I have a vision that Red Tents can be spaces where women share honestly across generations. Not just about menstruation (though that is super important) but also about the many other parts of our lives we so often don’t speak about honestly with other women.
A few years ago I produced a little book called ‘Listening to our Grandmothers’ and in it I recorded the stories of five women in their 60s and 70s. The book was about their stories but as I wrote it I became more and more convinced that we need more ordinary elders as role models, elder women who share with us about their lives and experiences and help ground us into our authentic lives as women. I was invited to give a TedX talk about this soon after the book was published and I am sharing it with you this month because I want to start a conversation about sharing accross generation in this community.
My TedX Talk wasn’t explicitly about inter-generational sharing in Red Tents – the Directory was only just getting started when gave it – but I do believe that our Red Tents are revolutionary in the potential they offer for us to do the kind of sharing I spoke about when I gave this talk.
My talk was about listening to elders but in Red Tents we can listen powerfully in other directions too. As we have shared in the past many Red Tents in our wider community are creating spaces for younger women to honour their menstruation and share their experiences and I know others in this community are finding ways to celebrate and honour others parts of our journeys was women, including for example, the menopause as well.
I invite you this month to think about how to invite older and younger women in to your Red Tent space this month as I really believe that cross-generational sharing could make a powerful difference to all of our lives. Please share with us about how your Red Tents are helping women to meet and share across generations in our Facebook Group . I have opened a special file here for you to share you experiences and reflections on this if you feel that you would like to. You can find it here.