Our Twenty Years Anniversary

I’ve been happily immersed in a nurturing world as I met up with my eight women friends this last weekend.

We are a special group who meet annually. We reside variously in W.A., S.A., N.S.W. and Victoria. This year’s reunion was remarkable for two reasons: it was held virtually and it was number 20.

It’s a tribute to our adaptability that we could transition from our normal 4-day in-person, AirBnB, event to show up on Zoom.

Usually we take a holiday letting at a quaint seaside village or in the South Australian wine country. There have been several brilliant stays on Kangaroo Island. We’ve even done a houseboat trip on the Murray River. We follow a leisurely, informal schedule of morning yoga, meditation, scrumptious meals,  afternoon naps and walks. Parlour or board games occur of an evening, some of them surprisingly competitive and always hugely hilarious.

For this year’s geographically distanced event, our together time had to fit a virtual platform. But we were still able to continue with the most important part of our reunion: our shares.

Sharing and Caring

Each of us had an assigned time to share about what has been going on in our lives. There were two sessions on Friday night, four on Saturday arvo and two on Sunday. The mute button on Zoom assures that the listeners are completely silent while the sharer is speaking. But at the end of a share, unmuted, there might be questions or challenges.

What did we share about this time? We talked about our hopes, fears, successes and failures, against the backdrop of COVD-19. Feelings came up, plenty of them, accompanied at times by tears and laughter. Support was offered and will undoubtedly continue as we’ve decided we will meet virtually once a month.

The weekend finished with a wonderful exercise called ‘an angel shower’. Each woman had an opportunity to listen to each other women in turn sharing a few appreciative words or a sentence or two about her. These words were recorded by Shirley on voice memo and later sent as an audio recording to keep and replay later.

I wish I could tell you what is so attractive about our women’s reunions. As they say, you’d have to be there. And be there over years and years as layers of trust and love are built. I can describe how our meetings make me feel: like a swim in the gentle and warm waters of a tiny sheltered bay. The reunions feel healthy and refreshing. Together we women create a pool of energy that we continue to dip into long after the reunion has finished or the ‘leave meeting’ button has been pushed.