The Red Flower: Why women heal together

A medieval tale, five generations of daughters, and an online women's circle held woman to woman.

Think of the last time something in you truly shifted.

Perhaps it was in a therapist's chair, or halfway through a course, or on the last morning of a retreat. Something loosened. You felt lighter on the way home.

And then, quietly, you carried it on your own.

Women healing in community

Women did not always learn this alone. For most of our history, a girl grew up among women of every age. She watched her older sister put a baby to the breast, and learned how it was done without anyone telling her. She sat beside her aunt and learned to plait hair and knead bread, and which leaf to lay on a burn.

When a baby was coming, the women came in. And somewhere at the heart of it there was an elder, steady and wise, the one you went to when you did not know what to do.

That was the village. Knowing moved between women like the beat of a drum, felt in the body long before it had words.

Most of us have lost the village.

Now so much of our healing happens by appointment. One woman, one expert, a door that closes. It has its place, and it’s very important.

What it cannot give you is the other women. The one who nods because she knows. The one whose courage wakes your own. The relief that creates space in your body when you realise you were never the only one.

That is why I am creating this women’s online membership.

And to tell you how it began, I need to go back nearly thirty years, to a story that has stayed close to my heart ever since.

Marie de France, the red flower
and medieval women's healing

Marie de France illustrated in a medieval manuscript writing her tales

In the twelfth century, Marie de France set down a Breton tale called Eliduc.

When I first read it, I was a young historian studying what the medieval world decided a woman's body was. Eve the temptress. Mary the mother. The only two versions of women that were told.

And I had not only read that story. I was raised inside it, in Derry, in Sunday school and Girls Brigade.

In the tale, a young woman lies so still that everyone believes her dead. An older women, Guildeluec, finds her there, and stays.

As Guildeluec keeps watch, a weasel seems to falls dead beside the girl. Its mate nudges her, and waits, then runs into the woods. She comes back with a small red flower in her teeth, lays it in the other's mouth, and the weasel wakes.

Guildeluec has seen it all. She picks up the same red flower. She sets it to young woman’s lips, and she comes back.

Red flower to red flower. Woman to woman.

No one taught her. She watched, and then she did.

For a long time I was the one watching. The historian, analysing women healers from the original sources. The learning practitioner in museums, helping people meet the past with their hands and hearts. All of this taught me something about holding space for others.

Then, like Guildeluec, I stopped watching and began to do.

Ancestral healing and the
two inheritances women carry

There are two inheritances in this story.

One was laid on women, mother to daughter. Carry it quietly. Hold everyone. Ask for nothing. I know that one well.

I am the first-born daughter
of a first-born daughter
of a first-born daughter,
going back five generations.

We held the emotional space for everyone. That long training made me skilled at containing what others could not hold.

The other inheritance is older. For thousands of years, women have passed healing on to each other, hand to hand. It was never lost. It was only waiting for the next woman to pick it up.

It is a small story. It needs no grand lineage. Just one woman showing another what she knows.

A women's healing circle,
held woman to woman

This is the heart of the circle I am building.

In the tale, no one stands above anyone else. The weasel knows. The wife watches. The girl wakes. And each one who receives the flower can carry it on.

My part is to tend the circle. I notice who has gone quiet. I make sure no single voice fills the room. When something needs naming, I name it. The medicine moves between you. One woman says the true thing out loud. Another recognises it in herself. Something wakes.

You will not arrive to an empty room. Stories, practices and rituals are already waiting, along with a few self-paced courses I have developed. What comes next, we shape together.

The founding members will help decide what this membership becomes, and what we explore in our live circles and ceremonies.

An online Women’s Celtic
Shamanic Journey Circle

So this is what I am opening. An online women's circle, private and held, reaching you wherever you are in the world.

A live circle every month, to sit together and be heard. Drum journeys and meditations for the weeks in between. Ceremony at the as the Celtic year turns. And other women, walking their own healing journeys alongside yours.

A place to lay down the inheritance that was laid on you, and find the older one waiting in your body.
The one that was always yours.

A place to arrive exactly as you are.

The founding doors open in early October and close at Samhain.
Founding members come in at £25 a month, and keep that rate for as long as they stay.

In the circle, the red flower moves from hand to hand. Some days you will carry it. Some days it will be carried to you. Both are welcome here, and there is a place for you.

SIGN UP BELOW TO BE ADDED TO THE FIRST TO KNOW LIST.
YOU WILL RECEIVE AN INVITATION TO JOIN THE SPACE IN EARLY OCTOBER.