Drawing on The Divine Feminine Workshop June 2021

“The wise woman begins to follow a path. She continues on her journey from maidenhood, to middle age, to the crone, creating light in the darkness, creating a path for others. Her footsteps mark the way for generations to follow.” Michele Costa Lukis

I personally am a true believer in the power of bringing like-minded people together. Women’s circles are a powerful tool to gather women and to talk about our shared experiences along with our dreams both collectively and individually. In this way, we create a community and a support network for each other.

Modern day life and its issues can lead us to feel isolated and alienated. We can find it hard to communicate what it is we truly think and feel deep inside, and we often numb out so hard that even if we are given an opportunity to express what we feel and think, we can’t remember what our ultimate dream for ourselves and for our world is. We end up resorting to overused words such as PEACE, LOVE and HAPPINESS, without them really meaning anything or adequately expressing what we feel.

I believe one of the lessons of this Pandemic and its various lockdowns has been the realisation that we are all social beings and that isolation is no good for any of us. We need true and deep connections with our people and our community. We need to relate and belong.

How can we achieve a better connection to our people?

I believe we can do this by gathering in small groups/circles and talking about what really matters to us. Only in sharing our thoughts, experiences, fears, sadness, joy and of course, our dreams with others do we see, hear and witness that we are not alone.

We learn that all that we hold inside of us is valid and shared by human beings across the globe. We realise we are not strange or odd, and we get to know that it is simply part of the human experience after all. No matter where or how we live, what privileges, challenges or disadvantages we have in our life there are certain aspects of the human experience we all share.

Collaborating with Michele Costa Lukis from Shamanic Space on this workshop was hugely celebrated by me as she is my mentor. She is a top Trans-personal Psychoanalyst and a Shamanic Practitioner and has been practising for over 25 years. Her wealth of knowledge, as well as her warm heart and unique spirit, instantly puts you at ease. You feel you belong to her tribe. I have attended a number of her workshops over the past four years and I have learned deeply from her but the main thing I always take away with me after each workshop is to have better TRUST in myself. This is a gift that is rarely given. Modern life and the patriarchy has fuelled the fire of doubt in us as women, we are taught to believe we are not enough, we don’t know enough and we ought not to trust ourselves because of it.

Michele led the workshop with an introduction to the Divine Feminine and the meaning of the words. She then went on to introduce various Goddesses carefully chosen by her to illustrate the path of a woman from childhood to old age (croneage). She wove her stories into each stage of the day and led the Group into several journeys. After each journey, I gave the participants some tips on how to relax into mark-making and how to initiate drawing. Drawing is a hugely useful tool as often words cannot express enough, or the mind starts to alter and rationalise the experiences trying to make sense of it all, and this process on its own can take some parts of the raw experience away. Drawing is a simple, powerful and effective tool in helping bring forth the messages we get from our psyche, visions and dreams in these journeys.

This workshop was held on Zoom and it was wonderful to have female participants from Iran, Sri Lanka, The Philippines, China, Abu Dhabi and London. Together we weaved a tapestry of symbolism, colour, messages from our collective subconscious and found meaning on a piece of paper. With the help of storytelling, journeying and drawing we were able to take our visions to the next level. Initially, this felt a bit challenging for some participants as they claimed “I cannot draw*. But slowly, slowly as time went on, with gentle reminders and reassurances of “there is no right way or wrong way to draw, we can ALL draw” I was able to guide them to find their own way of drawing on the Divine Feminine.

On the second day, everyone’s hands were already well prepared and able to express on paper the messages received through our journeying. By the end of the workshop, all the participants agreed that they could draw (this is my ultimate joy, each and every time after a workshop of mine when someone claims they CAN draw my heart expands a little more).

Something incredibly fascinating started to happen as we worked together through day two of the workshop. After each journey, we discovered we often had a shared experience, as if collectively we met on the other side of our physical bodies. Each one of us saw the same path, entered almost the same space but encountered it from a different perspective, the beauty of it all amplified when we shared our visions and noticed that we were together which led us to find a deeper connection to our visions and each other.

One strong message I received from running this workshop alongside the amazing Michele and all the wonderful participants, is that we desperately need to work on sisterhood, on women supporting women through different phases of life. We need to really listen to each other and validate our individual challenges and triumphs yet speak our truth with one voice. We need to hold each other’s hands and whisper: “I hear you. Your emotions, thoughts and dreams are valid. You are not alone. I am right here by your side no matter what“.

And then just watch how that other sister straightens her spine, ready to walk on her own path with more light in her heart and more power in her steps.

You can find out about this workshop here.