Today is “Mother’s Day” in the U.S., a day idealized by our culture. But for some it may not be a cause for celebration.
A reader asked how she might reframe the idea of Mother – a presumed “portal to Love” which in her case was closed, due to an unloving mother.
Whether we received it or not, all humans (no, all animals) need and are designed to be nurtured by the protective and holding love provided by archetypal mamas.
That’s why we melt at those pictures of mama animals with their young – and even more, mamas nursing the young of other species… the epitome of “unconditional.”
I think we all long to be held by that pure mothering instinct. Our own nervous systems respond just seeing those pictures.
Good mothering is “the portal to Love,” as my reader said, and we didn’t all get to go through that portal when we needed to.
We are wired as animals, and yet we are also more. What does it mean to be a spiritual soul-being incarnated in a human mammalian body on this most physical planet, Earth?
It’s complicated. We exist on multiple levels.
And perhaps we can find our needs met on multiple levels too.
I believe the universal mother is Gaia or Terra herself. Mother Earth. Mother Nature. Mater = matter.
It is actually from her that all life on Earth emerges. And I believe her great soul and beating heart are available to every one of us.
For me it is true. I experience that nurturing love from the Mother, myself, as I believe many do.
Humans are limited, some grievously so.
The infinite life of Spirit is not.
That aspect of love which, if we’re lucky, we first learn with a good enough mother, is actually, I’ve learned, an essential quality of soul that lies within ourselves.
Even more than that, it is a universal energy and principle of life.
Just like Siberian tiger cubs nursing at the teats of a golden retriever, we may have to find our mother love in unexpected places.
For me, it helps to personalize the Earth as Mother. It opens something in my heart, and allows the love I’ve always felt in nature to reach in and heal what is wounded in me.
On this Mother’s Day I wish to lay a bouquet of gratitude on the breast of Mother Earth who gave me life.
