The Red Tent

There is a certain book, by author Anita Diamant, called The Red Tent. In it, she creates for us the image of a place where women gather during their monthly cycles. Women in a family, women of ancient times, all gathering to rest and tell stories and commune together as women. She weaves a dream place for us that we hunger for at our core...or at least the women I know who have read this book do and I share this hunger.

In an age where distance and busy schedules keep us apart from family and friends, this concept of a Red Tent, somewhere we can go, that we KNOW we will be going to reconnect with friends, seems vitally important to me and my well being.
This concept is so vital, it has given life to a spiritual movement called the Red Tent Temple movement. Red Tents are springing up all over the world. Women meeting at the New Moon to talk and rest and cry and love and share joys and sorrows, and ....just be women, connected.
Red tents can be elaborate and filled with many many women or quite simple...I have shared red tent space while pregnant with a equally pregnant friend, on the couch, under a red blanket. We got together every Monday evening while our husbands sang on a Native American Drum and we just complained about our aches and glowed about the babies inside us moving. It was our time, in our Red Tent Space.

The important part of Red Tent is just connecting with other women.

So why am I blogging about this today? Well, I have once again started feeling disconnected from women in my life. Sure I see friends at work and on Facebook, but that is not the same, not at all. So a month ago, the same friend that shared Red Blanket Space with me told me about a spa nearby and invited me to join her, her husband, and a few others to celebrate her birthday. At the spa, we sat in various poultice rooms (a salt room, a clay room, a jeweled room, an ice room, a charcoal room) together, we sat in hot bathes together, we sat in moist saunas together. We talked about our children and homeschooling and Waldorf school and public school. We talked about the winter and how more snow was coming. We RECONNECTED! We shared a meal together, we napped together.....it was a wonderful RED TENT type of day.

This month, my husband and I and a friend decided to spend a day together at the spa....and this time I treated myself to a full body scrub and massage while there....it was HEAVENLY! Then surprise, my friend who told me about the spa in the first place showed up with her husband and a mutual female friend. We talked and laughed and again...it was a RED TENT type of day, just being, without the hustle and bustle of daily life....no time tables to keep, no one to do for, just BEING.

So I think I have found my Red Tent. I think I will suggest that we women friends get together at the new moon at the spa, to just sit and talk, share a meal, and just BE. The walls may not be red, but for us, it will be a sacred gathering just the same. A gathering of women, a gathering of sisters. Welcome to the Red Tent.