"Tend & Befriend"

How Hope for the World Is Growing in Circles.

- Prema Gaia

“THE WORLD WILL BE SAVED by the Western woman” is the now-famous prediction made by the Dalai Lama at the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009—and that sentiment is growing, especially in women’s circles. I had the honor of connecting with the founders of several of these movements and hearing about the tremendous positive shifts they have witnessed, why they are so passionate about women’s circles, and why they have dedicated their lives to making them available to all women, no matter which country or culture they come from.

Jean Shinoda Bolen is the founder of the Millionth Circle Movement and author of books including Moving Toward the Millionth Circle, which has now been translated into 80 languages. Bolen shared that she is intrigued by Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance” as well as the “hundredth monkey” theory. Those two theories suggest to her that new ways of human relating—“tend and befriend” rather than “fight or flight”—can spread rapidly from one group to all people. What it takes, she says, is a critical number of members of one group exhibiting the new behaviors and anchoring the new ways within community.