“I have come to realise that my most potent and powerful guide and inspiration, is my inner child, the felt memory of who I was when I was younger and the closest to my soul I have ever been, a time before all the taming and concrete poured on top of me, a time when my wild spoke to me like the birds speak to the plants or the soil to the seed.” ~ Brigit Anna McNeill
When I am very still, I feel the rock beneath my feet. I hear the rushing of the rapids. The smell of spring sunshine dancing on the river’s wake, shining in green eddies and whirling rock pools, where tadpoles flutter and wet reeds grow.
When I am very still, I hear my mother’s voice calling me and I know every stone to hop on, which rocks are wiggly and which ones can slip, to run to her arms. My legs are strong and young and nimble. My toes are able to grasp hold and bend. My arms are outstretched like an eagle, wiggling fingers in the cool spring air.
Quick! across a fallen log.
Splash! into the little puddle.
Beware of dark places where the crayfish hide.
Having grown up as a wild child among the rocks and waters of Minden, Ontario, when I connect to that deepest, most sacred centre of my inner being, I can always hear the rushing rapids. I was on my own in the wilderness often, but I rarely felt alone. I was able to see and feel nature all around. I was not separate from my natural world, I was a part of it, a unique dancer and faery glen tender who created offerings of twigs and spring flowers and danced in dandelion crowns.
Mothering my daughter has been a practice to reclaim the freedom and joy that I felt as a little girl playing in that wild river, to gift the river’s teachings forward, so she may know the beauty of the wild places, and understand she is part of something so much grander and more complex, so gentle in its medicine yet healing in its wisdom, that she trusts the renewing life cycles of nature, and finds her place as a woman.
Finding place as a woman in this world can be difficult. We are deeply feeling, thinking beings, creative and sensitive and different and nuanced. We are mothers to men, to animals, to children. We are mothers to nature in our gardens and greenhouses. We are mothers to ourselves, in our quiet moments when our inner child weeps. Some woman have grown up with no mother to guide them, no singular traditions or wedding rings to carry forth, forging womanhood through fire and brimstone, a silent struggle that strengthens force of character; a ha, the will to live.
Some women are married, some are not. Some are married and lonely. Some are single and, rarely lonely. Some have lots of friends, some only a few. We get paid less, work harder, work longer, and shoulder the responsibility of nurturance in society,
Today, I acknowledge and thank all women for coming to hold the light at this time. It is not for the faint of heart to bear witness to the suffering on the planet, the suffering of nature, to hear other mother’s tears in times of war: it is affecting.
Our greatest challenge is to open our hearts instead of hardening to the pain.
In the face of brutality, we must mother ourselves, and weep and feel and connect and talk, and empower our daughters to weep and feel and connect and talk.
Feeling is our super-power.
Happy Mother’s Day to all women, everywhere.
May we continue to nurture the light.
Such a beautiful heartfelt post. Thank you! ❤️
A gift to one and all. Thank you, from one mother to another.