Womanspace

History

HISTORY

For some years, Rose Dowling had had a dream about gathering women together around women spirituality and when she shared her dream with Wendy Sarno, she got an enthusiastic response.

So on Nov. 12, 2000 six women gathered for the first time to share what women’s spirituality meant to them and began to explore how they could offer their gifts in creating and presenting spirituality programs for other women.

“Connected to the ordinary which becomes extraordinary” “the gift of waiting” “Grounded and earthy” “interdependent and relational” “mutual and inclusive.”
These were some of the phrases used on that first evening to describe what we understood by women’s spirituality and our desire to give it expression in our lives.

Of those gathered on that November evening, some remained and became the founders and first woman’Space associates. Others joined the group later and became associates along the way.

At our January 2001 meeting, we were attempting to find a name for our group when Wendy Sarno articulated what was recognized by the whole group as our mission statement:
Through experiential programs, we offer women space to deepen their relationship with themselves, with the Divine and with each other.

Our name: woman’Space flowed naturally from that mission statement.

As woman’Space associates we have gradually developed our structure. As in most fledging groups, we spent a good deal of time on ways to market ourselves and how to run our finances, both of which depended on the programs we could create and present.
In March 2001 we began, for the first time to explore possible programs and decided on our first three:
November 2001 What if God were a Woman?
February 2002: Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography.
May 2002: Leading from Within.

Each year since then, we have presented at least four weekend retreats and presented customized programs for those who requested them.
All those who have sat in these circles tell us how much their lives have been enriched by the experience.

In our associate meetings and in our presentations, we make a choice to operate in a feminine mode in so far as we can. For instance, we always function in circle and begin every gathering with a ritual to close the circle and end with a ritual to open it in keeping with the ancient tradition of our foremothers. When we offer retreats there are two presenters or one person may be the main presenter and her companion acts as facilitator of the process. In this way we choose to manifest that interdependent connection which is so much part of who we truly are as women.

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