All Mothers Do

I loved her wildly. How could I not?! She birthed me. Raised me. Gave me breath, body, womb and life. She was THE ONE I wanted to shower my love upon more than anyone else.

And each time I connected to her from that vulnerable place so far down in my heart, I felt unlovability. It was a sensation so murky, dense and pervasive. It caused me to pull back, quick and fast, in to myself. Like a wild animal that hears a predator pacing nearby and darts for cover. My life depended on disconnection from my source of nurturance.

My life depended on disconnection from my source of nurturance.

Eventually I couldn’t see Unlovability as separate from myself. It wound its way deep into my blood and inside my bones. It sat smack-dab in the center of my brain. The relationships that wreck havoc on our heart provide a doorway to our liberation.

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The relationships that wreck havoc on our heart provide a doorway to our liberation.

I was small. The youngest of 4 girls. Each day when my elder sisters went to school, I ventured to woodsy hillsides across from our house. I’d speak to trees, plants and creatures there. Here was a place I connected to something more than the dense unlovability I found swirling inside. Here I found a Mother yearning for me in a way I yearned for Her.

It wasn’t that my mother didn’t love me. I know she did. All mothers do.

All mothers do.

Yet every time I went to connect to her, I connected to how she felt about herself. And how her mother felt before her. And her mother before her. And before her. And before her. I was a child, naïve to ways of distinction.

All that my mother was… was me. Passed down through my blood. Her unloved parts became my breath and body. Her self-loathing encircled me and became the flesh of my organs.

Women of her generation barely had begun to talk of this thing called self-love. And it hadn’t made its way in to the life of a homemaker encircled by country farm folk. So she carried the internal disgust of the Feminine deep within. And quietly passed it on. Quietly passed it on. She quietly passed it on. Neither of us knowing.

But I’d come face-to-face with it. I'd have to. I’d stare straight inside the lion’s mouth, looking down its throat to decide, “Now what the hell am I going to DO with you?!” “Is this a priceless gift or a wretched burden?” “Is it an important part of me or something I can righteously discard?”

It’s the relationships that wreck havoc on our heart that provide a doorway to our liberation. My mother loved me. All mothers do.

So I embraced this density. And the murk. And unlovability.
How it made my stomach churn. My brain ache.
And I went to the woods and talked to the trees. I asked the creatures how they moved, breathed and related. I let myself yearn for the Mother as I inhaled unimaginable yearning for the most wretched inside me.

This mess of my heart. The congestion in my womb. The layers, ties and binds of my dependency… on my mother, on life, on our love. It swirled inside. And I let it. I let it.

I let it ALL THE WAY in.

Unlovability became my doorway home. Because you have to face all that you hate to truly love all that you love.

You HAVE to face all that you hate to truly love all that you love.

I hated that my mother couldn’t love me. I hated that I couldn’t love her.
Because I longed to love myself.

And oh how this morphed into a holy hell of an initiation! One we all go through to discover we are the Mother… THE MOTHER of our lives!! We’re the ones to embrace all that came before. To devour it with our own impassioned conviction to heal, to live, to love it ALL.

So I let myself become the one I wanted to shower my love upon more than anyone else. What my mother never loved within her was my gift to love within me. It was the re-connective mesh that brought all parts together that’d been discredited. That the world had denied. All this stuff that had once been labeled and seen as a burden... within me it became known as freedom.

The parts of me I wished I had never adopted suddenly became ones I couldn’t live without. I savored them as their juices dripped down my chin. These were my treasures… my deepest nourishment. The pure gold.

These dense murky waters took me further down in to the pain of my soul. It showed me how to cradle myself. Here was a soft place for unlovability to land. Here was a tender place that held my mother as a little girl alongside the girl who ventured into woods to discover a yearning that would hold us both. That would hold it all.

It’s a memory I hold from as small as I can remember.

Reconnecting to a MotherLove that cradles me so I can love the world within. It’s all of life I want to shower my love upon more than anything else.

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I'm heading back to my MotherLand this Spring. Join me on The Feminine Creation Tour!
Event details here.