When I was a girl, my dad bought us a Ouija Board. The directions said it could be used to communicate with the dead, but at that age, I didn't know any dead people, so I used it to commune with my Guardian Angel.

Sometimes when we write together, it feels like that. The pen glides across the page, scribing internal messages and forgotten stories with no conscious thought on my part. Sometimes, when the group is resonating, what emerges helps me better understand what I'm thinking and feeling, offers wisdom and direction..

There's a deep listening, an open awareness that is amplified in our circle of sisters. Writing is just half the process. The real magic happens in listening to others' stories and in speaking aloud our own. As time passes, the writing becomes more powerful and clear, more healing and nurturing.

Have you missed our story circle as much as I have? It's the Gather for me. A time to share our stories of sorrow and triumph, our poems and fictions and the irritations that might just be trying to nudge us in a different direction.

Here's what we know: healing is possible only in community.

It has long been the tradition of Black and Indigenous women to gather in sister circles, sharing our stories and creating the change the world so desperately needs. First in our hearts, then on the streets.

Sharing stories is how we’ve nourished ourselves, our families, cultures, and communities through long generations of struggle. They are how we've created joy despite the long odds, the dark days and nights of sorrow.

We share our stories and write our lives so that we may live more fully. We gather under the ancestors’ gaze to create spaces where we feel their blessings and hear their voices. We gather to listen to the spirits sing and dance in the rhythms of life. This act of essential self-love can be deeply nourishing and transformative.

It doesn't matter whether you’re a professional writer, a beginner, or somewhere in between; the stories we pen on paper in this sister circle – held within our own, warm, brown embrace – become generative seeds of healing and joy. What they grow into is up to you!

So come again. Bring your recipes and fragments of the stories you heard at Big Mama's feet. Bring your poems and songs, your rage and bliss, and write your life with us. This too is how we become whole, wild and free in an act of revolutionary communal self-care.