Your guide to starting a women's circle (Yes, even you, skeptic!)

Seven tips for launching this life-changing practice in 2024

Photo by Jorge.

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Of course, I have always loved women.

My grade school friend Claire, who dressed up in my mom’s 1970s hippie skirts with dangling bells, and explained to me what marijuana was, and played veterinarian in the attic with our poor cats.

My middle school friend Ellen, who taught me to sneak into two movies at the AMC (shhhh), and gently suggested that coonhound sweatshirts probably weren’t the best choice in eighth grade, and showed me how to exert superiority over the cool/hot kids with a razor-sharp sense of irony.

My early college friend Rachel, who woke the athlete within, urging me into hours-long racquetball tournaments in which we whupped unsuspecting college dudes, inspiring my brief and completely un-ironic obsession with ultimate frisbee, and kickstarting my love of running.

My late college friend Elizabeth, who dreamt the dream of travel with me on long summer evenings in Wisconsin, eventually luring me to an island in the South Indian Sea.

My MFA friend Amanda, who smoked cigarettes in socks in the rain on my crappy little apartment rooftop and introduced me to the Berkshires and taught me – or tried to teach me – that one doesn’t always have to answer every question instantaneously and with five minutes of discourse.

But for a while, I forgot about women.

Men held the energy. They embodied cultural, political, social power. Sexual power. Impressing men = essential for achievement. Women were a mushy aside.

For years in my mid-twenties, I had no real female friends. I was a “guy’s girl” – sporty, feisty, brave, uninterested in clothes or makeup, content in a tent in the mud, willing to hike deep into the jungle, happy to engage in a messy screaming debate over mezcal.

And then, you know – pregnancy. I cringe at writing that, which tells you a whole lot about how deep internalized misogyny goes. As if we all still think pregnancy should be a thing which doesn’t affect you at all, like a new haircut or a cat. Go on, go on with your serious and important life, making spreadsheets and having conversations, don’t get all bogged down with womany goo!

Except, well, when you build a whole new human being with your body, it changes you. It has a bit of an impact. It literally rewrites every cell in your being with new DNA. And for me, it woke me up: oh hey, I’m a woman. Being a woman is actually a thing. A particular, vital, essential, incredibly complicated thing.

When I was so scared and overwhelmed in pregnancy, I tried to heal myself in the mainstream (male?) way. With reason, with the strategies and therapies recommended by the medical system. It didn’t work. What worked was women’s stories. Women’s experience. Women’s wisdom, treacly phrase be damned. It healed.

So last year, with a beloved Pittsburgh friend, I started a women’s circle. It changed my life.

Circling with women has revealed to me anew the depth of shared female experience. The resonances women share across generations, backgrounds, lifestyles, races, and nationalities. And also: what it feels and looks like to seek change, what it means to deeply accept yourself, and the many forms a good and meaningful life can take.

A year of women questioning, sharing, storytelling, actively creating their lives – together. It’ll change you.

Women gathering change the world. I don’t say that lightly or glibly.

It happens slowly, in the way of the truly meaningful stuff – the way trees grow over decades and give us shade and clean our air and brighten our lives.

If you feel called, do this. Try it in your community. It doesn’t have to be complicated or hard. The following are some loose guidelines to get you started in 2024.