Women Are Magic

This week I sat in a candlelight gym encircled by almost all of my favorite women in Tokyo.  It was the end of my last Monday night yoga class and Kristen asked us to close class by circling us up, knee to knee, for a round of Om.  So we did and the tears fell.  I had been strong all week.  Getting close to the end.  Meeting up with the most amazing women for my non-sayonaras.  And how symbolic it was.  To be in a circle of women, because that is what we do here, we circle up and support each other in a way I have never had the privilege of experiencing before in my life.

These women are doctors and lawyers, marketers and designers, radiologists and broadcast journalists, therapists and consultants. Yet here, we are still those things - paused.  In this moment, our number one job is mother.  Mothers to our children, our partners and each other.  And then there are the superhuman CFOs, Heads of Digital Transformation and members of the Upperhouse, that work while they mother too.  All such intelligent women.  With such big hearts.  They celebrate each other and lift each other up and sit next to each other on the floor when they are in a heap.

These women have me.  They hold me.

For five years, it’s been about women.  Here, the partners work.  The women do everything else.  In a way, we run our own corporation.  And it’s a damn successful business.

Before last night’s yoga circle, I spent the morning in another circle with another crew, running a wellness workshop with friends, overflowing with meditation, kriya, reiki, yoga, free writing and vision boarding.  As hippie dippy as it gets.  The writing prompt was: “What makes you feel joy?”  and for 10 minutes, I wrote about women.  Adventuring, vulnerability, laughter, community - it’s all women.  As we shared out, I joked about our shared love of onsens, and how being naked together was a favorite things because it embodied and evoked all the best things about our relationships with each other and ourselves. 

And finally yesterday, in my empty apartment, just hours before I had to hand in my keys forever, we gathered for one last yoga class. And like a beautiful unspoken dance, some of the women brought their children to look after each other, then a friend from upstairs took one of them to school, one brought tea and the other made cookies. And it was the most beautiful goodbye to a beloved space as I listened to the sound of small feet running across the wood floors as echos of my mother memories made here. All in the home on the corner where I threw open my window to yell down “hi” to this community of women for years.  These besties.  These sisterwives. 

Every day together.  Friendships like it is our job.  Fuck, I have been lucky.  Women are magic.