Jan Adam, author of this month’s story on using The Circle Way to create family rituals, offers the following encouragement and considerations:

While many of us use Circle professionally in our organizations and communities to connect and make meaningful dialogue possible, do we not also need this in our families, for the same reason? I want to encourage us to bring Circle in our living rooms and among our relatives.

Circle offers a beautiful structure and container both for important family decisions and for ritual. This way you ensure that every voice is truly heard, and emergent collective wisdom provides support for decision-making. Rituals provide a healing acknowledgement of important life stages and events such as births and deaths, weddings and anniversaries, graduations, new work, retirement, rehousing, divorces.

Circle has the power to soften entrenched family patterns of interaction. Dysfunctional family dynamics disappear when components of The Circle Way are applied, inviting every family member’s unique voice a full-fledged place. Be surprised!

The power of Circle starts as soon as one reads your invitation for a gathering. Formulate it with the most possible attention, making it inviting and ‘light’ when possible. Then one immediately feels the emotional intention, impact and potential of a family Circle.

For more ideas, please refer to Chapter 12, Circle as a Way of Life, in The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair.