Women of Wisdom

Catherine McFarland, a 52-year-old database manager at the University of Washington, first found out about the annual Women of Wisdom conference in 2000.

For years, she’d struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, a disease of chronic pain. She couldn’t work for long periods and, one by one, friends dropped out of her life.

Going to the conference “gave me back my life,” said McFarland, who now volunteers for the event. “It made me realize I still had worth.

“I was met by people with no preconceptions of me. It allowed me to lose preconceptions of myself.”

The women’s spirituality conference, in its 13th year, was founded by Seattleite Kris Steinnes, 55, who wanted to create a safe, empowering environment that nurtures the voices and spirits of women and encourages them to do the things they’ve always dreamed of.

It is not affiliated with any organized religion; workshops bring in elements from diverse perspectives, such as Hindu, Wiccan and Celtic.

“I guess we call it ‘women’s spirituality,’ ” Steinnes said.

Workshops explore different practices such as tarot reading, meditation, chanting and dancing, and issues such as sexuality, feminine consciousness and maintaining balance while increasing one’s business.

About 500 people attended the first conference in 1992, at which there were 24 events. This year’s conference, which started Wednesday and continues through Monday, features nearly 65 offerings, from workshops to concerts, lectures and theater performances.

Sharron Rose, a 56-year-old DVD producer and distributor in Shoreline, Wash., taught a full-day workshop on “The Tantric Dance of Durga.”

Rose, also a teacher and choreographer who has studied dance and spirituality in India, focused on the mythic teachings of Durga, a Hindu goddess of power and beauty.

Women have gained economic power in this society, Rose said, but “still there is not the level of respect for the true nature of women and what they have to offer.”

In her teachings, she said, she wants to remind women of how females in various spiritual traditions have always been “the spirit and foundation of everything.”

Merry O’Brien, a 66-year-old retired nurse in Renton, Wash., said messages about the strength of women have always spoken to her, “but I didn’t know how to translate them into something I could practice in my daily life.”

The Women of Wisdom conferences, which she has attended since 1994, let her see how she could.

She took a workshop on herbs and now makes various salves and soaps. She learned about journals and still writes three pages in her journal each morning.

She took a dance workshop and “started feeling like I loved my body, that it was OK the way it was, even though I judged it all the time.”

She learned about making altars and creating sacred spaces. She created a small altar at home and uses it each morning to center herself and to pray.

“I had no idea there was anything called sacred that was outside of the church experience,” O’Brien said.

She goes back to the conferences each year, she said, because “there’s always new stuff.” And she goes to bolster her own growth.

“There’s something solid inside me that I didn’t used to be aware was there all the time,” O’Brien said. “I refer to it as ‘owning myself.’ “

McFarland, the database manager, said it wasn’t any one particular workshop she valued most but the cumulative effect.

“It was getting to know the other women who went. And giving me the chance to get to know myself again,” she said.

Some of the workshops seemed to be “a little on the woo-woo side” at first, McFarland said. But she was surprised at how powerful and revealing they could be.

One of her breakthrough moments came during a mask-making workshop, where the women had gathered into a circle, putting up to their faces the masks they had made.

The instructor asked them to speak about the message of each particular mask.

“I put this mask up, and all of a sudden, all this stuff came out: that I didn’t need to hide who I really was, that who I am is good enough,” McFarland said.

“I learned something valuable about myself: that I hide. This gave me the chance to come out from behind the mask.”