect for a collaborative project down the track. A collective wound requires a collective healing. If you feel called to join me, I’d love to hear from you. You can follow me through my Facebook page Sacred Stones and Witches Bones or email me at caliwhite2@gmail.com.