Stories & Wisdom from our Aura Circles, Brazil 2025

Be The Earth's Aura Programme supports Aura Circles — women holding their own women's circles to create quiet spaces for connecting, self-care, feminine wisdom and transforming communities; nurturing different ways of being in the world.

Read the stories and wisdom from the five Aura Circles that we supported in Brazil in 2025.

Fabiolla Duarte: “Motherhood gave me the gift of belonging”

Fifteen years ago, I was a postpartum mother, an activist for humane childbirth, and a regular participant in support groups for mothers. Before that, in my feminine life, I didn't belong to anything — except to my own innocent ideas about the world.

We met in person on Tuesday afternoons, sharing how we felt and how our babies were. I realised my words echoed those of the other mothers — we were living the same experience.

Motherhood is collective, and in that moment I understood how much of life is. I wanted to remain in those circles forever, among women.

When anxieties arose around introducing solid foods, I immersed myself in studying the subject. I wasn’t interested in how to make my baby eat, but in understanding how babies eat — after all, we are Homo sapiens and have been on this Earth for millions of years.

My research began to resonate with other mothers, and soon I was teaching courses. On the surface, they were about introducing babies to solid foods.

In truth, it was about something much deeper — how the feminine within us sustains motherhood, with all its social roles, oppressions and quiet beauties.

Conversations about complementary feeding soon opened into deeper themes: how to sustain care, the exhaustion of sleepless nights, the longing to feel like a woman again, the fierce love for that small being — and sometimes the difficulty of loving the baby or loving motherhood itself.

Complementary feeding became the first rite of re-entering society after the postpartum cave. I loved being there, close to so many mothers in that shared threshold.

As the years passed and my son turned five, I sensed the need for a new space — one to explore children’s eating behaviour and how to nurture care around food without force or negotiation. In these conversations, mothers reflected not only on their children’s growth, but on their own evolving journey through motherhood.

Over time, my facilitation deepened, and I opened a third branch: circles for women to explore their relationships with the feminine, the body, food, culture, and self-care.

I needed to spend five years listening to mothers before I was ready to truly listen to women.

Within me grew the desire to give space to the woman who lives within every mother. So alongside the circles on baby and child feeding, I began hosting women’s circles.

Today, I’ve been facilitating these circles for ten years. They have naturally expanded into new directions, reflecting the richness and complexity women carry within them. Alongside discussions on the feminine, body, food, culture, and self-care, we now have a women’s literature reading club and, more recently, a study group focused on Black feminist thought.

Among all these groups, the one that has gone deepest into the layers of the feminine is the women’s literature reading club. Born from my journey with Be The Earth — our Aura Circles — it began in July 2024, and we’ve been gathering ever since. Some women come and go, but most continue to return.

There are ten women in the circle, and we’ve been reading the works of French writer Annie Ernaux. She explores themes from her own feminine life — falling in love with a man thirty years younger, experiencing her first sexual encounter, having an abortion at twenty-three, the deaths of her parents.

Each book tells her story, but also our stories. Through these readings, we talk openly about our lives and the themes raised. Women’s literature offers a gentle, safe, and intimate way to connect through one another’s stories. It's been deeply precious. 

We meet weekly on Fridays, online, for two hours. After more than a year together, we feel profoundly connected. Our bonds and trust have deepened, creating a kind of living school — or experiment — in the feminine, where we see and listen to each other with care.

I witness many beautiful moments of revelation.

Women’s circles are vital because, as Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel reminds us, “we can’t choose our family, but we can choose our village.”

Bell Hooks highlights that friendship among women is an exercise in listening and freedom.

Audre Lorde called it erotic — the vital power born when women truly recognise each other.

Adrienne Rich described love between women as an act of survival.

Silvia Federici showed that, in the burnings, what was often attempted to be erased was the collective power of women.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés teaches that when we share our stories with one another, we keep the instinctive soul alive.

Carol Gilligan taught us that care is a form of resistance.

We are the generation most pierced by loneliness. We live in a hyperconnected culture, yet remain starved for genuine bonds.

In the face of a moral and climate collapse, may every neighbourhood have its women’s circle, and may we all be within safe feminine communities.

Priscila Fonesca: “A meeting of memories and strengths that transcend borders”

It was a challenging year for me as I changed job and routine. However, the Aura circles were important moments — especially the exchange with Black African women, where I was able to recognise myself in the participants' stories and experiences. 

Realising how our vulnerabilities intersect, even in different and distant contexts, was profoundly transformative. These exchanges made me feel part of a larger network of Black women who continue to resist, create, and care. A meeting of memories and strengths that transcend borders.

This year, Aura helped me strengthen my self-care and recognise the importance of prioritising myself. Also, in understanding that care arises from the collective. Seeing myself reflected in the experiences of the women in the virtual circle, I understood that our pains and our strengths are shared, and that there is beauty in recognising this interdependence. 

Renata Laurentino: “Being in a circle with women has become a basic necessity of my existence”

In 2025, the circle I'm part of turned 12 and we received an “Aura gift" that allowed us to immerse ourselves for the first time. 13 women gathered for three days in a beach house to celebrate life, the gift of being together, and to experience moments of connection and great pleasure.

We fulfilled some dreams, such as: endless conversation circles, sea and river baths to cleanse and nourish the body and soul, oiling and massage rituals, hiking, belly dancing, and workshops for creating mandalas, drawings, and poetry. An experience we called “Lilith Island," a time and space to be ourselves, with our uniqueness and similarities. The weight of the world was left. 

Many of us had never been in such a beautiful and precious home; others hadn't had a break without their children in many years; others remembered how important it is to prioritise time and space with friends.

We nourished ourselves with good food, good conversation, and precious time for silence and contemplation.

We set our intentions for our futures, individual and collective, and the desire to continue in circles with women. We continued with the intention of meeting at the beginning of each season, to celebrate life and share our challenges and achievements.

And so we continued, through fall, winter, spring, and soon we'll see each other in summer!

The retreat provided us with a deepening of confidence and freedom we hadn't yet achieved. We talked more about our needs for pleasure, about our most “daring" dreams for ourselves and for other women.

The meetings that followed were more transparent, barriers fell, and we realised that many women were more courageous — following their instincts, intentions, and dreams. We were more committed to our personal dreams and to realising our pleasures.

Aura reminds me of our relationship with time and natural cycles. With each meeting, she reminds me of the power of the abundant nature that we are! 

Even in the face of so many daily, social, and structural challenges, we can and must find time and space to celebrate life, to breathe, and simply be.

These days, simplicity seems “expensive" and distant. But in each circle, I realise that it is in the connection that the greatest riches are found; in the exchanges, we are strengthened, inspired, and renew our courage in the face of life.

Being among women is a gift! Being in a circle with women has become a basic necessity of my existence. 

In our circle we sing a song: “May the circle open but not close, may the Goddess's love be among us, happy meeting, happy farewell, happy reunion sisters.”

So it was, so it is, and so it will be.

Flavia Ramos: “That simple insight gave me a whole new perspective”

There have been so many great and meaningful moments in Aura…

The opportunity to connect and exchange with South African sisters has been a highlight for me. Also, the gift and honour to work with Daniele, an Aura Fellow, who is my partner co-creating and co-facilitating the circles.

Last month, she taught me something so meaningful in a very beautiful way. 

We heard about a challenging situation from the women we work with in our community kitchen. While Dani and I were preparing the next session, I told her I was thinking about how best to support them.

She said, “Some things aren’t up to us to solve”. That simple insight gave me a whole new perspective! 

So we decided to shape the next session around playful games — in honour of Children's Day in October — rather than focusing on heavy conversations. 

Seeing how the women respond has been so rewarding. They’ve shared that the circle helps them feel truly listened, to listen more deeply to others, to solve problems together — and to have fun together.

Aura is an important moment in my life, in which I have been learning about self care, support to collective trauma and collective joy. It has reinforced my self-value and the value of my activist work with women, land and collectives.

The circles have helped me improve my sensitive listening, my ability to be flexible, as well as the practice of encouraging dialogue and lightness amidst challenges.

Daniele Custódio: “I’ve learned to value presence over perfection”

For the past three years, Flavia Ramos and I have been facilitating women’s circles at Academia Carolinas, a social project located in eastern São Paulo, in a very vulnerable community. Our circle is formed by women who, from Monday to Saturday, prepare around 600 organic and agroecological meals that are distributed free of charge to vulnerable residents in the surrounding area.

Flavia and I cross the city to get there — it takes about two hours each way, travelling by subway, train, and bus. It’s far, yes, but we do it with a lot of love.

Accompanying these women over time has been a deeply moving experience. It’s beautiful to witness their cycles of transformation.

Women who decide to leave violent relationships after realising their own strength and that they deserve more; daughters who grow up, become women, and choose to join our circles to share experiences; and a group that evolves, changes, and yet always reminds us of how essential our presence is every month — because this is their moment of self-care and connection.

These women share life together: they work side by side, they are neighbours, and their children go to the same schools — they play, they argue, they grow together. This closeness sometimes brings tension, which can affect their work in the kitchen.

The circle becomes that special space — a space for guided dialogue, reconciliation, laughter, and partnership, where conflicts can be reimagined and bonds strengthened.

Aura has profoundly transformed me over these years. I’ve learned to value presence over perfection. Between something perfectly planned and something done with love, the latter always matters more.

I’ve learned to listen more deeply, to embrace the unpredictable, and to meet each moment as it comes. Many times, Flavia and I spent weeks planning a circle, only to arrive and realise that the community needed something entirely different — and that was perfectly fine.

Aura has taught me that sometimes the most important thing is simply to listen without trying to fix — to allow space for people to speak and be heard. 

It has helped me connect more deeply with my feminine energy and intuition. It has opened doors to a more sensitive way of being — one where feeling and sharing among women makes life more meaningful and beautiful.