Women Weaving: A Manifesto

Our submission for International Women's Day

Hello, I’m really happy you’re here.
This is a quiet corner where I explore what it means to live with more heart and less hurry - through stillness, creativity, and connection. I’m someone learning, right alongside you, how to pause long enough to listen for what truly matters. Pull up a chair. There’s space for you here.

This year, for International Women’s Day, we are responding to a Substack invitation for creative expression around the theme Women Weaving.

The call is rooted in the Scottish tradition of Waulking, a communal practice where women gathered to finish tweed cloth while singing side by side.

Before sharing our response, let’s step briefly into that tradition.

Waulking (Scottish Gaelic: luadh) was a traditional practice in the Scottish Highlands and Islands where women gathered to finish newly woven tweed cloth.

After the wool was woven, it needed to be softened and thickened. The women would sit around a long table, rhythmically pounding and passing the damp cloth from hand to hand. As they worked, they sang Gaelic waulking songs - call-and-response melodies that kept time and carried stories, humour, longing, and shared emotion.

It was practical work.
But it was also social, supportive, and deeply communal.

In a time before formal support systems, these gatherings offered something essential: companionship, release, and the steady reassurance of women working, and singing, side by side.

Interested in this gathering in modern times, here’s an informative video to watch.

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The invitation asks for a 21st-century response.

Make an art work, a song, a poem, read something, share some writing in a post. Talk about what’s in the legacy you weave, word after word, note after note, post after post. What impact do you have? What are your hopes for women in community online or where you live?

Rather than writing something alone, I invited the women who gather with me each month at my virtual Kitchen Table to reflect with me. It felt only natural to involve them in shaping this submission.

I asked questions like:

What becomes possible when women gather?
What do we feel here that we don’t feel elsewhere?
What are we no longer willing to carry?
What are we weaving together?

And, many more.

Together, we created a manifesto. It grew from their voices, their courage, their honesty, their longing for something real.

It is not mine alone.
It belongs to the women who helped shape it.

Prefer to listen?
I’ve created a video version of the manifesto below.

Women Weaving: A Manifesto

We believe when women gather, courage multiplies.
Honest conversation changes lives.
Laughter is medicine.
Creative ideas flow more freely in community.

Women deserve spaces where they are safe to speak
and safe to be quiet.

We are weaving more than friendship here.

We are weaving trust.
Creative confidence.
Joy.
Healing.
Belonging.
Legacy.

We are no longer willing to carry comparison.
Or competition.
Or hustle without heart.
Or the pressure to always be strong.

We are done stepping back from our own light.
Done believing we are behind.
Done carrying everything alone.

We believe in communities that are brave and honest.
Gentle and spacious.
Creative and playful.
Warm and welcoming.
Deep rather than loud.
Small but meaningful.
A place that feels like coming home.

And in this kind of community, something shifts.

I have begun to reclaim my own voice.
To believe that what I bring is enough, valuable, and valued.

And I know I am not alone in that.

We are the women who cradle one another.

We are trailblazers.
Role models.
Leaving a legacy for the next generation.

We share long-forgotten memories.
We make space for each other with love and compassion.
We learn from one another through shared stories and shared wisdom.

Word by word.
Story by story.
Women beside women.

We are weaving something the next generation will stand inside.

And because of that, I will show up honestly.
I will make space with love and compassion.
I will refuse comparison.
I will nurture creative confidence.
I will cradle the women beside me.
I will remember that what I bring is enough.
And I will continue weaving.

May we keep setting tables.
May we keep gathering.
May we keep weaving.

A special thank you to Claire Venus ✨, Lauren Barber, Laura Durban, Georgia, Laurita Gorman & Lyndsay Kaldor for this important invitation.

With deep gratitude, I thank the women who answered my call and completed the survey.

And to those whose photographs appear in the video version of this manifesto - women who gathered in the forest, who walked with a medicine woman, and who continue to walk beside one another - thank you.

Your presence lives inside these words.

If you feel moved, I’d be grateful if you like this post with a ❤️, share a thought in the comments, buy me a coffee, or pass it along to someone who might enjoy a pause. Each small gesture helps this quiet space reach others who may need it.