A question I keep coming back to: how do we know what we don't know?
Because the truth is, we can't see our own blind spots. We can't read the parts of ourselves that live in the shadows. We can't meet what's sitting in our unconscious — not alone.
But here's what I've learned: we can meet it together.
This is why I sit in circles.
In a circle, the person sitting opposite you becomes the mirror. They share something — a story, a wound, a truth — and suddenly you're in tears. Or you're triggered. Or something ancient stirs in you that you didn't even know was there.
They didn't do anything to you. They simply illuminated what was already sitting inside you, waiting to be seen.
This is the magic of the circle. It opens the trap door between the unconscious and the conscious. It lets us see what we couldn't see alone.
Why We Find It So Hard to Feel
But here's the thing — we've forgotten how to feel.
As children, we knew instinctively. We cried when we were sad. We raged when we were angry. We laughed with our whole bodies. We didn't question it. We just felt.
And then we were taught to stop.
Shh, don't cry. You're okay, you're okay.
From the moment we came out of the womb, we were conditioned out of our feelings. Because the adults around us didn't know how to regulate their own emotions — and so they couldn't hold ours. And this has been passed down, generation after generation.
So we learned to swallow it. To bury it. To numb it.
And now, as adults, when we see someone expressing emotion — really expressing it — it can make us feel scared. Triggered. Unsafe.
Because the first time we saw big emotion, it was in a dysregulated and unsafe way. A dysregulated adult. And our nervous system remembers.
Here's the invitation: we get to draw a line in the sand.
A line between healthy, safe, regulated, fully expressed emotion — and dysregulation.
We get to relearn what we knew instinctively as a child. We get to feel again. All of it.
The Red Tent
And this is exactly what the Red Tent is for.
The Red Tent is my in-person circle — a sacred space where all feelings and all parts are welcome. The rage. The grief. The tenderness. The joy. The parts of you that have been hiding. The parts of you that have been waiting to be seen.
This is a space where the energy is held by spirit, and by space holders who have met their own shadow and know how to regulate their own nervous system. So you don't have to hold it all together. You don't have to be okay. You just have to be willing to show up.
Because when we sit in circle, something alchemical happens. The person next to you becomes the activator. Their share becomes your medicine. And together, we open the trap door.
This is why I keep coming back to the circle. It has been the source of my biggest breakthroughs. And I believe it can be yours too.
The next Red Tent Gathering is November 7th — closest to the new moon in Scorpio, just after Venus rises from the underworld. A potent time to work with the themes of death and rebirth. Because we are always dying to become lighter.
Details in the link below. I'd love to see you there.
With love,
Louise