Filling the wHole Within

The idea is to bring in vastly different concepts and experiences of mother and mothering.

For the past five years, my work internally, spiritually, has been around reclaiming a relationship with this idea of mother and mothering. I have stepped into what you might call an initiation with regard to trying to heal a lineage of unhealthy feminine, unhealthy relationships, with this idea of mother and mothering. As a result in the realm of teaching what you need to learn, this is been my primary lesson. 

It has come with the uncovering and discovering of layer after layer of shame and guilt and messaging that kept me locked in a paradigm of unhealthy relationship to mother and as mother. Through this work, through peeling those layers away, beginning to be able to come back to that essence that we all come in with, of inherent lovability, of light, of brilliance, that unfortunately in our society (for thousands of years) gets covered over by unhealthy stories, unhealthy messaging, unhealthy paradigms.

So having an opportunity to speak to people with many different experiences of mother and mothering is, on a personal level, I believe, a part of my healing to see that I am not alone in this and to help others see and know that they are not alone in their experiences. In being able to recognize some of their own stories being able to bring in a level of compassion for where we all are and where we've come from in an effort to heal that.

I was the firstborn of four kids born within five years to a 21-year-old. I think, for her, I represented the end of her freedom. The death of her dreams. Her own dreams. What she was living was society’s dream - marrying the right guy from the right family and doing that thing that mothers did in the 60s and before that, and still today often. My understanding is that I represented all of those things for her in a very unconscious way. As a result the anger, the frustration, the rage at not being able to live the truth of her light, I became unconsciously the target of that. The death of those dreams. Though there, I'm sure, is much more to it than that, as a child that was my experience of it.

So as I saw the potential for the replication of that in my relationship with my daughter, I knew that it was my job, my calling, to put an end to that cycle.

The idea is to bring in vastly different concepts and experiences of mother and mothering and archetypes of mother, all the way to Mother Earth, and our relationships with that idea of mother and mothering. Men mother, as well as women mothering. There’re so many different configurations and experiences around this quintessential role in our lives that I want to weave a lot of different threads together in the hopes of having a deeper innerstanding of what this, (as I described it) most intimate relationship we could possibly have is.

The nature of the topic itself probably lends itself more to women, but I so don't want to limit it to that. I want to embrace men and help them heal their relationship with the feminine as well as their relationship with the masculine. In having a different understanding of the way these roles play out.

First, I want to say that identification with the wound is something that is an incredibly necessary part of the process of healing. But staying stuck in that wound I think is where a lot of us remain. We identify as victim. Coming to the other side of that is what this process is all about. It is absolutely necessary to dig in the muck and stir up the mud but to let it all settle and clear and ultimately let it go so that we can clear the way for the light. So that the lotus can blossom from that mud and muck.

It’s an essential exploration, but again, not one to stay stuck with.

The term mother wound - I have an actual physical pain in my body that I've heard myself describe as my “mother wound" and when I feel the sharpness of this pain it's a trigger for me to look at what's going on relative to that mother wound.

A huge part of this healing process has been about embodiment. About understanding that our body holds these lessons and these keys and these clues and learning to listen to those. Fear of even being in the body is something I recognize within myself because

I know that the body knows.

So while talk therapy, while 12 Step, while other modalities of healing have been necessary and important and valuable, getting to this embodiment piece for me has been essential in letting it go from a cellular level.

Weaving so many different stories and experiences around motherhood, around mothering, around mother, it creates this incredibly rich tapestry that enables a new sense of allowing for all of us.

I’m excited to learn about experiences in this regard beyond my own little box, particularly experiences of motherhood and mothering in different cultures. I know we are often siloed in our own communities, in our own cultures and I know there's a much wider world of experience out there that will illuminate so many other different possibilities. It just feels like adding color to the painting, the whole picture. And depth.

My work these past five years has been focused on the feminine. As you know, we've seen in the world around us this huge uprising of a new healthier feminine, this is Divine in the feminine. We have taken on the masculine but an unhealthy masculine. And reclaiming that feminine in a new way, in the way that was shut out, hung, burned, cast away by an unhealthy masculine.

And that paradigm now is just crumbling, left, right and center, which, in the process, is really messy, really scary and really necessary. But I have come to recognize is that this new, healthy feminine paradigm all by itself cannot survive without a healthy masculine.

Men, unfortunately, particularly in recent years, have in many ways paid the price of this patriarchy bashing. In any new movement there is this uprising, this anger, this rage that comes through because there's been so much time spend being oppressed by it. But as a result men don't know where to go. They don't know how to be. They don't know how to allow what's real and true in themselves to come forward because they've been taught, poisoned, by this unhealthy masculine as well.

What I'm finding in my self is a need for a reclamation of a healthy masculine to balance the feminine. I’ve heard it described as the banks of a river. The feminine being the water. But without the banks, it would just overflow and have no form.

And bringing in an innerstanding of what a healthy masculine is in each of us, male or female, or anywhere in between. We all need that.

And that's been the edge for me. Most recently, my masculine has been a very toxic,  punishing, do-do-do, harsh, rigid masculine. And learning how to incorporate a gentle strength and structure without the harshness of that old masculine.

I notice I keep doing these mudras. This being the chalice, and this being the blade. The masculine and the feminine coming together in a new and healthy way.

I hope that this conversation for both men and women helps them come back to this knowing of this true state of balance. We call it Heiros Gamos. The sacred marriage. The marriage within. So that we can each claim both the masculine and feminine within ourselves as sovereign beings. So that we're not seeking it out there.

In order to have a healthy whole we need to find it within ourselves first.

Otherwise, we reach endlessly outside of ourselves to try to fill that H-O-L-E hole when we're not W-H-O-L-E whole.