Home in Her (a poem about Mother Hunger)
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
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.
This is beautiful, and powerful. Thank you for sharing it (and thank you for recommending my work as well!) ~