| As the ground warms up and explodes with flowers, strawberries and tomatoes I’ve been thinking about the soil. What it needs to stay fertile, to really nourish it up to look after the insects, worms and mini unseen things. That act of nourishing is so potent. It’s a similar generosity to planting a tree. It’s about putting something into the earth to grow even though you may not be around once it fruits. It’s about having a sense of deep time. That we are part of a huge cycle, not just the years that we can comprehend in our lives. I have been reflecting on the work of Wangari Matthai, how she educated whole communities of women to plant trees. What a gift to the world, to women, to the future of sustainable and resilient communities. I think we have some incredible older women to look up to, to value and respect. Many of you may be older women attending red tents or experience the richness of sitting in circle with older women in your community. We want to light the candle this month for all the women who have the extra years on some of us to offer insight, perspective and stories from their lives to our time spent together. I feel there is a hunger in our society for having role models in our lives. As much as it’s wonderful to look to celebrities, poets and writers to fill these roles, it is something very special indeed to have older women in our red tents who can speak with the wisdom of lived experience, who have journeyed further on the path of womanhood. We are using the term ‘older women’ to be interpreted as you like. Sometimes I am an older woman when I am with women in their twenties, often I am the young chick too when enjoying the grace of women in their sixties.We hear from Vali this month and her experience of attending a Red Tent. |
| Sitting In Circle with Vali |
Yes, I do feel honoured to be an elder of 69 years old at my local Red Tent, which I helped a young mum to establish about 3 years ago.
I have felt for many years that age is just a number and any ‘generation gaps’ need bridges to be built a.s.a.p.! In this way we all may continue to learn from each other’s experiences and, as we are all one, all unique and multi-faceted like diamonds, we all have so many gifts to share which I think is the name of the game.
Women, however, do have bonds, deep resonances that men cannot share, in giving birth and menstruation. There was a song back in the 70s: ‘Only Women Bleed’… how true.
So, as we do have that life essence coursing from us every month, slowly we are all realising what a miracle this body is, how wonderful the human in all the mystery of life and the Universe, the galaxy and beyond with so many stories, even lifetimes we may have experienced.
The Red Tent is based on the tribal times of our ancestors where at the full moon each month, whilst the men went to hunt for food, the women would gather together, share their feelings, joys and sorrows and actually bleed onto Mother Earth.
In Barbara Marciniak’s book called ‘Earth’ she explains how our Mother needs our human bodily fluids to help nurture and sustain her and that when this ceased to be, the Wars began and a theory is that she then received our life blood that way.
So, as we are cyclical beings, and everything in Life begins with a circle, Red Tent celebrates the menstrual cycle and indeed the Lunar cycle too, since the two phenomena are intrinsically woven together.
In sacred geometry we see that life is based on circles and cycles, from the sea shell to the architecture of a church to our own bodies.
The Golden Mean, the Fibonacci sequence weaves through life.
So yes, I love being present at the Red Tent gatherings and would like to recommend it as a way of keeping an open mind which in turn is a part of staying young at heart, vital for our well-being.
– Vali Trinity
| News around the Red Tent |
| Our dear sister, Mandy Adams, in Red Tent Cornwall hit the BBC recently with an interview about her work as a Menstruality Mentor and the practice of being with her cycle. The interview highlights the importance of the Red Tent global community so if you missed it then check it out here. Read the article here. |