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Mother: You Are Enough

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“Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.” ~ Alice Walker

::

I bet none of the Mother’s Day cards to be given this week include words like these.

My mother, Joan, died not quite two years ago. She wasn’t perfect. She did not hide her flaws. Yet, I didn’t know her obvious humanness was her gift to me until I sat with her body after she passed.

As I sat with her beautiful womanly body, a body that bore three daughters, I stroked her fine white hair, caressed her tender wrinkled face, and cradled her belly, the belly that was my first home. I felt awe for her obvious humanness and the strength she found as a single mother. The lines in her face bore witness to these parts of her life that were hard.

Like most daughters, I complained about the ways my mother was flawed. And I grew up fighting my own flaws, especially as a mother, especially when my life got very hard. I’ve really struggled with how I lost my way when my husband died. I wasn’t there for my children in the way I ‘should have been’ if I had been a good mother. I’ve held myself up to some standard that was always unattainable. I’m flawed. My daughters saw my flaws. They experienced my flaws. They can tell you in a minute all about my flaws.

What if I realized my flaws are my humanness? What if I simply accepted that I am flawed? human? real?

What if I saw my body now, while I am alive, like I saw my mother’s body when she was lying in the light that surrounded her moments after her death?

Flawed is a whole world away from sinful. I know sin is not real. I’ve seen too many babies born to believe one comes into the world as a sinner. Those tiny pink toes. Those cherub arms and legs. Those eyes that look at you from the other side of the mystery could never be marked with something such as sin…the kind of sin pill we keep being forced to swallow.

Flawed is where the light shines through, or as Leonard Cohen sings:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.

And that’s how the light gets out, how our light shines into the world, through our flaws, through our humanness.

And when we teach girls they must grow up to be perfect mothers, it’s a set-up for the never-ending striving for perfection, the never-can-be-reached destination that is exhausting and robs women of simply being themselves, and the opportunity to model to their children what it means to be content with oneself.

Oh, to feel myself relax into the shape of who I naturally am, flaws and all, so I might hold my daughters with the softness of self-love and acceptance.

Oh, to see my daughters relax into the shape of who they naturally are, flaws and all, so they might cradle their babies with the same softness of self-love and acceptance.

What if we gave our mothers a soft place to land, a place where they were showered with the praising words of “you are enough”?

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A Valentine to You, Dear Woman, Dear Friend

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A Year of Great Promise, (C) Shiloh Sophia McCloud

There is a Hassidic saying which goes: “When the moon shall shine as bright as the sun, the Messiah will come.”

Woman through her struggle to understand herself and to articulate the highest values of the feminine principle, could begin to make the moon shine so that it softens the sun-brightness of our present consciousness. In accepting her depression, her suffering, her loneliness, her longing to outgrow the inarticulateness and powerlessness of her past existence, she may accomplish something truly heroic and extraordinary for life, something which humanity in centuries to come will recognise and cherish. Each woman who gives birth to herself and responds to what life is asking her to accomplish, contributes to the survival of our species and the diminishment of human suffering.

~Anne Baring

::

Over the past week, I have written about despair and grief, emotions that are far from the flowers and chocolates of Valentine’s Day. And, many of my friends are experiencing a depth of emotion, similar to what I have written.

Deep emotions are part of our experience as women – and, perhaps, it is becoming so every day that passes. Why so, you ask?

As Anne Baring writes on her site, at this time in history, women are birthing a new kind of consciousness. They are vessels for the shift that is occurring

Women share a different kind of love, one that isn’t always reflected out there in the culture. When you know, and feel, this love, it changes your life. May you always know this love is here, as a deep well to draw from, especially in times when you are polishing the moon within you.

::

So, this is a valentine to you, dear woman, dear friend.

May you know the beauty of your own soul.

May you give birth to the radiant You that has been there all along guiding you to this day.

May you trust in Her voice as she calls you to listen to your own deepest wisdom.

May you come to know that you are part of a long history of women who love life and will do anything to nourish and encourage its growth and emergence.

May you see yourself as a Mother, through and through, whether or not you have ever given birth to babies, and may you call forth this Ancient Motherhood within, to love yourself wholly and deeply, first, so you have the energy and strength to share your love with others.

May you always shower yourself with love and compassion, trusting that you are wholly, and holy, female, just as you are.

::

Image courtesy of Shiloh Sophia McCloud. Her paintings are remarkable, as is her work in the world.

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Nature’s Design: Beautifully Packaged

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Packaging. For the best of 2009 Blog Challenge, our prompt today is Best Packaging of 2009.

When I read this, I immediately thought of how many times I’ve cringed this year at how things are packaged and how much waste is involved. So much of the time, packaging is extraneous. We just don’t need so much of what is used to wrap things up. In fact, we just don’t need so much of what gets wrapped up in more of what we just don’t need.

As I thought about packaging for this post, I remembered back on the things I purchased, or received, that came in beautiful packaging. I’m all for beautiful, thoughtful and well-designed packing that is necessary, and hopefully, useful on its own.

Which brings me to the best packaging I encountered for 2009. Leave it to nature to provide packaging that works and is beautiful and useful, even after the gift is delivered. Our design, as women, is a breathtakingly beautiful form that clearly follows function…on so many levels. We are designed to give birth to a myriad of creations, just one of which is babies.

My daughter, the beautifully designed mom, delivered the gift, Jamison, in April.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 15: Best packaging.
Did your headphones come in a sweet case? See a bottle of tea in another country that stood off the shelves?

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The Challenge is Now

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In every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, the adult female grows fierce when the cubs are threatened. And we….? ~Marianne Williamson

We women are protectors of the children and of the earth. Look at the love in this woman for her child.  You can feel it.

In the Iroquois tradition, it was women who held the key responsibility of deciding whether or not to go to war, for they considered, fully, the effects of war on the children, on the generations ahead, and on the earth itself. We love our children. But we, today’s women, have been deeply conditioned out of trusting our own instincts, our feelings, and our fierceness.

Earlier this year, there was a story in the NY Times about women in India who could not feed their children. I remember reading it, and looking at the accompanying photos of these beautiful women with their starving children, and realizing just how deeply we have been conditioned to believe we have no power. What stopped these women from doing ANYTHING they could to feed their starving children? When I wondered this, I turned the question back on myself. What stopped me from doing anything to feed my starving children and grandchildren? It’s not that they don’t have enough food. They do. For now. But, and this is the important message that is now coming out loud and clear, we women know deep inside that there is something horribly wrong with the way things are in the world. As Marianne Williamson expressed, our cubs are threatened. We are all threatened. We feel it in our bodies, for we feel the wounding of the earth and all children in our bodies.

As I read this article, I felt rage that these women had no hope to feed their children, and complete wonder at how our conditioning is so strong as to kill the instinct in us to do whatever it takes to get food in the mouths of our babies.

A beautiful woman, Diana Stone, has written a book that will be released in the spring of next year. She came to speak to our Institute of Sacred Activism workshop in September. She told us that the Iroquois have said that women must stand and speak. It is time for women to stand and speak.

The time is now. I have heard this too many times to be able to hold back any longer.

The time is now. For women to speak. For women to stand and speak, to voice what they are feeling.

The time is now for me to speak, as a woman, as a mother, as a grandmother.

We are facing this challenge each and every day. What greater challenge could there be than the end of the world in the way we have known it to be. I stepped my toe into the waters with my post on Living Gratefully. But that was not enough.

Enough is enough. I spent the afternoon, yesterday, with two of my three grandchildren. When I look at them, I wonder what kind of world they will live in. I wonder how long they will get to live. I wonder how much suffering they will endure, simply because we, people who have the ability to do something about the state of affairs we find ourselves in, have done nothing to really stop the anguish of the earth, to stop our own greed, to stop our separate ways.

Yesterday, I received this long quote from a dear friend. It is an excerpt from a book she is reading, Wisdom’s Daughters (2002), which contains the words of Women Elders of Native America. The woman whose wisdom follows is Vickie Downey of the Tewa Tesugue Pueblo.

It is the time of the feminine. With a woman that is what we feel. When I look around at the different women, I see sadness and a heaviness within themselves. What they are experiencing is what the earth is experiencing — her sadness and heaviness because of the way her children are living today. Women, they have that; the feeling is there in their hearts more so than the male people, cause the male is always doing things. The male also has to realize that he has a female part to him and he has to start feeling that same feeling.

Women have to be recognized. The words of women have to be recognized. The women will come out. It might be prophesied or doesn’t have to be prophesied, but the feeling is so strong that women will come out and voice their feelings. Whether people want to hear it or not, it is going to come because it is meant to be. It is that time.

Most women can’t comprehend what it is. They feel it. It is like a depression so they go to psychiatrists, therapists, trying to figure it out. Or it turns into physical ailments. Feelings into physical ailments. So they don’t know. They know something is going on but they cannot pinpoint exactly what it is.

As people, as native people, we are trying to do our best to tell the world this is what is happening to you. This is what is happening to us. This is what is happening to the earth. No matter how many words we give them, how many books we give them, how much information we give them, it won’t help them until they finally decide “well, I am going to accept this. I am sick. I am a sick society. I am a sick world. I am a sick person.”

When we do that we can heal. Then we turn around and we help each other. Then there will not be homelessness. Then we won’t have hunger. We won’t have wars….

So, the message is coming through loud and clear. This is the challenge, and it is here, now.

The Dalai Lama recently surprised listeners when he said, “The world will be saved by western women.” We women in the west, have the more power, resources, and connection to each other than women have had anywhere in the world for many, many centuries.

All over the world, now, women have the ability to voice what is happening, to stand and speak, whether it be to each other, to their neighbors, to their government, or to each other through. We can speak through many means, which blogging is but one.

Two great quotes have been swirling in my head for some time, now.

You must learn not to be careful. Diane Arbus

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you! Isadora Duncan

These words take me back inside, where my feelings and instincts as a woman reside. My fierce love was tamed, made dormant and silent. But we were once wild here, and we are still wild within.

What will it take to stand and speak, to grow fierce and vocal?

Image by Yogendra174, Flickr

This post is part of The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge (by blogger Gwen Bell):
Day 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

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Moments of Grace

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I’m participating in Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Day 8: Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a mother and a grandmother. I am a mother to two daughters, who are mothers to two sons and one daughter. My grandson is eight and his brother is 7 months. My granddaughter is 15 months.

My younger grandson was born in April of this year. The journey leading up to his birth was filled with moments of many emotions, but most noticeably trust, hope and yes, fear.

His brother, who is now eight, is a most amazing soul. He was born with a heart defect that went undiscovered until he was about twelve hours old. What unfolded after that discovery, was enough to make any human being wonder about the grace of God, or lack of any grace at all in the world. What this baby, and his parents, endured, made me question, at the deepest level, if there is a God. In the middle of the darkest moments of this baby’s first three months in the hospital, one full month in critical condition, I railed against God, not understanding at all how I could be at peace with what my beautiful first grandchild was having to endure in his first days and weeks of life; and, what his parents were having to experience. All I wanted to do was keep them safe. But, I couldn’t.

At one dark point, I took myself into the hospital chapel, shut the door, and swore I would not leave until I could ‘be with’ the way things were. I knew I wasn’t any good to anyone until I faced what it was I was unwilling to face. I prayed. I wept. I prayed. I begged. I wept some more. And then, exhausted with my own fighting against what was, I finally began to pray in earnest. No longer were my prayers about asking for what I wanted. In my exhaustion, my prayers were prayers of surrender. They were prayers of letting go. They were prayers of vulnerability, of complete opening to hear, really hear, what might be there all along, just waiting for my receptivity.

Finally, when I was quiet, open and receptive enough to hear, I heard a voice tell me that, in this moment, all was well. All was well. And with the voice, came a deep, undeniable, peace. The kind of peace that passeth all understanding. In the midst of one of the most painful moments of my life, I felt the kind of peace that moves beyond all measure of description. In this peace, I was able to go back out into the world, into the Intensive Care Unit, and really be there with, and for, those I loved.

Eight years later. My grandson is doing better than anyone could have imagined, considering the lifelong complications he faces. I won’t go into details, as those are sacred, private things that only he and his parents have the right to share. He is a most precious being, and such a teacher to us all. Life hasn’t been easy, but the peace comes when I don’t fight what is.

So, in the days leading up to this most amazing boy’s brother’s birth, I watched his parents prepare for the arrival. They were so excited and so courageous. The decision to have another child had been made with a great deal of conscious contemplation. The doctors all said the chances were good that this second child would be fine, yet they stressed there were no guarantees. There never was a definitive conclusion as to what had caused my first grandchild’s heart defect.

Early on a Tuesday morning in April, I sat in my grandson’s room as he slept. His mother and father were at the hospital, ready to give birth. My other daughter had just called to tell me that her sister was beginning to push, and that the baby, a boy as well, would be born at any time. As I waited, I sat again in prayer. For some unexplainable reason, I didn’t beg for all to be perfect, or just as I wanted it. I asked for all to be well. It’s not that I had somehow learned to be holy and accepting of all things difficult. I hadn’t, and haven’t. Yet, in this moment, when the chips were down, I was led back to the peace that defies description. I was led to open my heart to the eight-year old miracle sleeping in front of my eyes, to the miracle that he is.

As I sat in prayer, a presence, thick and deep, filled every atom of the bedroom. It filled every cell of my body. It was Grace, pure radiant Grace. It bathed us both in Its light. Grace stayed for the better part of what I believe to have been two minutes, although time left when Grace arrived.

I was pulled from this presence when my phone rang. It was my daughter calling to tell me her sister had givem bith to this new little boy. He had arrived and he was fine. His mother was fine. The birth was easy. All was well.

In this moment, I felt as if the weight of eight years had been lifted from my body. In this moment, there was such relief. In this moment, there was peace. Twelve hours later, when all was still well, I was holding this new little one in my arms, knowing that there is, indeed, Grace.

We can’t get to peace. We can’t get to Grace. Grace is always here. Grace is always holding us. It is when we let go of everything we demand of it, that we find ourselves filled with the peace of Grace that is beyond definition.

image attribution:   JamesH. is now Near Earth, Flicker
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattleye/ / CC BY 2.0

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For the Love of Music

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Bloom Project
Bloom Project

Today, in thinking about which ‘night out’ of 2009 was the best for Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, I realized just how much music has to do with enjoying an evening out for me. More than anything, I get so much pleasure from hearing live music, or dancing to music, or both. All three experiences that made it to my final selection revolved around music.

In the end, though, my choice came down to passion, love, creativity and synergy. I love passionate performances. I love creative expression and synergy between performers. And, I love it when musicians play from the love in their hearts.

My favorite night out this year contained all of these things. In an intimate live concert with Bloom Project, at a small church in Berkeley, I became a fan of improvised music. The October concert was an improvisational duet with pianist Thollem McDonas and saxaphonist, Rent Romus.

These two men are incredible musicians. They are so good at improvisation, that you feel both the synergy of musicians playing as if they have known each other their entire lives, and the flow that comes when perfromers are completely in the moment, perfectly attuned to each other’s next impulse.

Thollem McDonas
Thollem McDonas

Thollem is an amazing pianist, and he is my brother. He is actually my half-brother, as we have the same father, but different mothers. Life is funny. In 2008, both our mothers passed away. When you arrive at the home page of Thollem’s web site, you see a dedication to his mother, Geraldine. Gerry, as we knew her, was a pianist, too, as well as piano teacher who taught for decades. Thollem comes from piano genes, as my father plays as well.

What made this night so special was something less tangible than the incredible music. In listening to him play, I could feel something deeper and richer in his music than I had ever heard before in his concerts. As I sat listening, I was carried back to his mother’s memorial service in early January of this year, when Thollem played Clair de lune live, dedicating the song to his mother. In the five minutes or so that Thollem played that day, he poured out his heart into every note he played. Each note was filled with so much love for his mother. This love was present, again, in this evening concert.

As in most beautiful magical moments, something came together for me that night. Something so simple. I listened to the love for music that infuses Thollem’s notes and I felt his love for life, his love for his mother, and my love for him. This music itself was beautiful, and the experience was unforgettable.

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Female Creative Power

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“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~Jimi Hendrix

Jimi was pretty wise. Life is Love and Love is Life. There is no difference. The force that creates is love, it is life force, and it is nothing like the pretty picture we humans have been painted. It is powerful beyond measure, and it scares the hell out of us.

All we know of power in our minds is what we’ve been conditioned to believe. This conditioning is what we have been ‘taught’ by others, by their actions and how they have treated us. We, in turn, have ingested this conditioned worldview about what power is and the effects of power.

When I speak of power to women, of stepping into our power, of becoming more powerful, many women immediately resist the idea of owning their own power. When they speak of the reasons why, it is because they see power as a bad thing. They see power as something that oppresses, degrades, imprisons and destroys. They speak of the way power has been used in their lifetimes to maintain a status quo that keeps an elite group of people powerful, while denying vital life-sustaining resources to others. They cringe at the thought of being powerful if it means they must be like those they have witnessed wielding power.

For us to step into our power as women, we must look to something else to know what true power is, and that something is Life, a power that flows out from within.

When I think of life force, the first thing that comes to mind is a seedling growing out of the ground. Imagine what force it takes for the tiny seedling to push its way through the dirt, through everything that stands in its way of reaching the light. The force that fuels the seedling to reach for the sun is Life finding its way.

Life finding its way is power, power from within, power rising up out of the dark, the power of life exploding into existence.

If you look at the dictionary definitions, there are a ton of definitions for the word power. Words can only point to something, and when we try to use words with each other, more often than not what a word points to for me might be very (or even slightly) different for you. In addition, many words hold memories of our experiences that we attached to the word, and with a loaded word like power, this is especially true.

If we, as women, step into our power, we must first be wise and conscious of our intentions and of the source of our power. We could simply imitate what we’ve seen in this male-centric world, but then we would simply be creating more of what we already have.

Power over others, the way we have been conditioned to see power used, serves to sustain separation and suffering. Utilizing power to keep others powerless ultimately keeps us all powerless and separate. Just look at our world today. The world of human beings is filled with separation, loneliness, and violence. This is the kind of power that keeps many women from wanting to be powerful, or even believing they can be powerful.

Instead, let’s engage our wisdom to tap into what we instinctively and intuitively know about power. When we consciously look at what we know to be true in our experience, we bring this knowing into wisdom, and that sources generative power from within.

Women have been the power source and creative agents of the continuation of the human species from the beginning. Without a womb, humans would not exist.

I have had the glorious opportunity to witness the birth of two of my grandchildren. I have two daughters and they are both now mothers. To witness labor and birth is to witness true power, the power of Life giving birth to itself.

In labor, a woman surrenders to the powerful forces of Life finding its way into life, into light from out of the dark. If you have given birth or have witnessed it, you know what I mean. If the mother-to-be surrenders and works with the powerful forces that are working within her, Life will do what it does so well…bring the new baby into existence. If she struggles with the process, something we humans do on a daily basis, the process can be more painful, but the process continues anyway, in spite of her struggling.

Life force is always flowing, finding its way. If we don’t align with it, life still flows but we find it much more painful, in so many ways.

When we align with the force of life, we are no longer trying to resist our soul’s natural expression. This life force is our creativity. When we express it, without resistance, what we express is beautiful and powerful beyond measure.

This power frightens us because our rational mind is not in control of it. We want to control it but we can’t. When we try to control it by resisting it, we only make ourselves sick. Consider how painful childbirth could be if the mother-to-be actively resisted the baby coming into being.

The really important piece here is to learn to trust this power, this expression, this creative life force. To have faith in it is to surrender to the natural expression of power, a power that sustains all of life.

If you have never birthed a baby, please don’t listen to the cultural forces that tell you you’re not a mother, and you can’t be fulfilled without being a mother. When I use this example in courses I teach, it can be emotionally difficult for women who have not birthed a child. We, as women, must come to honor the fact that we are all mothers. Women can birth so much more than babies, and we do it all the time. We can mother more than just our own physical babies, and the ability to truly love all of life unconditionally is the power that flows out from within.

I have used the example of childbirth purposely here, because women’s bodies know this process. A woman’s body, regardless of whether or not she ever physically gives birth to a child, contains the intelligent substance and process to create and grow new life and to bring it into being. This powerful process is completely mysterious to our rational minds. Our minds will never figure out how this works…hence the mystery. But, when we honor our bodies, and the intelligent mystery within, we align with the life force that engages this mysterious creative process inherently available to women.

Knowing this and experiencing it within brings wisdom, wisdom that is needed NOW.

By aligning with the power within, by this mysterious life force that is our creativity, we are capable of growing and birthing that which wants to be created, that life force that is finding its way. This is the power we must step into as women. This is the power of life-sustaining creativity. It’s generative in that it supports life, nurtures the mystery that is life, that is love, that is the most powerful force because it is existence itself.

Can you imagine how things might shift if we realized this power within that is yearning to flow out into the world?

Can you imagine what might be created if we held all the world in the center of our hearts, hearts that are aligned with this creativity?

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Letting Go and Letting In

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Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my Mother’s death.  It’s so hard to believe it’s been one year. I remember I couldn’t write for a while after she died. It was as if things needed to settle inside me. No, settle isn’t quite right. Things needed to move around, push their way out, burrow deep inside, get all mixed around, catywampus-sideways…everything just had to be left alone to be inside me. One thing I have become all-too-familiar with is the need for grief to be welcomed and befriended. It is an intelligent process, grief. I have experienced that when you open to it, don’t rush it, don’t fight it, even befriend it by giving in to it and entering the darkness of it with trust, it will move you, it will shake you, it will bring you somewhere out the other side of the darkness, somewhere new that you never expected.

Mom’s death was a lesson in letting go on so many levels. Letting go of my longing for her to be cured of her cancer, letting go of her being open to talking about her death, letting go of being able to say good-bye in the way I wanted to, letting go of wanting to be by her side at the moment she passed, letting go of all the things I thought I still needed from her as my mother. One big-time letting go.

And now it’s one year later. I find I am still letting go. I am letting go of our culture’s taboo on discussing death and sharing grief. I am letting go of the expectations that we are only supposed to grieve for a set period of time and then if we don’t move on we’re ‘not normal’. I’m letting go of the culture’s obsession with the objectification of a woman’s body, as if it existed solely for sexual gratification. And, I am letting go of the societal voices that ‘honor’ mothers on the surface, and treat mothers with disdain and women with second-class status.

As I wrote in a post last year, as my mother died, I felt a deep painful tearing in my body, right at the core. It felt as though my connection with my mother (the most primal connection I had) was being severed as she prepared to die. The pain seared in my core, down deep at the base of my body. It was as if I could feel her leaving by way of the pain in my own body.

Then, after she died, I sat with her body for a long time. I felt awe in the presence of her body, the body that nourished me and delivered me into this world. I felt gratitude for all she did in her life to provide for me, to keep me safe, to usher me into adulthood. I felt compassion for her foibles and humanness, a humanness that I had once expected to be perfection. Yet, there in the moments following her death, I was captivated by the ephemeral nature of this imperfect humanness for I knew, with her life force no longer there, her body was already beginning its way to non-existence.

Over this past year, I have come to know a strong connection between my mother and my own body. This connection lies at the heart of being human. We are fed by our mother, both inside her and once we are born. Her body is the vessel that holds us as we grow from being a few cells to a baby big enough to make our way into the world. She sustains us. During this time in the womb, she is all that we know.

This connection is primal. It is a connection to more than just mother. It’s a connection to the Universal Mother and to the Earth. This Earth is the vessel that sustains us as we move throughout our life. She provides for us. She nourishes us. While life can be harsh, without the Earth, we would not be.

We lose our connection because we are conditioned to believe we must let go of mother to be strong, independent individuals in our western culture. We also learn to blame mother for most everything that wasn’t right in our childhood. Mothers take the brunt of blame. Mothers are taken for granted. Mothers learn to internalize this blame.

It’s not about believing that mothers can do no wrong. Rather, despite the ways in which you don’t see eye-to-eye with mom, and regardless of whatever story you tell about your mother, can you find and feel your heart’s deepest gratitude to your mother for carrying you and birthing you? Because, that Mother, the mother that nourished and sustained you, is the same Mother that sustains all of life. The substance that fuels a mother’s capacity to nourish a baby into existence is the same substance that fuels all of existence.

What conscious grieving of my mother’s death has taught me is the profound, yet basic connection between awe and gratitude for my mother and the gift of life she gave me. It has strengthened my connection to my own body and to the Earth, and to all of life. And, it has brought me to the wisdom that comes from knowing this same substance is within me as a woman.

This substance allows for a beautiful and mysterious connection between women. We don’t have to be mothers to know this connection. It just is. This substance connects us with the Earth, with nature, and with the sacredness of life itself.

I don’t know what sharing this with you will bring, I only know that now knowing this has awakened reverence and awe for my mother, my daughters, my sisters, my nieces, and all women; my grandchildren and all children; my father, my partner Jeff, my sons-in-law, my nephews, and all men; and all of life. That’s been the gift for me that lies in knowing the fullness of my mother’s humanness, as well as the sacred nature of her female creativity.

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The Original Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870

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Julia Ward Howe

To all women, to all men, and to all of Life, I offer you the original Mother’s Day proclamation of 1870 by Julia Ward Howe. Read it and let is wash over you. Take it in and see what comes from it.

I shared this on Facebook, and received many wonderful responses. One response was from my Aunt, a strong vibrant woman. She recognized her own voice in Howe’s and could see this voice in all women; and, she also feels gratitude for all the men in her life that have served when called.

I mention this because I feel both are true. Neither sentiment negates the other. We live in a world of paradox. While we can hold firmly to the knowing that we can have a world in which peace truly exists, we also can honor those who have fought for freedom and justice. There is only one answer to it all – Love, unconditional love.

Sometimes that love is soft, sometimes it is fierce, but hopefully we can all find a way to the love that is unconditional, for all that is, for all of life, for the depth and breadth of how Life reveals itself. If it is all One, then Love means to love it all, unconditionally, while allowing your own being to move towards that which you know from deep within your self is True in every cell of your being.
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

thanks to Jonathan Klate, of Amherst, MA, for sharing this.

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How DO you treat your Mother?

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“How different it would be if we looked at the earth as our mother. Do you treat the planet with the same love, care, respect and honor that you treat your mother?”— Peter Walsh, from his Oprah Radio show

I came across this quote yesterday and it stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been thinking a great deal about the atrocities that are committed to women and girls every day all over the world and realizing that women are the recipients of the things we hold in the darkest part of our shadow complex.

How many people really do treat their mother with love, care, respect and honor? How many of us treat the role of mother with respect and honor? How many of us treat the female body with care and respect?

I don’t doubt for a moment that Peter Walsh loves his mother and this really isn’t about him. I think most of us love our mother, but do we even for a moment really know what it means to love our mother? Do we dare to look deeper at how we treat her, how we hold her and how much we respect the sacredness of the female body and its ability to bring life into life? I feel the real question is not how we treat our mother, something we pay homage to on Mother’s Day, or the glorified Madonna archetype that many times carries with it the corresponding archetype of whore.

The real question is how to we treat the physical manifestation of Mother, the female body and her ability to support and nurture life into being? How do we treat women and their bodies? Do we honor the female body with love and respect? Do we care for female bodies? Do you care for your own? Do you respect the sacredness and the divinity that it is? And, do we respect all bodies, those of men and boys as well?

For the correspondence between one’s Mother and the planet is about the life-giving ability that women offer. Our planet is alive. The Mother is all of matter. Everything that is alive is the Mother. It is all sacred. We are all sacred.

When we no longer see a distinction between all living things, and we honor all of life, then maybe we’ll wake up to Life as it truly is, not as something to rape and use to satisfy our insatiable appetite for more and more. Look around you and see how we treat the female body.

Look into your own experience with open eyes, but more importantly an open heart. What would it be to love, with all your heart, your mother, yourself, your body, the Earth and all of Life?

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