|  Mother-Daughter-Full
Circle
by Clare Peterson
It was the last sleep over at Nancy’s before the Congress
would end. I woke up at 5:30 am feeling a strong direction
to tell my mothers story and to invite all the women who had
traveled from international countries to meet. There was no
space within the program for this, but with the immediate
support of Nancy, and the graciousness of the organizers,
I was able to follow through and here is what I shared.
Fifty years ago this year, The United Nations Charter was
drawn up here in San Francisco. My mother attended. In her
belongings after she died, I found a poem that she had written
and submitted in the early fifties, to Common Wheel magazine.
Eight or ten lines..titled TO MY SISTERS. It was a plea seeking
women to come forward and connect to support and share what
they knew. Across the text was a rejection slip saying that
this writing was not suitable for publication.I remember how
cold I felt reading those words.
So now fifty years later I am able to stand here on this
stage, in the same city where I was also born, and ask that
my sisters from all the different countries meet face to face.
I do not want to leave here without meeting you. I ask this
for myself and for my mother. A completion.
So we met; 41 of us from different countries sat in Circle.
There was a Presence in the room. We now have through GTW
site, an International Circle Connection.
That day on our way home, Nancy drove me by the house where
I was born and where my grandmother and mother looked after
us during the war. It is at 3555 Clay Street, a few blocks
from where the Congress was being held. I put some flowers
at the garden gate and honored the women who had worked so
hard and gone before me. The sense of lightness and freedom
I experienced felt like a full completion and release of a
burden of responsibility carried all of my life. The women
honored; my mother completed, and my sisters together.
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