I'm currently reading my way through Heaven and Hearth which is a glorious book full of old folk lore split into each month of the year. Today I began to read May's entry and found this wonderful paragraph:
"A sense of sisterhood and female camaraderie was essential in the days when every woman was her family's household manager, gardener, cook, pharmacologist and physician. With the late spring garden burgeoning with useful culinary, household and medicinal plants for stews and simples, and a huge harvest to come in the ripe summer months, it was essential on top of everyday chores to cleanse containers and bottles in the stillroom and pantry, and dry early herbs and flowers on hanging racks and (for delicate flower-heads) custom-built airing trays in a dark, dry corner.
It was common practise for women to help each other with these tasks, for the workload was enormous and the botany involved in picking and sowing seeds and plants at the astologically correct time highly complex."
(page 77)
I can't help but see a sort of resurrection of this "sense of sisterhood" in today's blogland! All the wonderful blogs I have visited of women living the homemaker's life, setting up a business with feminine values and all supporting one another with grace and gratitude. It inspires me so much!
And it reminds me of all my female friends who have supported and helped me in these past few years to grow into the woman I want to be. (Which also gives me an excuse to post old photos I have stored on my computer! If you didn't already know my camera ist kaputt! and until I manage to find my sister's to "borrow" it my blog will be fairly photo-free and boring!)
So, here are a few of those wonderful women and girls who have made my life so blessed by their very presence alone!
This is Maria, who looked after me during my first summer camp at Woodlarks. She inspired me to write so many wonderful stories and still contines to contact me. Her Nan and my mum became firm penpals and tonight are meeting for the first time (and I'm going with!!) It was also the wonderful girls at Woodlarks who showed me that caring for others is something I enjoy so much and am very, very good at and my experiences there gave my the confidence to work in a care home in Germany!
These are the girls who got me through Russia - three of the hardest and darkest months of my life (not because it was Russia but because Russia showed me parts of myself I really hated and had to deal with!) The girl in blue and the one in orange with the pink hat were absolute stars!
This is the wonderful lady who both presented me with such a beautiful song to write lyrics to and who also dedicated a story to me in her recently published poetry book! Her music and my lyrics (to the song Birth of the Four Winds) can be found here
And THESE special women have all had massive impacts in my life the past couple of years. The lady on the right is an American woman who asked me to help her run a new forum online when an old one was closing. She trusted me so much and showed me how much I could achieve. I recently stepped down from my role as admin but my year or so acting as such taught me so much - mostly about the importance of trusting others and giving others the power to rule themselves (our board has no strict rules but it works!)
The lady in green is like my second mummy! She has supported me and also challenged me in ways nobody else ever has. She has told me like it is and made me really look at myself and who I am and who I want to be. It has been hard - but it has all been done with the utmost love and respect and I couldn't have asked for a more honest relationship if I tried.
The other "shortie" in the picture is my dear friend from Switzerland. She showed me how good my German really is (as opposed to the university who told me it was rubbish) and built my confidence up again. She also took the step of selling on eBay with me, so I wasn't alone!
These final three ladies are just so gorgeous I cannot tell you! I never got to meet the one in black - this was at one of her "gigs" with her daughter. The one on the right and the one in the background gave me so many fits of giggles in our 4 days together that I thought I might burst!! I also received the most beautiful present, hand-crafted by the one in the background, and I so wish my camera worked so I could show you!
I also wish I could show you piccies of all the other wonderful women in my life - of which there are plenty - and I do promise to get a working camera in my hands soon! I promise - I do, I do, I do!!!
These women have all shown me such love and compassion and many of them I met online - how wonderful it is that we can meet and build such amazing communities with people from all over the world! I do find the land of bloggers so very inspiring and I hope to meet many more people to add to my list of "sisterhood"!
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