HAPPY GATHERING

A little magic happened at a Gathering Bag workshop held at The Women’s Library on Saturday March 1st. The muse behind the magic, and co-author together with Sue Hollingsworth of the book of the same name, Dr Marlene Winberg shares her reflections…

Dearest Friends

Yesterday, at a Woman Zone gathering in the Artscape in Cape Town, I was once again moved by the quiet magic that happens when women sit together in a circle to sew and tell stories. I found myself asking – why is this so? What is it about the rhythmic motion of needle and thread, hands busy with fabric, that seems to loosen the threads of our own stories? Why do our words flow more easily, laughter rise more freely, and even our grief find a gentler path when we gather like this?

I read The Water Woman, the story of a young girl’s initiation into becoming a healer. How she was taken to the water, guided through ritual, taught to listen – to the river, to the stories hidden in its currents, to the voices of the women before her. It was not a solitary initiation. The wisdom was passed in whispers, in gestures, in the unspoken knowing between women who had come of age before her. And isn’t that what we do too, in our own way? When we gather, we are remembering – stitching our wisdom together, holding space for each other’s becoming.

As we sat together yesterday, I realised that the book, The Gathering Bag itself, is a gathering. A symbolic bag that carries the stories of women who came before us, the ones we hold now, and the ones yet to be told. Just like the Water Woman’s initiation, these stories live in the space between us. They are carried in our hands, our words, our silences. And as we share them, they shift and shape us, just as water smooths stone.

Perhaps this is why we keep returning to these circles – why we are drawn to the slow, steady rhythm of hands at work, voices rising and falling in conversation. It is about the sewing, and the storytelling, but it is also about something far older than us, something that lives in the spaces between, something that holds us even when we don’t know we need holding.

So, let’s gather when we can, thread needle and thought, and let the stories flow. Let’s fill our gathering bags with what matters -remembrances, wisdom, the joy of simply being together.

Dr Marlene Winberg is a Narrative Arts Therapy Practitioner www.marlenewinberg.com