Andrea Wilson’s Blog

Got back last evening after spending three days on Whidbey Island, Washington with my women’s group, the Otter Daughters. The group is semi-fluid, with some core members and others who drift in and out. There were seven of us this time. We ate, laughed, cried and shared our stories.

We helped one member with her English: she now knows the difference between “public” and “pubic.” LOL And she shared a Chinese joke with us about “old eagle feather,” but it’s a bit risque to explain here! She now also knows that “volunteer” is not from the same root as “valentine.” We had a lot of laughs as we tried to explain some English words to her. Somehow they all seemed a bit risque in the end! Okay, maybe not “retriever” and “driftwood,” I guess. Although given time, we might have come up with something!

All in all we had a lot of fun and I didn’t think about the Thirty Day Challenge at all. But today I had to catch up. I thought about how much my little “community of women getaway” meant to me and how the Thirty Day Challenge is a community, too. And a very generous one, at that. It brought my two worlds together and made me thankful even for online groups in a world where communities in our everyday lives have dwindled to almost nothing. Women in particular need community. And we are the ones flocking to forums and chat rooms in search of what we have lost.

The times are gone forever when women spent their days together looking after the children, gathering food, cooking and making clothes. The days of sharing, learning, laughing and crying together are few and far between. In the Western world women are far too isolated from one other.

If you don’t have a little community of women you truly love and respect, you should try it. The freedom to be yourself is amazing. Any old group won’t work though; you need to find a warm and loving community like the Otter Daughters, bless their souls.

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