I wonder sometimes…Will we ever feel that ease and comfort with other women when we have been so hurt by the one from whence we came? Can we find a way to make peace with her flawed nature as we do our own (but not feel we must save her, or sacrifice our own well being in order to be in relationship)? Will we heal ourselves and find our way authentically in the world of women? It is an ongoing process for me.

Thinking very much about where to go with Claire and the Dark Mother after my latest post. I’m starting to have her visions, and so will write them. Oh I love you Licia, sweet inspiration with a darkened breath has come from you. I revel in it.

What I think we need to realize is that it isn’t our job to heal these crazed women. (Sorry for the judgment!) We are so accustomed to want to ‘fix it all’, from our dysfunctional backgrounds that we have a hard time recognizing that it isn’t our responsibility to heal these women. That has been a huge empowerment piece for me this year.

They may choose. So do I!! I’m getting clearer, healthier and more empowered by the day!! GODDESS, it feel FANTASTIC to nurture and accept myself, giving myself as much love as I can!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU DE~LICIA AND FRIENDS!

BLESSINGS,
Gina

I decided to cut ties with my mother(?)some years ago. She was abusive towards me both emotinally and physically. Even to this day, she has never apologised for the way she treated me, and more or less told me to get over it.

I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but I will give a little background information about my relationship with her.

I am the eldest of eight, and was treated as a proxy adult. From a VERY young age I had to take on the tasks and responsabilities she should have automatically as a parent and adult, and my mostly absent father. I was never shown/given any love or affection from her unless when in company. At the age of nine when I asked her why she kept having more children when my father was hardly ever around, I was slapped hard across the face, so hard infact, I couldn’t hear for a couple of hours afterwards -I still have hearing problems in one ear- and was called a trouble making bitch! She screamed this in my face!

Years on, she started to criticize me in front of my daughter, or would make unpleasant comments about me when she was around and I decided enough was enough!

I do not want my daughter thinking you put up with that type of behaviour from people, just because you happen to be related to them. I make sure that every single day and several times a day, she hears me say the three most important words a mother can say, and mean, to her child….I LOVE YOU….

It wasn’t easy at first, to walk away, but I had to. Now, three years later, despite still feeling hurt from time to time, I find it aches it a little less. I can go for longer without thinking about her and her abuse. The feelings and memories of course will never go away. But I feel a sense of relief and as if a weight has been lifted.

My family continue to be dysfunctional, squabbling and game playing amongst themselves. I am the only one that has had a child, and who is in a long term relationship. I have one sister, who like me broke away from home in her early teens, who is close to me and who I have regular contact with. She is now leaving the country as she knows I plan to. But through her, I know that my mother(?) still plays games with people and I am so pleased I walked away!

Siân.x

I choose these words …
“the strength to break unwanted cycles and claim our life as our own.”

When you come face to face with Amma, even just for those few moments in an individual blessing, she is completely focused on you. You bring her your problems, whatever it takes. She’s mothered me spiritually, but also surprisingly literally and in the pragmatic realm. She’s never let me down, and so I will always consider myself a daughter of the Goddess incarnate in She.

There is a level of spiritual *healing* in her touch, as well, that goes beyond the obvious, and is a big part of why I’m able to navigate this world, this city, this job, my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve no plans to don a Sari and go scampering into the Eastern World. I am very anchored here in the West, and couldn’t bear giving up television … But still, when we take what we want from the experience, and leave the rest for those who prefer it, it is quite rewarding, healing, and cleansing.

What a wonderful string, Licia. We should talk on the phone, don’t you think?

Love,
D~

I hear you about your mom…my mother is still an active alcoholic (and chose to remarry my father after 25 or so years divorced). SO the door to relationship with her was slammed in my face, despite years of trying to work with her to heal, to get her to listen, to get her to therapy. She doesn’t want to go there with me.

I feel sad, too…and I know there is a part of me that is missing. I do the best I can with Great Mother (which I will write some more about here); I feel that there may not be a physical woman in this world that can mother me the way I need to be mothered…but I could be projecting.

Most of my earlier friendships and some relationships were based on that need, and so consequently I became like an “emotional begger” always scrabbling for the tiny scraps of attention left by others, small morsels of often spoiled emotional loam left aside or dropped unintentionally. I often wonder if I ended up with the life I got because it was my time to realize the Goddess, or did I realize the Goddess because of my life, you know? What came first? And I am only too accutely aware that the tiniest difference in my decisions could’ve led to a life that was very much like my mother’s –> I could’ve become her.

One thing she did give me is a set of brass ones, if you know what I mean. And so I’ve never lacked for nerve in reaching for what I want, which ironically, led me to the Goddess also, and led me to my life as it is now, which fits me much better than the one my mother led in her day. I went through a period of shedding old relationships that no longer fit, like skin, and because I was deeply invested in them emotionally, the shedding was painful and long.

Subsequently, however, and like you, I don’t have much room for my biological mother in my heart. It’s like she is a stranger or someone who was mean to me when I was little, someone who left me unprotected and exposed to great dangers again and again. As I grew, I had to turn away from her because she knew no other way, and I grew into my worthiness and found self-respect. It makes me sad, but mostly because she’s getting old quickly (concrete around the heart will do that), and I worry about who will be there for her when she is infirm. I spent a lot of time in a convalescent home with my grandmother, and if my mother ends up in one, she’ll want friends, for certain.

Yes, it’s like we signed up for the same course, isn’t it?

Love,
D~