The Circle as Resistance- MysticMoon Sisters
Feminism, Resilience, spirituality, and The Why
Last year a friend of mine, Marika, shared a paper with me that she had written for her Women’s Studies course. She had asked to write about Mystic Moon Sisters, the community that Destiny and I created together, and to explore it through the lens of women’s spirituality, feminism, resilience, and resistance. I said Yes! Absolutely! Excited for her to join us without really thinking about what it would feel like to read someone else’s academic interpretation of something that had been such a deeply personal part of my life. I sat with her paper and read through it many, many times. Cried many, many, many times tears of grief, happiness, sorrow, love, excitment... a quiet and profound sense of pride...
When you create something from the heart, you don’t always stop to examine what it means. You are simply doing the work. You are gathering people, lighting candles, putting out the cards and crystals, preparing the room, welcoming people through the door, listening to stories, holding space for grief, laughing, crying, practicing Reiki and having conversations that sometimes go far beyond anything you planned for the evening. You don’t necessarily stop to ask what this gathering represents or what it might look like from the outside.
Marika did that for me... She gave me a birds eye view of what Destiny and I created together and for that I am, and will forever be entirely grateful.
Marika observed our circles and connected what she witnessed within them to the conversations she was having in her Women’s Studies class about gender, spirituality, suffering, community, and resistance. One of the phrases she used to describe Mystic Moon Sisters was “a clear example of externally-defined resistance.” That sentence stayed with me because when Destiny and I began Mystic Moon Sisters, we certainly were not sitting around trying to create a feminist resistance movement. We weren’t trying to build something in opposition to men or the systems around us. We were trying to create community.
We wanted women to have somewhere to gather, somewhere to connect, somewhere to talk about the parts of life that don’t always have a place in everyday conversation. We wanted to create a space for healing, friendship, spirituality, and belonging. What Marika helped me understand is that perhaps we don’t always have to consciously set out to resist something in order to create resistance. Sometimes simply creating an alternative to isolation, silence, disconnection, and the expectation that women should carry everything quietly is its own form of resistance.
Marika wrote about the way people are welcomed into our circles, noting that “as soon as you walk in the door you are welcomed with smiles, hello’s, and introductions to everyone.” It is such a simple observation, but it speaks to something I have always believed deeply: community begins with being welcomed. Before there is healing, there has to be somewhere you feel safe enough to arrive as you are.
She also observed that “nothing in these circles is compulsory.” You can participate or remain quiet. You can take a card from the center of the circle or simply sit with yourself. You can share your story or listen to someone else’s. There is no expectation that you need to perform healing in a particular way. There is no requirement to speak, to be spiritual, to understand Reiki, or even to believe in the same things as the person sitting beside you. You are simply invited into the circle.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things about gathering: we create a space where people don’t have to perform. Women, in particular, are so often expected to perform versions of ourselves for other people. We become mothers, partners, daughters, caregivers, employees, organizers, emotional support systems, and the people who remember everyone’s birthdays and appointments. We learn to anticipate what everyone else needs, sometimes long before we have asked ourselves what we need. Marika’s observations connected our circles to conversations about motherhood, work, stress, and the enormous expectations placed on women. She noted one woman’s guilt about leaving her children at home to attend the circle, even though she desperately needed that time for herself.
That stayed with me because I think so many of us women understand that feeling. We can feel guilty for taking an evening for ourselves, as though caring for ourselves is somehow taking something away from the people we love. Yet sometimes stepping away from our responsibilities for a few hours is precisely what allows us to return to them with a little more of ourselves intact.
This is where feminism, for me, becomes less about an academic concept and more about lived experience. Feminism is not about women becoming more like men, nor is it about creating an opposition between women and men. For me, it is about women being allowed to be fully human. It is about having a voice, having boundaries, having choices, having economic and emotional independence, being able to take up space, and being able to define our own lives beyond the roles we have traditionally been assigned.
And that brings me to something that I think is important to say about Mystic Moon Sisters, particularly as our circles have evolved.
Mystic Moon Sisters was never created to exclude men.
Destiny and I were always open to men joining our circles. We welcomed men into the conversation because we believed there was value in creating spaces where women and men could actually hear one another. I have witnessed some incredibly powerful healing happen when men have entered a circle with openness and a willingness to listen.
There were moments when a woman could speak about something she had experienced and a man could simply listen without becoming defensive or trying to explain it away. There were moments when men shared their own vulnerability and women were able to see them not as representatives of some larger category of “men,” but as individual human beings carrying their own histories, wounds, fears, and experiences. Sometimes the presence of men created healing for women precisely because it allowed a different kind of conversation to happen.
I don’t believe men are the enemy. I believe there are systems, behaviors, attitudes, and forms of violence and sexism that absolutely need to be challenged. I believe women deserve safety and equality, and I believe men have an important role in creating that world alongside us.
But over the last few years, I also began hearing something different from women.
Some women told me they needed women-only spaces.
Some were carrying trauma. Some had experienced abuse or sexual violence. Some simply did not feel safe relaxing fully when men were present. They weren’t asking for a space because they hated men. They were asking because, for them, safety required something different.
So I listened. And that is why today I create both.
There are spaces where men are welcomed, and there are spaces that are intentionally women-only. I don’t see those things as contradictory. I see them as an acknowledgement that healing is not one-size-fits-all. A woman who needs a room filled only with women deserves that room. A woman who finds healing through connection and conversation with men deserves that space too.
Creating a women-only circle is not an assertion that men are inherently unsafe. It is an acknowledgement that some women need the opportunity to put their guard down completely, perhaps for the first time in a very long time. And I think that distinction matters.
Because ultimately, I don’t want to create a culture where women are afraid of men. Nor do I want to create a culture where men are taught that women’s empowerment is an attack on them. I want something much more nuanced and much more difficult: a culture where women can feel safe and empowered, while men are invited into the work of understanding why that safety matters.
I want men to have spaces where they can be vulnerable, where they can talk about loneliness, fatherhood, relationships, grief, masculinity, shame, and the things they may never have been taught how to express. I want men to have opportunities to learn from women without feeling that listening is an accusation. I want women to be able to speak about their experiences without being dismissed or asked to make their stories more comfortable for someone else.
I want us to be able to have difficult conversations without immediately turning one another into enemies. Perhaps that is another form of resistance. Marika wrote about the way our circles often extended beyond the scheduled ending because someone had something important to share. She noticed that myslef and Jen would not simply move on with the evening’s plan when someone brought forward something personal. We would stop, listen, respond, and allow the conversation to unfold. That observation made me think about how deeply countercultural that can be.
We live in a world that is constantly asking us to hurry. We are measured by productivity, schedules, efficiency, and how much we can accomplish. Yet healing doesn’t always follow a schedule. Sometimes someone needs another twenty minutes. Sometimes the thing that was supposed to be a simple conversation becomes the thing someone needed to say for years. So we stay. We listen. We let the circle unfold.
Marika described this as part of the community that has formed through Mystic Moon Sisters, and I think she was right. The healing isn’t necessarily in the ritual itself. It isn’t the candle, the crystal, the Reiki, the moon, or the oracle card. Those things can provide beautiful pathways into reflection, but the deeper medicine is the human connection that happens around them.
And then there is Destiny.
I cannot tell the story of Mystic Moon Sisters without telling the story of her.
Destiny and I began this together. In October 2022, she died from brain cancer, and the community that had formed around Mystic Moon Sisters suddenly had to find a way to carry her absence. What happened next was one of the most profound examples of resilience I have ever witnessed. Women gathered. Friends gathered. People who knew Destiny gathered, and people who had never met her gathered too. They brought food, stories, donations, tears, laughter, and love. The community continued to grow in the wake of her death. The circles became part memorial, part healing, and part promise that what she had helped create would continue.
Marika wrote that “Destiny had already created a community of women, and after her death, it only grew larger due to the support of all her friends and family.” I don’t think I could say it better. That is resilience to me. Resilience isn’t pretending that loss doesn’t hurt. It isn’t moving forward as though nothing happened. It is finding a way to carry what has been lost while continuing to make something meaningful from the love that remains. Maybe that is ultimately what Mystic Moon Sisters has become.
A place where women can gather and remember themselves.
A place where people can speak about the things that hurt.
A place where grief can exist alongside joy.
A place where women can find one another.
A place where men can enter the conversation when the space is right for that.
A place where women can also say, this time, I need this circle to be just for us.
And maybe Marika was right when she called it resistance.
Not resistance against men.
Not resistance through hatred.
But resistance against isolation.
Resistance against silence.
Resistance against the expectation that women should carry everything alone.
Resistance against the idea that vulnerability is weakness.
Resistance against a culture that asks women to continually give without asking what they need in return.
We gather.
We listen.
We witness.
We heal.
We remember.
And every time we do that, we create something different from the world that tells us to keep our pain private and keep moving. I think that is why the circle matters. Because when women sit together and tell the truth, something shifts. When someone finally says, I’ve been struggling, and another person answers, me too, the loneliness becomes a little lighter.
When a woman discovers that her experience is not hers alone to carry, she becomes part of something larger. And when we can create spaces where women feel safe enough to speak, while also creating spaces where men can learn to listen and participate in the work of healing, we move a little closer to the culture I want to live in.
A culture where women don’t have to be afraid.
A culture where men don’t have to be emotionally isolated.
A culture where feminism doesn’t mean creating another enemy, but creating more freedom.
A culture where boundaries and compassion can cp-exist together.
A culture where we understand that different people need different kinds of spaces at different points in their lives. No judgment. No competiton. No Egos.
That is the vision I carry for Mystic Moon Sisters.
And maybe I needed Marika’s paper to remind me that what Destiny and I created wasn’t just a collection of circles and events. It was community.
It was resilience.
It was women finding one another. Creating new friendships. New allies. Learning new tools. Finding their voice. Moving their bodies. Breathing deep into their lungs. Coming home to their bodies.
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do in a disconnected world is gather, look at one another, and say:
You are not alone.
We are still here.
And so.... we will keep gathering.
Here is Marika's Paper for those who wish to read it:
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