On Fridays, for the last ten or so years, I have Sex--let me finish--ta Feira, a weekly afternoon meeting from November to April. We are a group of women who, each week, present a researched paper on a topic chosen the year before and host a tea for the other members. If this sounds a bit archaic, it is: Sexta Feira was started by a woman in 1886 with the mandate (oh, wait...I’ll need a better word than mandate . . .) with the directive to “stimulate literary tastes and furnish social entertainments.” It was called Sexta Feira which meant Friday in Portuguese because that’s when they met. And we’re still meeting on Friday afternoons over 135 years later.
Also on Fridays, more recently, I facilitate a women’s writing group for a couple of hours. This group evolved from a series of workshops and classes I’ve held over the years. When the same few women kept signing up no matter what I was teaching--Memoir, Essay, Journaling--I realized they were coming for the company rather than the craft. These writers have become their own private writing group. While I continue to offer workshops and groups, this one is not on the schedule anymore. Even as the facilitator, I also consider myself a member of this little group of writers who are present for each other in ways that continue to stun me.
Both groups are women only. The hours are inviolate. I consider them sacred times and spaces during which I connect with other women.
I’ve always been fascinated by the strength and power of women. I considered it in my first book in an essay called “A Monstrous Regiment of Women” when I wrote, “The power of women is a subtle strength that feeds our society at its most basic level, and yet it is overlooked time and time again.” It must sound silly or naïve that I’m in awe of women--I mean--I am one, but my view doesn’t include my own strength or power--if I even have any. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Who is actually overlooking this power? Society? Sure...but also sometimes me.
The title of that essay first showed up in the 1500s in a when John Knox, a Scottish clergyman, issued a pamphlet opposing Catholic queens on religious grounds and arguing against female rule over men generally. It has since been used in titles of other works, but it came to my attention in the great book by Laurie R King. (I linked it...you should check it out.) Those words--and that image--spoke to me. It gave form to the power of women that before I only caught hints of.
Even as I finally figure out the strength of women and my own in particular, we continue to be underestimated--still. Remember what Nathaniel Hawthorne said about women? In particular women writers? I’ll remind you: "America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash–and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed."
Oh. Poor Nathaniel.
I think it’s our capacity that stymies and scares others. (Men.) Women can gather and almost immediately and implicitly ask one another to share the burden. We can cry together, laugh together; we can be silent together or rage together. Women’s hearts, women’s voices, women’s feelings--we have a capacity to hold whatever is going on in another. That’s the strength we have.
And I have it, too. I’m reluctant to admit it, but I do. I don’t see it--it’s like when you’re wearing perfume and everyone else can smell it except you. I know I have it because I’m still upright, teaching classes, writing books, showering.
It’s not just my Friday afternoons that prop me up; I have an incredible bloc of women who I am grateful to call my friends. I mean, who am I that I get so many smart, generous, funny, intense, creative, skilled, fierce females I can call, text or sometimes--weirdly--even just think of who will race to my side in times of crisis or even just companionship? I’m nobody, that’s who. It’s just the way we women are. All of them have been my strength as I navigate Annie’s cancer. And, by the way, who’s stronger than Annie right now?
So, for me, Friday is Ladies Day. Join me?
This week was a little off schedule—with a guest post on Sunday and my regular post on Friday…it’s been a week! But I’ll be back to whatever-normal-is next week!
Thanks—as always—for your support!
Right on, Cindy!
Tell Annie that I pray for her daily to be completely free of cancer!
Sharon Sherman
I'd love too! XOXO