Circles for women

A circle gathers women around a shared centre.

Each woman sits where she can see every other. Verena holds the frame, the time and the attention; what is spoken belongs to the women who speak it.

Women come together to speak and to listen, to share what they are living through, and to hear it echoed in other lives. What one woman names often gives another the words she was looking for.

The body stays part of the conversation, as it does throughout Verena's work. A circle may include breath, movement, ritual, stillness, music or singing, and time simply to notice what is there.

Ritual marks each circle as time stepped out of the ordinary, where women meet with intention.

Circle comes from the Latin circulus, a small ring. In a ring every place faces the same centre, and each person can see every other.

Women who want time with other women, and with themselves.

Each circle begins with an intention. Some gather around the seasons and the turning points of the year; others around themes such as aliveness, connection, womanhood, embodiment, boundaries, cyclical living, or the ways we lose, and find again, our sense of ourselves. In the cycle of the year we meet a deeper truth: everything is in motion, everything has its season, and nothing lasts forever except the movement itself.

The theme gives the circle a direction, but not an answer. What it becomes is shaped by the women who enter it.

Every way of being a woman has its place in the circle, and every way of feeling, speaking, moving or taking part. Aliveness takes many forms: loud and quiet, joyful and grieving, certain and unsure.

Each woman arrives as she is in that moment: open or guarded, calm or unsettled, close to herself or far from it.

The work is less about learning how to become more feminine than remembering what may already be there: one's own rhythms, strength, softness, boundaries, desires, and way of belonging.

Some women come once; others return, and find the circle deepening with each meeting.

Some things become possible only in company.

Verena knows the longing for places where nothing has to be achieved: places where a woman can arrive, let herself be held by the space, and bring what is present without having to make it smaller, clearer or more acceptable.

Much of contemporary life is lived separately: private homes, private struggles, private attempts to cope, until carrying things alone comes to feel normal. A women's circle moves in another direction. It creates a place to be witnessed and to witness others, to share what is present, and to experience connection as something ordinary rather than exceptional. Gathering again becomes quietly countercultural: a way of making community, mutual support and belonging part of everyday life.

Verena's own relationship with womanhood has been a gradual one: discovering how much strength can live alongside softness, and what it can mean to trust the body, its rhythms, and ways of knowing that do not always begin with explanation.

She has experienced how much can change when women meet without competition and begin to encourage and support one another. Her intention is to bring the circle close to everyday life: a place women return to because connection matters, and also when something is wrong.

A circle is a held space.

Verena opens and closes each circle and keeps its agreements.

Everything in the circle is an invitation. Each woman decides whether and how much she wants to speak, move, take part or simply listen.

What is shared stays in the circle. Confidentiality allows trust to grow over time, something that can matter deeply in spaces between women, where trust may not always have been a given.

Women speak for themselves and witness one another rather than trying to fix, analyse or advise. The circle is not a coaching space in which women solve one another's problems; it is a place where an experience can be spoken and allowed to exist in the presence of others.

Her training is in women's circle facilitation with a focus on trauma-sensitive holding, grounded in trauma-informed embodiment coaching and embodied group work. It shows in the pace, slow enough for each woman to stay with herself while another speaks.

The circle is a place of exchange and presence among peers. It is not group therapy and does not replace individual therapeutic, medical or coaching support.

When something surfaces that asks for more individual attention, Verena may suggest continuing in an individual embodiment session or, where therapeutic or medical support is more appropriate, help point towards a psychotherapist, doctor or other suitable professional.