Every time I've considered charging a fixed price for the Returning Circle, something in me resists it. I've thought about this long enough to understand why.
The circle is not a product. It's a practice. It exists because I believe in it, because the women who come need it, because something happens in those rooms that doesn't happen in rooms where a transaction has already established the terms of the relationship.
Making it donation-based means the woman who can give twenty pounds and the woman who can give two pounds and the woman who can give nothing are all in the same room. This is intentional. The healing that happens in genuine community — across the full range of life circumstances — is different from what happens in a room where everyone has pre-selected for ability to pay.
If you've been coming and giving what you can — thank you. If you've been coming and giving nothing because right now nothing is genuinely what you have — you are still as welcome as anyone else.
That will never change.