Over the next week, I’ll be continuing to write about women’s circles and community leadership as I share about my course, Circle Craft. If it’s not for you right now, feel free to skip along. I’ll be back to my usual reflections soon. Thank you so much for being here.
We are living in a time when many of us can feel a strain in our social fabric, even if we don’t have language for it. So many of us are lonely, tired, and wary. Trust feels thinner than it used to. And alongside that, I see something else stirring (especially among women) - a quiet readiness to tend, to gather, to make places where people can exhale. Not grand movements. Not brands. Just rooms, fires, circles, tables. And still, many hesitate.
The hesitation makes sense.
We’ve watched “women’s work” become content, aesthetic, and performance. We’ve seen leadership flattened into personal branding, and care turned into something extractive rather than reciprocal. Many women feel the call to gather others while simultaneously wanting nothing to do with what that call has been packaged into online.
So they stall. Or they do it quietly, without support. Or they jump in and burn out. Or they carry an unspoken fear that wanting to lead, host, or hold space makes them presumptuous.
In my opinion, this moment we’re living in doesn’t need more charismatic figures or louder voices. It needs people who understand that gathering is not about visibility, it’s about responsibility.
To bring people together is not a neutral act. It shapes nervous systems. It stirs old relational wounds. It creates power whether we acknowledge it or not. And right now, many of us are feeling how fragile our relational skills actually are. We want belonging, but we don’t always know how to sustain it. We want community, but we’re afraid of the mess it brings.
This is where discernment matters.
Not everyone who feels called to gather others needs a course, a title, or a platform. Sometimes the call is simply to deepen how we show up in our existing relationships. Sometimes it’s to learn how to stay when things get uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s to grieve the villages we didn’t inherit.
But for some women, the call keeps returning.
It shows up as a persistent sense of responsibility. A care for what happens after the circle ends. A desire to host without centering themselves. A knowing that good intentions are not enough, and that harm can still happen even when everyone means well.
These are the women Circle Craft was made for.
I didn’t create it to help people feel confident or polished as facilitators. I created it because I saw how often circles falter not from malice, but from lack of preparation. From unclear boundaries. From unexamined power. From facilitators being asked to hold more than they had support for themselves.
Circle Craft is rooted in a slower, more relational understanding of leadership. One that asks different questions:
How do you invite without coercion?
How do you hold without over-functioning?
How do you repair when things wobble?
How do you end well?
How do you tend yourself so the work doesn’t hollow you out?
This isn’t about becoming a guide, priestess, or authority. It’s about learning how to host with integrity in a time when people are tender and trust is earned slowly.
If you’re looking for scripts without self-examination, this work will likely feel frustrating. If you want to build an identity around holding space, it may feel underwhelming. But if you are someone who senses that gathering others is a responsibility worth taking seriously (and you want to do it without replicating the very dynamics you’re trying to heal) then you may recognize yourself here.
Circle Craft is not urgent. It doesn’t promise transformation, it’s a practice. A place to build skill, capacity, and discernment. A container where your own edges are welcomed, not bypassed.
You don’t need to know yet if you’ll ever host a circle. You don’t need a plan or an audience. You just need to be willing to move slowly, honestly, and relationally.
Some seasons are for calling things in. Others are for learning how to hold what arrives. If this feels like one of those seasons, you can read more about Circle Craft here.
And if not, that’s not a failure. Discernment is part of the work too.
If this essay named something you’ve been carrying - the call to gather paired with a resistance to doing it wrong - Circle Craft is where I teach the relational skills behind hosting circles with integrity.
It’s not urgent, and it’s not for everyone. But for the women it is for, it often feels like relief. You can learn more about Circle Craft here.
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