WILD EMBERS
We are the descendants of the wild women you forgot.
We are the stories you thought would never be taught.
They should have checked the ashes of the women they burned alive.
Because it takes a single wild ember to bring a whole wildfire to life.
~ Nikita
Salut et bonjour from a van in French Flanders 🇫🇷 🚐 on the first leg of this year’s van adventure - more to follow in the next edition!
This month though, we celebrate the power of older women coming together, in particular, the growth of Women’s Circles and other exploratory spaces such as the ‘Wintering Group’ hosted by today’s featured guest writer, Crone Miriam Grace.
“The invisible power of women's circles on the women in them grows out of the power that people have on one another, which is extraordinary.” said Dr Jean Shinoda Bolen in her 2003 book, Crones Don’t Whine, where she correctly predicted the growth in women’s circles.
“When there is psychological or practical support for making a significant change, change is more likely to happen. That others believe in us, or have the same perspective we have, or are role models, has a powerful and invisible effect.”
There is indeed, a unique magic when women of a certain age, with shared life experiences and shared struggles, come together in a safe space - whether that’s at the bonkers beauty of Croning Ceremonies, afternoon menopause discos, or the intergenerational magic of events such as our Crone Spoken Library. So, when Crone Johanna (Circles Together) offered to lead a Women’s Circle for Crone Club Sheffield, we of course, jumped at the opportunity!
What is a women’s circle?
A women’s circle is a gathering space where women come together to share stories, listen deeply, and hold space for one another without judgment. Unlike a casual meet up, a circle is rooted in ancient traditions of sitting together, creating community, and honouring life transitions. Circles are intentionally non-hierarchical - everyone sits in a literal or figurative circle to embody equality and shared wisdom.
Gatherings often weave ritual, reflection and conversation. Some are spiritual, incorporating meditation, chanting or ceremony. Others are more secular but still grounded in the same principles: presence, listening and honouring each voice.
In our circle, we began by each lighting a candle in the circle and sharing how we were feeling. We then had a short time to get stuff off our chests that might get in the way of us focussing on ‘the big question’. 👇🏽
Women’s circles often centre around a theme or a big question such as letting go, aging, self-trust, ancestors, and then invite responses. We were invited to speak without interruption, with others listening without offering advice or commentary (unless it was asked for!). Aside from my optimistic choice to sit on the floor and not wear socks, this was one of the hardest bits for me - not jumping in to provide solutions or sympathy, something which we are so conditioned to do.
One of the things I loved about Johanna’s circle was that it also included a shared creative activity where we shredded herbs and flowers into bags, to which we added an ‘intention’ to take away with us.
“For generations, women gathered to pick herbs, mend clothes, knead dough, and craft with their hands, side by side, telling their stories and sharing their hearts as they worked and created together,” explains Johanna.
“In a Circle, I try to echo that rhythm: creating whilst connecting. When our hands are busy crafting, drawing, painting, stitching, shaping clay, something softens. Our nervous systems settle as we drop out of our minds and into our bodies. Our stories come out more easily, conversation flows more naturally. In this moment we're not just creating art, we're creating connection. To each other. To the parts of ourselves we forgot were still alive. Making together has always been a way of belonging.”
Belonging. A feeling like you’ve come home, found your tribe, is such a fundamental need for us all, and felt all the more keenly for women in peri-menopause. As one attendee at our menopause disco ‘CroneLines’ said:
“Just walking in and, though I knew nobody, I knew l'd found my tribe of powerful, fun, beautiful women. I welled up!”
And yet, to create that feeling of belonging in group event conversely requires some tough decisions, including who to exclude from the gathering.
“Let purpose be your bouncer,” says Pria Parker in her book ‘The Art of Gathering.’
“Barack Obama's aunt once told him, "If everyone is family, no one is family." The same is true of gatherings. If everyone is invited, no one is invited - in the sense of being truly held by the group. By closing the door, you create the room.”
I definitely felt the power of the room in Johanna’s beautifully curated Circle as we closed the doors of the Hillsborough Pavilion, and I also felt it in much of the feedback we received after the CroneLines disco.
“It was just brilliant dipping outside and seeing the young men driving past, with their jaws on their chest in disbelief at such a large noisy gathering of delightedly happy, chatty, dancing women - of a certain age!!”
But this sense of being among one’s own is “…not a universal feeling among women, it depends upon the shared archetypal sense of sisterhood,” says Dr Jean, in Crones Don’t Whine.
“It is the sister, mother, and crone archetype in women that makes it possible for women to identify with each other across national, racial, and religious boundaries.”
And it is the archetypal sub-personality of the ‘Wise Woman’ and the natural world that Crone Miriam explores in her Woman’s Wintering Group, which she explains more about here in this month’s featured article. Enjoy! 😘
Miriam Grace: Myth, Maturity, Mid-life and Meaning
Psychotherapist Miriam Grace explores seasonal, aging and feminine cycles within a women’s wintering group
2025 - 2026 will be the seventh winter of my exploratory women’s wintering group. I use my experience as a therapist but this isn’t a therapy group. Most of the participants have had therapy in their lives and many are trained as therapists or healers in a variety of disciplines.
The concept is that the therapist is not me, but is the natural world; the archetypal sub-personality of the Wise Woman; and the participant herself and her journalling.
Each day I post a journalling prompt in a closed private Facebook group. (You’ll see examples of posts and comments within this piece). Sometimes I might present psychological theory in a pre-recorded video, eg. the paradoxical theory of change, or introjection and internalised belief systems.
Sometimes I share a poem or a quote. There’s logical progression to the posts. We follow the seasons according to Chinese medicine and the Gestalt cycle1 - with focus on withdrawal, sensation and awareness. Then as March begins we start to explore mobilisation and a key psychosynthesis concept - ‘Will’.
Autumn
Our opening meditation is a guided visualisation of a journey through an autumn wood to a clearing in the forest where the House of the Wise Woman is entered and conversations and gifts are exchanged. This visit is repeated throughout the course with explorations of different rooms including the kitchen, the study, the basement and attic.
These exercises are similar to collective dreaming and relate to a psychosynthesis model of the psyche, with the attic and basement signifying the lower part (not lesser, relating to memory, subconscious material) and the higher part of the Self (which is not superior but relates to an expanded or spiritual awareness). Other suggested activities might be cooking with seasonal foods; time in nature sensing the temperature, the colours, the behaviours of animals and birds; making nature tables or displays; using pictures, poems or exploring stories.
Using our senses to accentuate our engagement with sensation and curiosity are threads throughout. We share stories of witches and fairies during Samhain2, and use Dickens’ ghosts as we approach Christmas. We learn and practise the Loving Kindness meditation during our solstice meditation week.
“Beautiful frost this morning where I am, prompted me to remind you to notice nature this weekend. The trees are different to when we began and the temperature in the air. The skies seem clearer somehow. Describe the nature you see below, and imagine how the trees, the birds and animals are feeling. Notice as much as you can, and use all the 5 senses that are available to you. You are part of the natural world. What do you KNOW when you become aligned with the natural world around you?”
Examples of responses to this prompt.
“I have noticed how the foliage has shrunk back creating space. There is more air and what feels like more light despite there being less light really. I imagine the trees are relaxing, knowing they don’t have to soak up the light and feed the leaves every day and now can rest a while, the year’s nourishment quietly feeding the new growth inside.”
“I’m noticing sky mostly as I’m upstairs sitting in bed. The trees are now silhouettes and you can see the shape, twist and curves of their boughs outlined on what feels like an empty sky. I feel an ache, not about sadness or loss, about beauty, reverence or awe. A stillness and a longing for that simplicity, that clear definition, the quiet of it. Never has the saying ‘less is more’; been more true and this little view I have borders on the sacred.”
“The squirrels still scramble frantically burying nuts. The air is crisp, stinging the tips of my ears.”
The connection as a whole group is a focus on a Thursday evening when we meet for an hour to have an imaginary campfire (on Zoom) with blankets, candles, hot drinks and enthusiastic sharing of letting go of that which no longer serves us.
Women often need support and encouragement to rest, to nurture their energy and to let go of duties. Our society demands consistent productivity year round. I believe it is against our nature and I’ve created this programme of theory, reflection, journalling and exploration, so that women who are often tired, chronically unwell or burnt out can find a way to honour the energy they have and be centred in their authentic place during the winter.
I always say that low energy IS energy; quiet, slow and gentle energy, IS energy. I offer an invitation to live appropriately for the energy you have at any given moment. We are nourished and nurtured by our own inner wise woman and by meeting at a campfire.
We develop behaviours such as resting, napping, stopping, eating, exercising, being in nature, crafting, reading, journalling and meditating and we practice them. We experience the reward hormone through the group interaction and this attuned approach becomes gently embedded. Even on Zoom I can feel the nervous system co-regulation happening.
Spring
When spring arrives we leave the group and go out into the world to flourish, resting on the foundations we have supported through winter. Will is not willpower but it is discipline to enact behaviours that come from our authentic self. We might call this ‘heart centred wisdom’ as I do, or values based on living, soulful or spiritual practice.
In psychosynthesis, it is not enough to discover and to know, we need to actively live this. The work is to connect deeply with ourselves, which in my group, we do over the winter and then repeatedly return to it.
In February and March we work on our path, our direction, after spending a few months with our Wise Woman, we spend time in the study of the Wise Woman’s house in the wood charting our course so far and setting our compass with our internal Navigator.
Participants may have different sub personalities to me, but I have a captain and a navigator. I do also have disruptive sub personalities that want to stay in the woods all year round and drink hot chocolate!
I use Steven Covey’s quote through the course - ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing’. I encourage participants to know their main thing.
For several years mine has been to keep my nervous system out of high stress. This year I felt that this main thing was changing to something more like, “I am brave, I step up, I walk forward”. I will find out more about my main thing as I continue to visit my Wise Woman through the winter and create my sankalpa (a yogic term meaning an intention, it’s similar to an affirmation but arises from meditation not an external place such as a self help book).
In spring 2026 we will be ready to leave the group with strong foundations, rising rooted, it is up to us as individuals to practice Will. This may mean continuing the journalling habit, meditation, mindful exercise and eating, whatever we have learned in our visits to the Wise Woman.
“No one here to guide you, still you are not alone... witches can be right, giants can be good, you decide what’s right, you decide what’s good, just remember....” (From Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim).
Everything is optional in the group, participation at campfire, journalling, responding to posts in the thread. Even payment is pay as you can afford, with a range of fees. This loose structure is challenging in itself as we are usually conditioned to look externally for approval and guidance on how to behave ‘correctly’. Participants are responsible to themselves to make good enough judgments regarding participation, withdrawal, self care, rest, timing and pacing. We are accountable to ourselves and to each other and the group boundaries are based around respect.
The unconventional nature of the group is undoubtedly due to my own aging and confidence to explore, without being assured of outcomes. Jungian models see the first half of adult life being a time to engage with and establish oneself in the world and the second half adult life to be a time of engaging with the relationship with oneself. There is a common experience of women in mid life of caring less about the way others see us. There is a surge of energy arising and pushing for self identification and self expression.
The women in my group share a political stance with me, that they have had therapy but what remains is an unsupportive external environment for the lived experience of peri-menopausal, menopausal and post menopausal women in the world. We create our own culture for half the year, hibernating with our inner wise woman and then in the Spring we, as the title of Sharon Blackie’s book says, “rise rooted,” due to being together as woman in a manner that is as old as the hills.
I am working seeing clients and supervisees, running retreats through this period of the year, the darker months, but this work is always therapeutic for me too.
Gathering “around a fire” with women in mid-life and older, working together to care for ourselves, feels as if this is how my life should be now, it’s part of the season for me. I can’t imagine winter without it and several members of the group who return each year say the same. While I organise the posts and the meetings, oversee the materials and the bookings, and facilitate the group, it’s a focus for me too.
At a time in life when many women feel invisible, this group makes their internal processing significant, important and central to their lives. The space to explore autumn, letting go and goodbyes, is preparation for death, illness or practice in living with solitude and loneliness. The group doesn’t change what is, in terms of aging, loss, the change of seasons. We work with the idea of confidence, fluidity and a concept I apply to these issues called Safe Uncertainty, by which I mean that though there is uncertainty, we can feel safe in our ability to cope.
I write about this unconventional gathering of women and wonder if I risk being denounced as a witch / bad therapist, for being unconventional. I also don’t mind if I am, as there is something that has changed so thoroughly within me in the last few years. If my wise woman / witch / crone sub personality is more visible to others now, that I am subsequently cast out, to go and live in the woods... I will be quite at home there.
[loud cackle ... exit in a puff of smoke]
“Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up to all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain.
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.”
The Poet, John O Donahue
About Miriam
“I completed my 4 year Post Graduate Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy at the Sherwood Institute in Nottingham in the early 1990s. I’ve enjoyed training in and teaching a variety of therapeutic disciplines but probably the orientation that most organically followed on from, or expanded my Gestalt practice, was my integration of psychosynthesis which I immersed myself in during my 40s. My client work is now with women, especially those in peri-menopause, menopause or post-menopause and I’m known for my work with women coming out later in life which you can read about in a chapter I authored in Queering Gestalt Psychotherapy published by Routledge. I live and work in Derbyshire, UK and see clients and supervisees in person and online from around the world.” www.blue-skies.org.uk miriam@blue-skies.org.uk
Miriam is also host of the podcast Women of Steel - you can listen to 30 second previews of every episode on the homepage, and also to every episode on the website, YouTube and your favourite platform eg. Spotify, Substack etc.
You might particularly enjoy “The Everyday Witchcraft of Ordinary Hags” Season One with Crone Karen Shimwell. womenofsteel.co.uk - for all episodes and preview clips.
Upcoming circles and gatherings by crones in Sheffield and around the world
Go on, pull on your big crone pants and give one a go. What do you have to lose?!
Johanna’s Women’s Circles
Johanna runs various Women’s Circles in and around Sheffield UK and is also setting one up in Hillsborough - please do check her out! ‘Circles Together’ - @circlestogether on Instagram.
Miriam’s Free Taster Week: Nourish and Nurture 21st - 28th September 2025 FREE / DONATION
You’ll be part of a private Facebook group and receive daily journalling prompts which you can discuss in the group and also at the CAMPFIRE by Zoom on the Thursday evening at 7.30pm for an hour. All is optional, and you can be as introverted or as extroverted as feels authentic for you. You can join by signing up on this link. The YouTube advert is here 👇🏽
Miriam’s Wise Women Retreats in Derbyshire
Miriam is also Therapeutic Creator, Director and Facilitator at Wise Women Retreats - find them on Facebook or at wisewomenderbyshire.com
Unplug, Slow Down & Reset with Crone Sarah Wilson and Hester, 20th September, 1-5pm, £45pp
“Join us for a special afternoon retreat bringing together Alexander Technique expert, Hester Singer and renowned wellness and yoga practitioner and teacher, Sarah Wilson. In a unique synthesis of methods, they will guide you through various body and mind practices to help you slow down, release tension and reset.” Register here.
The Artful Crone - a creative heart for soulful women in their third act 🇺🇸
Crone Stacy Vajta based in North Carolina runs ‘The Artful Crone’ - a Creative Hearth for Soulful Women in Their Third Act. The Artful Crone is a gathering space for women who want to make art that feels personal, soulful - and just a little bit magical. Stace creates sacred spaces for soulful women in their third act to reclaim their creativity, not just for art’s sake “but as a way back to themselves”.
The Profanity Embroidery Group, Whitstable UK
Created “by accident and totally without a plan” by co-founders, Crone Annie Taylor and Wendy Robinson, the group is made up of 30 regular members, and meets every other week in the Duke of Cumberland pub in Whitstable, UK. Perfect for those looking for a crone connection of a more sweary kind. Read more on them in a previous TTTW ‘profanity textiles’ here or you can follow them here on Instagram @pegwhistable
And finally.
I was privileged to curate a gathering on behalf of my wonderful mum as a surprise for her 80th birthday this month which included a VIP attendance of the bridesmaids from her wedding - pictured below. It was so lovely to see mum come alive chatting and laughing with her sister and old school friends. And I have to say, I think they look even happier in the picture as crones than in their early youth? 🥰 Love you Moomin Troll! xxxx
Until next time, Cronies… stay connected. With love and croneage, Juzza. xxx
The Gestalt Cycle of experience is a framework which explores how individuals recognise their needs, take action to meet them, and ultimately experience growth and satisfaction. The cycle comes from Gestalt therapy, which was developed in the 1940s and 50s by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Paul Goodman, blending ideas from psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology, existential philosophy, and holistic approaches to the body.
The Cycle of Experience itself evolved later, as Gestalt therapists sought to diagram how awareness and contact unfold. It’s been refined by different practitioners (like Joseph Zinker and others in the Gestalt community). While not part of Fritz Perls’ original writings, it became a central teaching tool in Gestalt therapy from the 1970s onward.
Samhain is the celebration that is the origin of Halloween. Samhain was first observed by Celtic Pagans.
Thanks for this lovely writing. I felt like I could shed a layer and allow myself to be more vulnerable. Also, to find some people to invent some outdoor autumn rituals. Thanks xx
Thank you for sharing this. I’ve experienced women’s circles and it’s interesting to read about different ways of creating the space. I can definitely relate to the crafting together which changes the conversation (in a good way!).
‘ By closing the door you create a room’ - yes you do!