Motherhood

The Visitation by Gerónimo Antonio de Ezquerra  

Dream journal notes:

I am in the early stages of being pregnant but I don’t think I’ve realized it yet. Someone says that my stomach is round, that a child grows within me. I look down, surprised to see that it is so. As I gaze up, a woman is standing beside me, she is much farther along in her pregnancy. Our eyes meet as the dream ends…

For four long years I have been under the influence of the mother archetype. She has stalked my dreams and appeared within my body, forcing a reckoning that I never anticipated. It began to underlie the foundations of my inner work, reframing how I interacted with themes of creation and destruction, nurturance, embodiment, relating, and feminine mysteries.

The Great Mother reached her arm back in time, tracing lines of experience, teaching me new lessons, reconciling what I thought was finished…

When did I become so rigid in my body? I used to move freely as a child, gazing into mirrored surfaces to dance with my own reflection, feeling the rhythm of the music as my limbs flowed with ease. I ran and played, sang and jumped, we were one. Years of disconnection made me harsh towards this vessel. Uninhabited, abandoned, I treated it harshly through restriction or indulgence. How much anguish did I feel at the intensity of discomfort? I wanted nothing to do with this body of mine.

But the Great Mother came with her healing balm, calling me back with nature’s offerings. I dug my feet into the earth, worked my muscles up mountains and trails, sat in the darkness of an eclipsed moon, mingled tears with raindrops as lightning struck overhead. I began to find intention, aligning breath with movement, purifying sweat tracing lines from head to toe. I kneaded dough with bare hands, ate of the bread I baked, the food I had grown. In moments of joy or sadness I’d pause, drop into my body, and meet the experience overflowing like rushing rivers. I was finally coming home.

From where did I learn to fear connection? I recall deep belly laughter, cousins hand in hand, my grandmother telling stories of her homeland. I linked arms with friends in the schoolyard, chased fireflies at twilight with my siblings. But warring family factions, years of instability, and unchecked relational tension eroded a sense of safety. I retreated into myself, kept others at a distance, would reach out and then run away at first fright.

But the Great Mother revealed that sometimes we plant seeds and sometimes we rip things up from the root. I felt empowered to hold firm boundaries, discerning where to give and when to take away. I began to speak with clarity, uncovering long lost needs and shadows of tender yearnings. I found softness, easing into the arms of a lover with total surrender, feeling the intensity of emotion as it cycled uninhibited. I was alive with the energy of connection and at times reeling from the loss of ones I cherished. I was learning what life/death mysteries truly were.

How did the chain of mothers become broken? I stood amongst the matriarchs of my family, learning how to cook with instinct. Heads bowed, I prayed with my grandma. My fingers ached as I strummed upon my mother’s guitar and sang her favorite songs. Shadows grew darker. I cried tears as I stood at the casket of the grandma who helped raised me. I shed tears for the one who died long before my birth and the pain that left upon our family. I longed for sisterhood, to walk the path of maturation together, but was excluded. I was left adrift. One by one, these figures slipped away, till they were barely a memory.

But the Great Mother showed me that these elements are eternal — they are my birthright, my psychic heritage. Even when something ruptures on the personal layer I can find Grandmother, Mother, Sister within. I swam in imaginal pools of bottomless waters, visited crones and kindred youths who told me what steps to take. I met a chthonic force, saw the fire in her eyes and heard her piercing scream; she gifted me vitality and honed my strength. Each star in the psychological constellation lit up and I felt held as never before. It gave rise to empathy and understanding. I was finding my place in the matrix of creation.

Mother and Child by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

I was approximately one week past conception when I had the dream noted above. I awoke, the visitation fresh in mind. Could I be with child? Had the Great Mother come once again to reveal something unknown yet deeply important? There was little doubt in mind, a sort of knowing settled in. I felt the unbroken link within my hands — a circle of mothers extending out from me to the very beginning of my line. I was now a part of its story.

New life blossomed within and the long road I had been walking, its purpose, was clear. Each lesson from the archetypal Great Mother was a chance for me to nurture and heal, to truly connect to all parts of my being, to understand how to hold myself before I could truly hold another. Her confrontations were unrelenting and I learned that bearing the torch is more than just a mere passing of hands, but an opportunity to shape the vessel that links us through time and spirit.

As I write this, my daughter nestled in my arms, I sense the bond like a waterfall of emotion, thrumming through my body in a powerful stream. I look at her in awe, a being constructed of my body, me and yet not me. What is her role in this grand weaving of fate? Who will she become? What will she teach me?

I bow to the forces that brought me here. I am humbled yet emboldened, transformed and somehow just the same. A threshold has been passed and I am tasked to continue this thread; pieces of me, pieces of her, pieces of all who came before and all who will come after.