*Re-Feeding (part I)

Singing to the Mother Wound (an honoring on the heals of Mother's Day)

~When I was 11 my mother fell scary ill. She was writhing on the couch in pain, my three younger brothers were crumpled in fear, one was literally hiding under a blanket, and my father slammed a door in my face when I went to him crying to help her.

She has not risen out of the underworld of severe illness since. She has been mishandled, misdiagnosed, mislead, endured two rounds of aggressive breast cancer, has been labeled with every diagnosis in the realm of “chronic” disease, suffered a life threatening vaccine injury on top of her vulnerabilities and has been without a nourishing and stable home since I was a young teen.

The hurt parts of me hated her for years for being weak, for not being there for me, for acting subordinate to my father and others, for not getting better, for not listening to me, for making (what I deemed to be) horrible choices for herself that did not honor the woman I know her to be, the woman I wanted her to be.

Yet, since that day she hit the couch, really since the womb, I have been trying to heal her by carrying her pain, constantly feeling into her body, absorbing her story, replaying our painful dance as mother and daughter. I could not have a conversation about my life without “my mother is sick” flying out of my mouth within the first two sentences.

My entire experience of mother, this story of pain burdening my every cell, kept me from accessing the truth, medicine and unconditional Love of Mother at the center of those cells. This blocked the compassion and wisdom needed to see my mother in her truth.

I have spent my life simultaneously rejecting and crying out for Mother- which left me starving. I longed to climb into her arms and cry my heart out, while wishing at times she would just die so I wouldn’t have to live with the anxiety of losing her at any moment to the horror story I kept running through my heart and mind. Until I dug up the root of this conflict within me, I could not heal because I could not feed the scared and starving parts properly.

The enigma is that my mother’s story, as painful as it is to watch someone, not just any someone, I love suffer, so much so that I hurt myself for decades to numb the rage and the pain, is largely what landed me at the feet of the Divine and sent me into jungles, deserts, sacred valleys and temples to pray for guidance.

The wound was also my medicine. My mother was also my healer, as Mother is. This revelation spurred a generational healing in my DNA that will continue to expand.

Walking myself back to the Mother source and unraveling the attachments to all that is not Mother, including to my own birth mother, is why I came to Earth. It is the reason I am here in this body, with this exact family constellation that I chose.

I have come to understand why I chose her womb of all wombs. I want her to know that even though she grieves what she couldn’t give me- she gave me God. There is no greater gift. I bow to the weavers.

I have missed my mother Renee (means rebirth, to be reborn primarily by holy baptism, and my legal middle name) every day of my life. I almost burned myself up in the insanity of grieving someone while they are still alive; grieving what can never die. I was gravely lost in some story of what could have been and all of the loss, rather than loving what is and navigating my life from that position.

There is no one like her with her fierce spirit, her tender and devotional heart, her precious, untended and misguided innocence that so many have taken advantage of, her beautiful olive skin and deep brown eyes, her ingenuity, love of the wild and dream of living off grid in Alaska with a fishing pole, her crazy smart brain (I know my mama could have been the world’s leading holistic neuroscientist), resourcefulness, beauty making and selflessness. The level of giftedness is ridiculous.

My mama is a saint. Really. She doesn’t see it through all the trauma that blinds her, but the marks of God are all over that woman.

You made me dinner
I could sense your nervousness
that I might taste the fear
that you forgot how to feed me properly

A bright colored table cloth
once a shower curtain-
you see purpose and beauty 
where others do not

Can you repurpose yourself
with the same love?

I have not met anyone who, like you
can be handed sticks and stones
be left bereft and alone
only to build yourself a castle 
and make friends with all the animals

But you are a woman after all

Remember you fill all the empty bellies
only when you let yourself be fed,
then that table you dream of
to gather your children’s hungry mouths
will never be empty.

Although I honor, fully trust and accept her path, I still pray for her recovery in this life- one decade of freedom please for my mama because she is a goldmine of love and wisdom in a world that needs both!. And although she suffers, I no longer say she is sick, because she is not. And there is sickness.

This last year I was finally able to hand my mother over to the feet of Mother Goddess in a ritual act in India. Just about broke this body. We don’t understand how deep these ties bind us up until they begin to unravel. We also don’t understand just what we are made of until they do.

I let go of her life needing to be any other than it was. My mother is also a daughter of the Divine and therefore her life is between her and her Creator.

In order to release that story of pain I had to face the True story of my being, which initiated an ego transformation. Instead of trying to heal her, an act of the naive child, I realized that owning the truth of us, of me, of all of us, and walking in that extraordinary, inviolable beauty is how I “heal” her.

For the first time in my life I began to feed, or what I call re-feed, myself and heal the many parts of me undernourished by imposters, pain and false narratives about the power of Mother. This was beyond food, and very much included everything I ingested physically.

I must trust in Mother to re-feed myself, to receive in a way that satiates me and pulls back my hand from reaching for poison. This means taking great leaps of faith into the void of surrender where I often face plant on a ledge, barely hanging on, crying for help and flailing in fear- like a little pink bodied fledgling. No matter how many times I fall short, I am lifted and compassionately given another chance-

Jai Maa!

NOTHING exists or moves without Mother. There is not one iota of life anywhere on this planet that is not made of Mother. How we honor the mothers, our Mother, is we start re-feeding ourselves like we know what we are made of, like we are grateful for our lives.

If the story is that Mother, therefore the feminine, is sick, weak, powerless and too wild to be trusted, then the children subconsciously reject Mother in all her forms, and fall prey to corrupted forces masquerading as Mother.

Yet, we cannot live without Mother so when the places the children are manipulated into seeking mother leave them/us starving, as they always will, we (the children) continue to cry out for a mother who is unable to hear us because she is also caught in the same loop- crying for her mother who is crying for her mother… This feedback loop closes our hearts close to the Mothering force and therefore we suffer a devastating desensitization to other forms of life, and one another.

This creates a gnarly rupture in the fabric of Sacred Reciprocity and compromises the ability to trust in oneself and Life. It fills the heart with scarcity when there is enough abundance (that is not grown in labs or factories) on this planet to feed every hungry mouth.

It is the root of all addictions and the many mental diseases we see today, as well as the so-called “chronic” mystery diseases that affect mostly women.

I bow my head to my heart and for all the children who starve, for all the mothers whose hearts and bellies are twisted with a soul wrenching worry as they watch their children suffer under a vile story that was told long ago that we must fight for Love, to be fed, to be cherished, held and deeply nourished. A story that tells the children that Mother, therefore woman and all we associate with the feminine, is weak, in all Her many forms.

To tell the true story of Mother’s power and wisdom, that women dominantly hold within their bodies, would crumble the major pillars in the foundation of society and reconnect us in one consciousness.

Mother

Regenerative, life giving, all healing, round, ripe, flowing and forgiving, compassionate, keeper and teacher of the sacred edge, of the sacred rage, of the sacred flame that burns away what no longer serves Her children- for the cycle of renewal to begin again.

The voice and wisdom of Mother lives within every cell of my being. This voice tells me how to feed myself, which way to walk, which medicines to take- and not, who to interact with- and not, how to express, ultimately how to heal myself. There are still areas of old pain that hold a deep fear of Her love, but she is slowly gaining traction as I tremble in the unknowing of what this love will do to me.

Whether I fully rest in Her arms or I don’t, I am still loved in my chosen suffering.

As are you.

Blessed Be, Shira

*this is part 1 of a series that will unfold the layers of re-feeding, explain in further detail the re-feeding process and how it heals the Mother wound.

(It is not my intent to diminish mothers by using lower case ‘m’. It is to highlight the paradoxical dance between the human conditions and the divine truth within.)