Come sit down. Tell me your story.
For thirty three years in business, everything I've built has started at a table. A dinner, a conversation or coaching someone through something. It always came back to the table.
Years ago I ran The Red Tent Woman, a women's business events company running across five states in Australia. It began with forty or so women around a table in a restuarant sharing food. Then it moved out of restuarants and into women's homes, everyone bringing a plate and a bottle of wine. That was the happiest I have ever been in business. There is something organic that happens in natural conversation around a table, in my home. It's something that never quite happens when you're officially coaching someone or in a formal restaurant setting.
Being heard
When you sit at a table with someone, they feel listened to. Seen. Heard. It's intimate in a way a boardroom or a corporate space can never be. It softens us. When someone is talking and I know it matters, I stop. I put down what I am doing, I hold the space and I really listen. That is the whole thing.
Warm and cosy
It happens here, at my house, and the house is part of it. I have made it warm on purpose. It feels like a holiday house in the country. A chiminea and a deck outside with a heater so you can stay in the cool air. An egg chair in the garden to sit and journal. Fairy lights at night, and a little red bridge that goes nowhere. Inside there is art everywhere, salt lamps and candles, warm bedrooms. It's not fancy and it's not new, it's rustic and lived in. The Dutch have a word for it, gezellig. Warm and cosy. That is the feeling I want you to walk into.
Nurtured and cared for
You get a hug when you arrive and a hug when you leave. In between you are nurtured, cared for and above all - seen. One artist I worked with, Stevie Lepp, put it best. We never painted once, it was all conversation, and she still says she feels I saw her in a way nobody else ever has.
That is why I call it the Table, not a workshop or a program or a community. A table is just people sitting with each other, being with each other. Personal. Intimate. That is where the real work happens.