Bliss

This is a journal entry I wrote in April of 2006, when I returned home from my first WWFaC retreat. At the time I was journaling at LiveJournal, so I wanted to tell my online friends about the experience. I titled it:

Bliss

 I just got back from my first WWFaC retreat.

WWFaC? That's Women Writing For a Change. It started here in Cincinnati, as a woman attempting (and succeeding) to empower a group of women to find their authentic feminine voices through writing.

Makes sense to me. After all, how many of us have relieved ourselves of hurt, anger, tension, through our journals, our diaries, our secret writings? The tradition is strong, right through from the Middle Ages. Women love to communicate. Women need to communicate. And denied any other outlet for communication, women will communicate with the nearest woman; themselves. How many of you have writings tucked away, whether long hidden (like my Diary, kept during my 13th year), or recent, online in your blog perhaps, or delineations of seminal moments or special trips (my first trip to Europe when I was 16 is reposing in a small green book somewhere upstairs). How many are blessed to be able to add photos or artwork, to their journals? I only wish I could. They add another dimension, one I find endlessly entrancing. Since I can’t draw and don’t own a camera, I use clipart all over my private journal

I could go on and on about journaling, but I want to tell you about the weekend. I spent it in an old convent just outside of town. We stayed in the part that used to house the novitiate. The floors were terrazo tile, the walls marble or dark paneled oak. The doors and windows were massive and heavy. And all around it, outside it, was the lacy green of spring trees with blue and white skies shining behind. Outside my third floor window was a garden with wind chimes, so that when I sat down to write, I was charmed by faint elfin music.

And the space was permeated with holiness and the power of women. Our group of 20 or so was electric with power and potential. The rule among these women is to listen, to hear, to accept without censure or criticism, whatever another woman in the circle has to say in her writing. We had opportunities to read our writings aloud, both in full group and to our small circles of 4 or 5 or so.

By Saturday night, I was High, Drunk with the joy of communication and understanding. Delirious with delight at the acceptance of the craft I so hopefully offered. On the lower floor of the convent, on the now-secular side, there is a kitcheny room nicknamed The Girl's Cafe, where we gather in the evenings, after readings are done, after the candle defining our sacred space is blown out. And then...well, we're women! So there is food, (LOTS of food) and wine, and laughter, (pee-your-pants laughter) and exchange of secrets that no longer feel so alienating and singular, and more laughter and more wine and more food...

Suffice to say that I didn't get to bed, my head buzzing with wine and joy, until past midnight on Saturday. And I rose up at 5:30, clean and sharp, eager to shower, to go downstairs, to talk and write and spend more time with women.

And during that weekend, the ties that were cutting into me, binding me tight (to the work I was doing then) began to loosen, and fray, and finally fall away. I breathed deep, and turned inward, and the words began to flow.

June 8th is the date of the next retreat. I will be there. I have joined their Feminist Leadership Program, dedicated to helping women to find their voices in an effort to rescue our world from the damage and erosion and violence that currently frightens and threatens us. I can't wait. It's what's next for me.