Women's Drum Camp In The Sky

Recently shared at a Women's Drum Camp in my country, bringing the news of work being done within World Pulse, brought back here to honour the work women are doing everywhere, the power of knowing that whatever we are facing, now we are working together.

Let me take you to a place

Where I go to heal

To gather strength

To be in circle, intentionally 

With women in the woods

Taking a deep breath

From all we face as women in this world

To witness what we know collectively

To share with each other from deep in our bones

Our music, our drums, our dance, our news, our plans

For what to do next

We offer our magic, our healing skills as women

Despite being told 

That the most selfish thing,

The thing we are warned we must never do

Is to take a few precious moments

Alone, with ourselves and with each other

To heal, to share stories,

To make plans together 

Link our arms in person

Bringing stories of women from all over the world

And throughout time -

To carry and keep known this ancient tradition

The women who gather together

To drum and dance among the trees.

Let me tell you where I go to heal

I said to my beloved World Pulse Sister Adah

I need rest she said, from this work I do

Have been doing for so long

My beloved and broken country 

These men at war

And I know her work 

Because we have a circle together now,

A global circle in the sky

As real as this, our being together today

Our circle of World Pulse 

The heartbeat of women working together worldwide

With all who understand

That it is the leadership of women

That is so desperately needed

I know her work, gathering women in her powerful arms

So many displaced from years of war 

Men caught in the web of violence

While world leaders wine and dine

Doing business sending tanks and guns and bombs to each other

Warring for pieces of our beloved planet

But we women continue to meet and build with each other

Our Drum Camp in the sky

So many thousands of us now from almost every country

Women in Afghanistan writing

For us all to remember 

That they have been forced indoors for two years now

Women in Iran with news after news 

Of women still held in jails

Writing to this global sisterhood

Do not forget us. 

Do not forget us.

Holding in our arms the leaders, exhausted

Going from village to village

Finding what women need

Freeing women from servitude

Freeing girls from breast ironing, from FGM, from forced marriages

Widows from widows huts in deserted areas,

Freeing women kept indoors

Creating circles like these – everywhere

Opening schools for girls

And centres for women to gather

A sewing machine to make menstrual pads

Planting trees to sit under

To hold a woman who has been beaten,

Some funding to house women forced out when husbands have died

A shelter for girls not wanting to marry some man forced upon them

Some land for women to grow food

We dance as we celebrate this precious moment

When women come together

We link arms knowing

Our sisters are daring to do this, everywhere

This very recent Spring 

Women now safely in my city

Arrived from Ukraine and Iran

Told stories of traditions still practised every year

It is always the women who hold ceremony with the trees

They told me

Decorating them as they bloom 

As the men stand in respect,

As the community celebrates together

And I remember my ancestresses burned as witches

For meeting together in the woods and honouring the trees

Who I honour as we meet in circle as women together

It is when women meet in circle

That I know we are becoming stronger than ever before

Finding ways to work together

Lifting each other with our love

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