A year's reflection: Home in Her (a poem for about Mother Hunger)
It’s much more beautiful and tender and alive than I ever realized. It’s not personal at all— yet here I am, in the center of it— willing to feel it, willing to grieve it, willing to let go...
I think of my mother often. How she kept a log of all the gifts I’d receive on my birthday & sit me down to me write thank you cards the next day and made me save 10% of all money I was gifted. How she catered to my autistic sensitivities without knowing I was autistic. She made me believe I was special, gifted and unique for my particularities despite what family members said.
My mom and I were very close before we were no-contact. Too close. As Astrid Schmidt once said on my podcast, “enmeshment is when everyone is touching and no one is connected.” Healing from enmeshment has felt akin to pulling out my insides, laying them all out in front of me & trying to discern which bloody guts are, in fact, my own. It’s a lifetime of trying to find yourself in a bloody familial soup.
I have. And for that I am so proud.
Unlike many seem to believe, I don’t hate my mother— far from it. People always assume such choices are made from a deep dislike and resentment; I’d argue the distance has allowed me to keep loving her with the benefit of also learning to know and love my Self.
I’ve been angry with her, that’s true; not for who she is, but what she cannot see. What she will not see. I don’t think I even know her enough to hate her. When you’re that close… enmeshed close… there is no Self available for being known & anything that exists outside the script of the dysfunctional family narrative simply doesn’t exist. I’ll hear stories from family members about her bold ferocity— how she was a rebel, angsty middle child— and I can only imagine it. Because that’s not the mother I saw or knew. I desperately want to believe those parts of her are still there, burning fiery hot, full of life and her Self.
Writing about estrangement is so delicate. Writing about others at all… wildly delicate. I know I’ve hurt my beloveds when they see themselves reflected in my writing— sometimes it’s about them, sometimes it’s not. Either way I know they wonder.
I wonder, too. I wonder if she reads my writing. Or if they talk about me on family holidays. If they think it’s odd I’m not there, or if they are relieved to have space in the absence of me. I wonder if she is able to comprehend the kind of woman I’ve become— if she still feels like I only come around to make her feel small— if she feels smart or pretty or confident enough to go it on her own. If she believes she could “keep up with me.”
My mother and I are very different people— but even so I see how she shows up in my aging face in the mirror and in the auburn highlights I get. How she shows up in the way I send thank-you cards so frequently & keep a back stock of gifts all year-round for birthdays and events. Ya know, just in case. How I keep my home tidy & a toothbrush under the kitchen sink for scrubbing the grout— something she taught me all those years helping her clean houses. How I wear skimpy swimsuits like the floral thong bikini she often wore to the lake. How my peachy plump butt & how I know how to shake it is certainly - absolutely - inherited from her.
As the distance of the years grows & I allow the somatic trauma work I’ve done to re-shape my perceptions, I do see how it must have been hard to raise a child like me. I have compassion for all of it. I’m not angry anymore. I really do understand. I have forgiven, and that forgiveness no longer means I don’t get to have boundaries. I am safe to be soft.
I’m also not expecting anything to be different.
My boundaries aren’t changing— but I’ve changed. I can see her slightly more clearly, albeit at a distance. I have ease praying for her now. And rather than angry or hopeful or in denial, I’m just sad it has to be this way.
My arms were heavy this morning, my heart was aching. It felt like my energy was moving downward, draining into the ground. I was moody & critical over stupid shit. When my girlfriend pointed out my grouchiness, I heard my mom in my head saying “Oh that’s just Moody Maddie again.” We went on a walk to move the energy & as we stopped at the corder I said “I just need to be mirrored— please tell me you see it’s hard. Please tell me you want me around. Please hug me and remind me I’ve done a good job.”
Reading the (below) poem I wrote last year, I see how far I’ve come. Even since then. I see the burden lighter, my vision clearer. The tarry-black anger I wrote about is nowhere to be found.
The grief is poignant & right here; but it doesn’t linger once it’s met.
It doesn’t feel like I’ve been done wrong, or that it should have been different. I don’t feel personally affronted or like anyone needs to be different for me to be okay. There isn’t even a story attached. It’s just heavy in the way being alive is heavy. In the way seeing videos of Gaza is heavy. In the way losing a long-time friend is heavy. In the way seeing children being separated from their immigrant parent is heavy. It’s heavy because life just really isn’t what I thought it was— it’s far more disappointing and heartbreaking, lonely and lovely. It’s much more beautiful and tender and alive than I ever realized. And it’s also rude that it’s not personal at all— yet here I am, in the center of it— willing to feel it, willing to grieve it, willing to let go then let love in again.
There have been moments on this journey where it felt hopeless— where I thought I’d be bitter, living with a vortex of need no one could ever fill— the kind of person no one wants to be around.
But when I look at my life and read my old writing, I see how all those versions of me were saving me, mothering me, loving me, longing to know me. I wanted to be around me.
All this time, I’ve just been trying to see myself.
Individuation is a no joke journey— especially for those of us who have lived in the fog of early enmeshment.
If this resonates with you in any way, I am so sorry it hurts. I know it’s hard. You’ve done such a good job. Such a good job.
I pray you see yourSelf clearly.
I pray you find clear mirrors.
I pray the grief comes and goes in waves, and leads you back to your fullest aliveness.
Happy Mother’s Day.
-Madison
And I’d be silly to not mention…
If you want support, my year-long program The Fortress is currently enrolling— it’s the place I offer the most somatic & spiritual education, coaching and community for folks who want to see themselves clearly.
It’s the work I did and do, continually, to live free & to be fully me.
I’d be honored to have you.
Originally released summer 2024—
There is a particular shade of grief only known to us who remain unmothered despite our mothers still living. Its texture, pathetic small seeking— Looking our whole lives for someone to say “there you are.” Here I am. Searching for a clear mirror. See me So I can see myself. Love me So I can love myself. Tell me who I am so I can too, know and sense I am real. A puppet performing for love dancing for others mirroring loving trusting you hoping somewhere in you I may find myself. When you carry this particular shade of grief you may find many Mothers— Oriented to the ones who, like your own are waiting to devour you. Sirens with glimmering eyes so inviting so enticing. Are you my mother? Most don’t know what to do when an eager student worships them, confusing them for Mother. It’s true— I fucked my teacher, stoned in my husband's house. It was under the full moon, so we called it divine. I’ve gotten on my knees at the advice of a teacher and called it Ceremony, confused why I didn’t feel a thing. I’ve given it all to mentors who used my story, used me up. Don’t let me fool you, I gave it all gladly. I’ve taken intuitive guidance prophetic words psychic insights from crones thick with projection. Poison I ate up— looking for Her. I’ve misused my Sacred Devotion serving systems and false gurus who held me as I cried gassed me up with bullshit & called it Truth. Before I knew who I was. Before I knew safety. Before I could see through the fog. I’ve competed with countless mentors without knowing it. We were dancing different dances for different reasons. Different altogether. I was confused, dizzied up in the spinning of it all. Are you my mother? Yes, they said. Yes, they said. They knew me better than I knew myself. And it’s true– When you’re wandering wounded looking for home, you, too might give everything you have to friends family and often foes, just to find yourself. I did. 31 years of searching Devoting Mirroring Serving dupes Before I found the real thing. Angry and bitter— I made lists trying to forgive them one by one. At the end of the page I find myself. A set up. After all, aren’t we all looking for Home in Her?
It’s been a minute since I’ve written you because it’s been a minute since I’ve written. Since my trip to Costa Rica & graduating from the somatic trauma resolution & embodiment of spirit program, Alchemical Alignment, I have been in a deep season of healing and integration (and selling/promoting/teaching as I launched The FORTRESS).
All of it brought up so much around my relationship to my mother, past mentors and my own power. It’s taken so much of my energy in the way that facing our deepest core wounds often do… and it’s been a season of juxtaposition in the way life often is: holding my heart tenderly in private, cocooning while dancing and selling and showing up on the internet.
I’ve been estranged from my mother for almost 5 years now, and crossing another Mothers’s day felt like a knife to the heart.
This year though, something was different in me. In all the years past, it felt like a dull, lonely grief— no one could ever understand. A grief that makes me feel alone in rooms full of people (especially people with wonderful relationships to their mothers). I now know this grief cannot be remedied by searching for Her in others. Flaccid grief, toggling between fantastical hope for change (“It will be different this time”), and absolute apathy (“She will never leave him. She doesn’t want to know the Truth”).
While the lonely grief no doubt stays with me and probably always will, over the last month I observed a tarry-black anger, gooey with disgust emerge from the dullness of my heart.
Because I teach Shame Alchemy, I know accessing disgust is a vital point in our healing. Shame is disgust, turned against the self. Despite the discomfort, hot, tarry disgust was a sign of healing. A sign freeze had melted, and shame was being alchemized. I could feel vital, life-force energy returning.
All of this coming to the surface the very week I opened the doors to The FORTRESS. (To say my work has been working me would be an understatement).
I’m thankful to have wonderful mentors & practitioners I can trust who were able to help me as waves of grief, shame, disgust and anger moved their way through my body. Life provided me the most synchronistic opportunities to understand this unmothered grief and rage in my lineage— after every somatic session I had.
When I say life has felt like a fantastical magic show… I mean it. (My Pisces moon is conjunct Neptune at the moment, so no real surprise here).
What I mean is… dead animals scattered around my yard, asking to be buried ceremonially under the Grandmother Tree. A full, fresh, wet snakeskin at my feet. Run-ins with the right people at the right time. Opportunities to understand the fractal pattern of my lineage; frozen mothers who couldn’t mother due to their own trauma. Shamanic journeys offering visions of being pushed off a cliff, only to land gently into a plush field of four leaf clovers. (To say the least).
I discovered that for generations, 7 to be exact, the mothers were violently unmorthered to the highest degree. The mothers were alone with their grief with no one to hold them. The mothers were stunted, frozen, unable to see through the dense fog of their own fear. The mothers tethered & tending to the men who hurt their children— frozen, unable to speak. The mothers were once the children who were hurt at the hands of their own fathers. No one was there to nurture or protect them because they had not been nurtured or protected.
Disgust turned to objective compassion— and not the kind that has previously caused me to intellectualize and forgive prematurely. This was the kind of forgiveness that burns through the pain, churns in your belly and asks you to see reality clearly, while remaining open. Excruciating, liberating forgiveness.
So I offered the Mothers and their babies to the Spirit Grandmothers. I offered myself to the Spirit Grandmothers. I lit candles for the mothers and their babies.
I said I was so sorry.
I am so sorry.
I understand now.
I grieve this reality, and the choices I must make to stay well inside of it.
I choose life— and life will never choose the degradation, humiliation and the endless seeking of unmotheredness.
The Mother is Life.
So I will Live.
They say be careful what you teach. They say be careful what you pray for. Because life will give it to you… and she surely has.
I guess it’s a good thing the only thing I really care about is Devotion to the Truth.
May I worship this reality and open more. May life continue to reveal the Truth of who we are: eternal, joyous, free. May the Great Mother continue to liberate us from all that is not True.
-Madison
P.S. I read Mother Hunger recently, and if any of this resonates with you, it might be helpful. I recommend reading it alongside seeing a trusted practitioner who can help hold space for what arises in you.
Interested in working together?
