Summer, Gently

A gentle beginning
to summer.

I wanted Summer, Gently to be a way of stepping into the season with care — an evening by the water where women could move, breathe, and feel that every detail had been prepared for them.

My friend Bianca came from Puerto Rico to Boston for the gathering. We went to grad school together, and she is an amazing Pilates instructor. We were so excited to bring our work together: her movement practice and the rituals I wanted to share through LURUH.

I put so much of myself into preparing it. We made fifty canang sari — Balinese flower offerings — for a gathering of forty women. I pictured the flowers, the incense, the mats beside the harbor, and how it would feel to arrive and move through the evening. All forty places were reserved. One of my friends even came from San Francisco to surprise me.

There was so much love in what we had planned. Which is why, when the women began to sit down and the rain poured, accepting it was hard.

And then,
we stayed.

I remember walking into the gathering and telling the women they could stay with me if they wanted to. They stayed. In the pouring rain, we came together and began sharing our feelings and thoughts.

We cried. We hugged one another. We placed flowers in the water. The waterfront felt like it belonged just to our little gathering, and there was something so intimate about being there together.

Some women spoke about the worry of getting older. Others shared stories from further along in life — becoming a mother, approaching a new decade, finding that life had unfolded differently from what they once expected. We were women of different ages, listening to one another. Someone else’s experience could offer a possibility you had not yet imagined for yourself.

It took an open mind and an open heart to share like that, especially there in the rain. I am so grateful to the women who let us into a little of their lives. This is what I want for LURUH: a place where you can bring what is on your heart, and where another woman’s story might help you feel less alone.

I believe women can help one another heal. There is something about the care we offer each other when we feel able to be open. Watching it happen that evening still makes me emotional. It was the reason I wanted to bring us together.

I think nature has a way of teaching us about life. I had prepared so carefully, and now I had to let go of how I thought the evening should unfold. That did not happen easily. But as we stood there, something beautiful was happening that I could not have planned.

LURUH means to fall, to shed. That evening, we really did shed — tears, expectations, a little of what we had been carrying. The meaning I had wanted to share became something we were experiencing together.

For clarity.
For what you’re stepping into.

One of the moments I wanted to share was a rice blessing inspired by bija. In Balinese Hindu practice, bija is blessed rice received as part of worship, often placed on the forehead after prayer. The word comes from Sanskrit, meaning “seed.” This is a living religious tradition, and I want to acknowledge the roots of the gesture we shared.

At LURUH, we offered it woman to woman, with a few grains of rice and simple words: “This is for clarity.” “For what you’re stepping into.” These were the intentions we brought to our gathering.

As women, we carry so much through the different chapters of our lives — motherhood, grief, change, and beginnings we may not yet know how to name. I wanted each woman to have a moment where someone stood before her and offered care for whatever she was moving through. She did not have to explain her whole story to receive it.

For me, that is where the spiritual part of LURUH lives: in taking a small gesture seriously, giving it our attention, and meaning the words we say to another woman. My hope was that she would carry the memory of being cared for into whatever came next.

Read about bija in Balinese tradition

The evening still
had more to give.

We had a beautiful Balinese dancer from Nusantara Kreasindo, sharing Tari Oleg Tambulilingan, the bumblebee dance. Watching this part of Indonesia here beside Boston Harbor meant so much to me.

Then came a double rainbow and a magnificent sunset. After all that rain, we had this extraordinary sky above us.

Our first gathering was different from the one I had imagined. I was still learning how to accept that, even while seeing how much connection was happening around me. The women shared such beautiful thoughts about the experience, and I left with so much to learn from and be grateful for.

When I think of Summer, Gently now, I think of the women who stayed. They helped make our first gathering what it was.

Jiji

With Bianca and Nusantara Kreasindo. Read about the Balinese bumblebee dance (English)

A little care
to bring home.

I wanted the women to have something to take home with them, too. Cat, the founder of gen-well, helped make that possible by putting together a take-home toolkit for our gathering.

The Wellth Collective is gen-well’s curated selection of brands, products, and resources for women. Its aim is to help women build a personal wellness toolkit that reflects their individual needs and changes with them through different stages of life.

At Summer, Gently, that idea became something the women could explore in person — a collection of products and resources to discover, alongside the gifts they could bring home.

So much of what we had prepared changed in the rain. But some women still went home with those beautiful gifts from gen-well. That meant a lot to me — a little of the care we had put into the evening could go home with them.

Thank you, Cat, for being part of Summer, Gently and for helping us care for the women beyond our time together.