Hello and welcome! I am Mitle Southey. I am an intuitive guide and circle holder. I’m on a mission to help as many women as possible experience the transformative power of circles. Today we are talking about YOU as a circle holder. Your role as a circle holder, but more importantly, claiming your unique quirks and gifts as a circle holder. I really want to encourage you to have the courage and confidence to step into that role. Or if  you’re already holding circles, to deepen your capacity as a holder, and to continue to expand your understanding of holding space. Through circle school, we look at you as a whole. In week 2, we go through who we are as a circle holder. We look at our unique quirks. Our unique gifts. We connect with the soul of our circle, understanding that she is a separate entity to us, but she’s coming through us. We are her human. So we look at how that relationship can work most effectively. Then we ask who are we serving with our circles? Who is it we wish to bring these to? Why? Why are we choosing to gather women in this way? Claiming your unique quirks and gifts. I love the word ‘quirks’ because we are all quirky. We all have those things that make us who we are. So think about your own journey. Your own life experience. All the things that have brought you to THIS moment in time and space. To this place in your life. And really be willing to go on a journey of self discovery. Who are you? What do you stand for? What do you stand against? What is it that you want to share with the magic of circles? Why do you want to hold circles? It’s a process of gathering the threads from your lived experience. Your culture. Your heritage. From the country you are in. From your own rituals and ceremonies. From the modalities you are trained in. From your professional experience. It’s about bringing all these threads together of who you are and being willing to have a journey of self discovery. Be willing to go within to see who you are as a circle holder. One of the elements that still surprises me, yet I still see it every single time I hold circle school, is that we have a collective fear of stepping into this role and holding space for others. From my experience of working with so many women, I find that it still stems from the history of the witch hunt. From us being persecuted and killed for stepping into roles where we supported other people. Where we were healers. Where we conducted rituals and ceremonies for each other. We have been stopped from doing that for such a long time that there is this incredibly powerful collective energy around that. And that is why I use the word ‘courage’ when I’m asking us to step into this role of circle holder. On the face of it, in this moment in time and space, for those of us living in the UK or Australia or New Zealand or the USA (and many other countries) we can step into this role. We are not going to be persecuted or killed for it. But still it can hold us back. In week 2 of the curriculum, we really unpack that and examine, ‘What is actually holding us back?’. We also focus on looking at our quirks and gifts and really claiming those. There are fun personality tests you can do. They don’t have to define you. But they can give you an insight into who you are. They can give you an introduction to a part of you that you may not have connected with. For me, the Myers & Briggs test was so powerful because it gave me an understanding of being an introvert. That introversion is a super power, and I think it’s a super power for a lot of circle holders. It’s often the thing that we think makes us less, that is actually our super power. It’s the thing that makes us unique. It’s the quirk that gives us that beautiful energetic resonance with the women who are called to work with us. Becoming a circle holder is a journey of becoming our fullest and truest expression of ourselves. Each time you show up for your circle, you are learning more.