As a person that lives and breathes self discovery, self management and self leadership (in other words, healing and actualization), I have been in the place many times where I have smacked my head and said, “I thought I already dealt with this issue!” 25 years of intentional integration process is long enough to know that it doesn’t work like that. I find that healing happens in layers, just in perfect timing and process so that I can assimilate the work and not overwhelm my system with too much change to handle. I know now that an issue will cycle around again, but I will go deeper into it, making my way to the core.
And so it was when I started working on the mother wound again recently. I’d been told a couple of years ago by a trusted medicine woman (yes, all of us healer-types need others to reflect to us and assist us-how hypocritical would that be to help people and not seek help for myself?) that I had pre-birth work to do. Starting at my 2nd month in utero, perhaps when it was confirmed she was pregnant, my biological mother was thinking thoughts about whether she wanted me or not. In the environment of the womb that ranged from ambivalence to actively wanting to expel me, my cells formed with an understanding that I was coming into an unsafe place, one that wanted to harm me. My molecules carried a message of protection, and, armoring myself, I came into the world anyway. My anger that I was not wanted helped to form my spine, my organs, my tissue. It was how I survived.
And this protective stance also made me strong enough to live through all that happened after I emerged from that womb. What was perceived as independence and stubbornness was actually a survival attitude that bore me through until it was safe to start to examine why I felt that way. I began my healing when I met my life mate, whose love created a container for me to unravel the knots that I’d tied myself in for reasons I have already written extensively about. I feel confident that I would not have had the courage to heal myself if I had not experienced the kind of unconditional love he provided for me. I know from experience that love changes everything.
This latest round of mother work was initiated those couple of years ago with the understanding that there was pre-birth processing to do, and has recently been intensified in a breast anomaly that required multiple diagnostic tests, including a biopsy. The anger at my mother that formed my tissues and helped me survive was now providing a window into my mortality. Time to let it go. The anger had been such an integral aspect of my body that I didn’t recognize it as a threat;
truly, it was the essence of this body and therefore under my radar. Thankfully, my inner guidance brought it to my attention early one morning a few weeks ago when I felt the consistent uncomfortable pressure in my left breast. I made time right away to have it checked out as well as to go inward for information.
The resulting process has been miraculous. Not only have I worked with the anger, grief and betrayal feelings at a deeper level by expressing it safely and responsibly, but I have released the anger as a way of surviving. By shifting my focus from the mother who didn’t have the capacity to nurture me to the Great Mother who can mother me exquisitely in just the ways I need, it takes all the pressure off of my biological mother. She’s off the hook. She can’t be want I want her to be, and I’m okay with that. I have the best Mother that I could ever desire in the Great Womb that I come from and am immersed in every day of my life. The Divine Feminine has always been with me; it took this crisis to receive Her love at a bodily level.
I have changed mothers.
I began my search for home early in this life, when She was my home, all along. I’m so grateful for the perspective shift that I was offered.
