When I tell women that I planned and canceled five retreats before the first Journey Into Sacred Expression Women's Retreat finally happened on March 8th 2015, when I tell them all the doubts that can come in, all the ways you can trivialize your inner voice and your self, all the ways you can both will something to happen and resist it completely all at once... It changes something in the circle. It creates deeper trust. That's what it does. Because it was that, trust. Terri, Mary, Clara, Amy, Maryam, Kerryn, Monica. This was my Sweet Sixteenth group. 16 circles of women. I said these names in the circle, many times. But once I said each woman's dear name, and all their names after another, like an incantation. Yours are the names I did not know existed. Yours are the names I held faith in. Enough faith. When you hear a voice to birth something in the world, and you haven't done it before and the voice takes form of a sudden idea and the impulse to create it, you cannot know if you'll be met. Who or how or when others will show up to meet you there. All you can do is continue, again and again, to meet yourself. To show up for you and for the call. You can hold the seed of the desire as sacred. And know that if it's being willed from within, it was whispered inside of you by the same force that wishes to see it realized in the world. You can surround yourself with at least one person who will remind you of who you really are, when you momentarily become invisible to yourself. Terri, Mary, Clara, Amy, Maryam, Kerryn, Monica. Yours are the names I'd meet in the circle and forever be changed by. Yours and 128 more women who have come before to join this circle across 44 moons. You cannot know the voices or eyes that will meet yours when you follow inner guidance. But I'm honored in the deepest way by those women who have stepped into this circle so far to meet mine. 44 moons feels like a blessed cycle. As I marinate in that, I step further into the expansive adventure of collaboration with women who inspire me. I'm so grateful for the journey so far. For all the names I could not know.