Giving birth is the most primal experience we women get to undergo, and this is not only about birthing human beings. Yes our bodies amazingly birth children, but also creations of ideas and dreams, hopes and passions.
The "Mother" part of us is the time in our lives represented by fertile manifestations and the nurturing compassionate female that cares about the world and all its living inhabitants.
You do not have to be called "mom" to transform into this stage.
Any woman is capable of this transition from Maiden to Mother and all of us experience it at different ages.
I did not have my first child until I was 36 years old. My daughter Sierra was born after laboring for almost 4 days, 90 hours to be exact. Contractions were a consistent 15 minutes apart up until the very few hours just before she took her first breath of air. My midwife had began to get a bit anxious due to the length of labor, and when she told me we may have to go to the hospital, I finally let go.
I let go and finally... full dilation.
This raw primal voice originating from the deepest depths of my being emerged like a lioness roaring in the darkest of nights. I'd never heard such sound before, let alone it was emanating from me.
I embraced this sound as I allowed its vibration to travel through my entire body encouraging my female counterpart to move through and out of me. Every so often I would stop and ask my midwife if it was ok that I was roaring, (the maiden in me still needed permission).
She verbally encouraged me to continue, as I telepathically encouraged my daughter to move forward through her birth path. With 40 minutes of pushing, Sierra entered this realm and we both were spent.
The next few months were not all butterflies and rainbows for our home as it appears it is for other households. My husband and I did not know who we were along with who each other were, and our daughter was trying to navigate in a new and noisy world of sleeping, feeding and being human.
My postpartum was something I would never wish on anyone. Thank goodness for my husband being an Herbalist, because herbs saved me. I went through bottles of herbal tinctures like water for about a year and a half.
Looking back now on almost 5 years, my labor and transformation into motherhood
over these years is so symbolic for me.
Not only was I birthing my daughter, I was birthing a new woman deep within myself whom I had never met. I was stripping off my "known" identity for a woman I didn't know I was to become.
No woman wants to admit out loud that she is struggling as a new mom. But the struggle is real.
Its real because you are no longer the same person you've known yourself to be.
Some women may choose not to call it a struggle necessarily, but call it what you will. For me, it was a struggle at 36 years old, already set in my ways.
No woman wants to say out loud that "I miss my old life of independence."
Why?
- Fear of being judged
- Fear of sounding like an ungrateful mother
- Fear of her friends thinking she is unfit
- Fear. Fear. Fear.
Women are hard on themselves, and unfortunately hard on other women, and it makes it worse when our ego gets in the way.
We women are told "BE STRONG" from a very young age but guess what... The strength we think they mean is not that strength at all.
To "BE STRONG" means this...
- have courage to ask for help
- be truthful with your feelings
- be patient with your new emerging identity
- be compassionate with yourself
- don't feel "less than" when you need to call upon your support system of friends and family
- DO NOT DO IT ALL ON YOUR OWN
The most amazing transformations accompany excruciating pain just before the beauty is revealed.
I am no longer the symbolic maiden, the inexperienced and insecure female I was before. That part of me has been stripped away.
As the wound is healed after the scab falls away, the new skin is actually likely to be much stronger than it was before the wound.
So too is your new identity.
Becoming a mother to a daughter, caused the shadow side of my thoughts
to be exposed by the light of her.
I am no longer bothered by my egoic self talk judging the number on the scale or criticizing parts of my body, but instead focus more on the health of my body and the brightness of my smile. I don't allow room in my mind to worry about what others think of me, and find more importance in self care and how I view myself.
I am my daughter's role model.
It is up to me to show her the way of the Divine Feminine.
If you choose to read through this again, you'll see I could very well be describing an experience of spiritual growth or growing a spiritual business versus describing the birth of my daughter.
Its like this...
We have a thought in our mind. That thought, if strong enough, implants itself into our heart where it becomes a burning desire of creation. That burning desire grows the more you nurture it, feed it, and send loving energy to it. That thought that has now grown into this burning desire becomes a creation of you ready for manifesting. When it's ready and you are ready, you birth that creation into physical manifestation.
During the journey of the idea from the mind into the heart, well that seems the easy part.
It's once the thought implants itself into the heart that the real journey of growth begins. Once that burning desire ignites in the heart, it needs time to grow. There are lots of things to figure out, some of which we don't even recognize yet.
It can become exhausting allowing this idea to grow.
At times we feel like we want it to be over or that maybe we wish we didn't even have the idea, for the struggle is becoming too much.
Just as the idea gets to the point of breakdown, it's ready to be birthed by you.
That birthing process is long and hard, and the struggle is real and so difficult.
Just when you think you can't give anymore, just when you are spent beyond exhaustion, out comes your physical manifestation!
Then a new journey begins and you learn how to be this new "you" who created your thought, your burning desire into physical form.
Its a new journey of learning how to juggle yourself around this creation, and understanding where everything needs to fit in.
You see, even if you are not called "Mother" you are already one to your life.
You are "giving birth" all the time.
So I ask you this... Have you already or are you currently experiencing the rising of the Mother archetype?
Embrace yourself.
Nurture yourself.
Be fearless and Be Strong in the way we now understand strength to be.
Be the very representation of the Divine Feminine of the world, and for our daughters of the world.