Rowena Pantaleon and I co-facilitated this tribe of women called Women and the Sacred in Carmel Valley, August 21 – 24, 2003.

Our intention for this gathering was to come together to reweave the ancient strands of the indigenous feminine and to invoke the memory of the ancient grandmothers; to allow our bones to re-member what it is to live in holy communion with our sisters.

The question was asked: How would we as women be different in the world if we lived together on a daily basis, how would we as women move, dance, work, sing, play, and make love? What has been forgotten because we do bleed together as women as in the old ways? The guidance from the Kontomble reminded each woman that we were a single vertebra of the Great Snake Mother and over the weekend we learned how to move as the Snake Mother. The Serpent Mother invited us to learn to dance from our womb source and to remember the potency of the physical body as well as the spiritual realm of the Feminine. In joining these energies together, we placed them in the collective cauldron of change and we did re-member the potency of the tribe of women moving as one.

On the morning of the gathering, Rowena and I went for a walk up the mountains in Carmel Valley and we encountered a blue heron on a small pond. I have been walking this trail for 20 years and I had never seen a blue heron in this area. I came home and read in the Animal Medicine book about blue heron and it seemed very appropriate as a guide for our time together in the days to come. Blue heron reflects a need for those to follow their own innate wisdom and path of self-determination--to be true to your own deep gut, belly knowing. I began the gathering with this information as I wanted to give each woman full permission to track her own inner rhythm and to learn to be instead of do. We created an abundance of space for the women to rest, write, dream, play in the waters, and sleep in the hammock.

Friday morning I called my Kontomble and Saturday morning Rowena called her Kontomble.

We wrote together, prompted by the statement:
I come from a long line of women who . . . allowing our pens to finish the sentence. I will share what came through my writings:

I come from a long line of women who smelled the earth's dark, dank scent, crawling on all fours, hooves pounding the wet fecund fields of abundance. The squash scream out, I grow for you. The corn sways her yellow tassels in the wind, I will feed you and your family, taste me. I come from a long line of women who danced the fertile dance, who slid their bellies across the earth, sensing, flicking their tongues to the taste of desire of living fully in a woman's body. I come from a long line of women who bled on the earth; they mixed their blood with mud and blackberries and ate their own essences tasting the minerals of the story living at the bottom of the dark well. I come from a long line of woman who worshipped the sacred waters. You daughter are a Keeper of the Holy Waters: drink, drink, feed, feed. We are Women at the Well.

One of the rituals that was prescribed by my Kontomble was a journey to the Sea Cave on the Coast of Big Sur. The intention of this journey was to surrender to the big waters the wounds of our mothers and our grandmothers so that we could invite the medicine and gifts of our female lineage into our blood and bones and stop living from the wounds of the female line. The journey to this cave was an initiation in itself, but once we were inside the cave we felt the vibration of each wave crashing underneath us. We surrendered to the pounding heartbeat of the mother echoing through our bodies. We chanted and we then spoke our stories of the mother-line into the cowry shells that we would later give to the waters. There is a very powerful hidden grotto around the corner from the cave and this was the place where we made the offerings of goat's milk, fertile eggs, spirits and the cowry shells.

Rowena's kontomble has said to pay attention to where the waters would spiral and to toss our offerings in the center of this spiral. Words cannot describe this sacred place where the offerings were given. I only wish we could take every woman who longs to heal the wounds of the female lineage to this holy place. After the ritual, some of us were brave enough to strip down and jump into the icy waters of the Pacific Ocean.

That evening we had a celebration of the sweet deliciousness of women being with women. We feasted upon lamb in a curry sauce, amazing salads and deserts, sacred wines, and we danced. We danced around the fires, we danced in the waters, we danced to the sacredness of being born a woman, we danced to the sacredness of women being together in safety and holiness. We unveiled without shame and dance some more.

I am in awe of this gathering of women, We came together and we did our work, we spoke our truth, we gave our grief and rage to the earth, to the waters, to the fire, and we celebrated our womaness. Ahhh until we gather again. Ashay.