#10: Sooner or Later
The Mysterious Circles Always Close.
I. MOTHER
[Earthly/Early Mother]
When she cried coming home from school at nine years old you told her to stop. If she continues to cry, you said you’ll take her out of school.
When she asked what was going on with the home, and why they had to move in fifth grade, you told her because of her father’s mistakes, they may have to live under a bridge.
In your fits of manipulation and rage, your eyes like slits, you hissed at her calling her evil. You let those words escape your lips, to your only daughter.
The wind blows through time and seasons circle on an axis.
Now is the season of transmutation. Cutting cords. Clearing karma. Closing circles.
She sees how you instigated the relationship with her father — how your blind(ing jealousy, selfishness, and rage) behaviors caused rife between her and the first man she was ever to love. She hated his ambivalence toward her, his outbursts and physical aggression, but she hated you more because you never stopped it.
She fell into an abusive friendship as a pre-teen that haunted and taunted her until she was 21 with a girl who manipulated her and took away every sliver of burgeoning confidence she’d hoped to have. She twisted and molded her like metal between her spiny fingers and you were there on the throne to watch it all. When she’d come home from her sleepovers upset you accused her of being a mean, selfish daughter. You lit the match and blamed her for burning.
You didn’t protect her from abuse.
You didn’t protect her from anything.
As a 20-something she fell into the beds of different men, searching for affection and guidance, something she never got from you. Many, many men. She was 32 before she realized she never had any self-worth, in all her life.
She has no happy memories of you as a child. You never hit her. You never even really yelled at her. And yet she has nothing positive to remember from you in those formative years. She doesn’t remember you smiling, playing, cuddling, or laughing with her. You didn’t impart any lessons or skills. She was invisible, yet you were always around. How can this be?
When you embarrassed her in the doctor’s office she started to cry. You said you were “protecting” her from their poking and prodding. You were so irate and hostile in a way that didn’t match the situation. And then you left her there. You left her in the cold waiting room, got in the car and drove away. She was 17 and asked her high school boyfriend to pick her up. You left her in a tender moment when she needed you, and this wouldn’t be the last time.
Around others, you’re the life of the party. Beautiful. Always the most beautiful. Happy, clangorous, fun.
Why can’t she remember you this way?
She sometimes thinks of this scene from the film Lady Bird, the dialogue an almost direct snapshot of her teenage years,
“Whatever we give you, it's never enough. Do you have any idea what it costs to raise you?”
“Give me a number. Give me a number for how much it cost to raise me. And I'm going to get older and make a lot of money, and write you a check for what I owe you so I never have to speak to you again.”
Yet she grew up and couldn’t understand why she never had enough worth to stick with or cultivate anything — jobs, relationships, or money. Nothing stayed.
In the book Mother Hunger author Kelly McDaniel writes,
“Mother Hunger comes from the unacknowledged damage to nurturance, protection, and/or guidance. Mothers who recognize their mistakes and make repairs keep bonding secure. For a mother to do this well, she must be nurtured by friends, protected by partners, and supported by family.”
You never said sorry. To anyone.
While she’s not fully there yet, she sees how you weren’t supported to give her what she needed. She doesn’t understand the scope or the history of the matrilineal lines. But it’s not adding up.
We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born. . . .
Loving a child is not enough. Love is not enough.
She remembers finding you in bed in the afternoon and you couldn’t, wouldn’t get up. Another day alive was too hard for you. With her two younger siblings in the house, she was scared. She drew you a bath and begged you to get in. You did.
You needed more and she wishes you advocated for your needs. That you would have opened up to someone. She wishes you’d got the help you deserved. She’s sorry. And she wishes you didn’t close your heart, Mom.
In all of it, in this now, I release you.
I love you, Mom, and I release you.
II. MOTHER
[Earth]
This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden — so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone. | Robin Wall Kimmerer
I lay in the grass in my blue lace nightgown like a dazecore, demure Sylvia Plath. By the time I get up my hair is matted with dead leaves, my arms red from the rub of the twigs.
I lay in the same spot I found the black snake the week before, a Southern Black Racer. Keeping the dog from the snake I gently prod her with a stick so she could safely move about her day.
I lay here now where I found her, the sun blasting my solar plexus. I imagine it’s a fire, burning away the cords with my mother.
How must it feel to be considered “evil” by merely existing?
How must it feel to be detested for the way you move, for the mythos around your ancestors? The way you eat, the way you have babies, the way you survive. How does it feel for everyone to recoil at the sight of you? To be afraid of you?
I told my mother about the snake. She nearly retches, reiterating, like she has my whole life, how she hates snakes.
As I walk away from her I feel the snake slithering demurely around my heart, squeezing.
I recently came out of a sickness portal. A fan of German New Medicine, or Germanic Healing Knowledge, I connected a lot of the symptoms to “Conflict Shocks” I’d experienced this season. I’ve been “sick” three times in the last six months after not experiencing these kinds of symptoms for many, many years. There’s no doubt in my being that it has nothing to do with immunity and everything to do with what’s been happening (and my changing of perceptions around it).
During one of the worst symptomatic days, I cried outside under the beloved Grandmother mango tree. For past moments of being unsupported by family, and ostracized/evangelized to by extended family — I was always wrong.
As my eyes were closed I began to spiral. And in that spiral, I recognized the infinite and boundless love of the Creator. Of my guides. How I was held now, and always. Connecting with one special tree two years ago set me on a path that has forever changed me. How the deepest belonging is right here, connecting to the body and planet we inhabit. It only takes one flower, one bird, one rock to ignite it.
We need humans and interdependence to thrive and survive. We need human touch, laughter, and community. But the roots of self belonging, connection, and love stem from the Earth, whose image is a direct and pure mirror to God. There is no mistaking this.
From these roots, we build upward and outward, stably, and connect with and feed our human relationships. You can not bear fruit as a sick tree with dead roots — with no roots.
It’s the ash tree who told me to forgive my mother.
It’s the turkey vultures, like black angels1, who remind me to keep floating on; the cardinal reminds me to do something I love: sing.
It’s the basalt stone who reminds me of ancient threads connecting me to the deepest wisdom, transcending all time and language.
It’s the banyan that says “Now, like us, you are a million years old2.”
It’s the sedan-sized Agave that poked me and caused me to bleed that reminds me that in life there is annoying, dumb shit that happens and how can we meet it???
It’s the spirit journeys with Datura, Foxglove, and Henbane that show me what I call The Moonpearls — the innate wisdom and teachings sitting deep in the darkest caverns and watery depths I most need around topics like transformation, sex, family, and “work.”
With this kind of belonging, my worth is revealed to me as innate. My shame is tended to with gentleness and with radical responsibility. Look at it. Love is shown to me as boundless, unconditional, and always accessible to me… and to you.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Forgiven,
forgiven,
forgiven.
This is God through the mirrors of the Earth.
III. MOTHER
[Beyond time and space]
It took writing this piece and getting divorced to remember the vision I had of you ten years ago.
I was in college and I woke up from the most lucid dream. When I awoke I had a tender, longing ache in my chest.
You were small and sitting up already. You had rolls in your arms and legs and when I looked at you I couldn’t imagine the feeling. I wanted to hold you and protect you. I had never loved something so tenderly in all of my life. I have brown eyes, but you had blue eyes. And you were a daughter.
Will I meet you one day?
The last few months it’s been felt strongly that you are guiding me. You are ensuring I hold and transform what’s mine so that I can tend to the path laid out for me — for us.
Will I be able to be what you need?
Who will your father be? (No pressure.) (!)
I don’t know when I’ll meet you — but I thank you for your guidance, your patience, and honestly your willpower because the transformation is real.
I hope we will play outside together and name the birds and flowers.
I hope I can read to you and then when you discover your favorite books, you can read to me.
I hope your father will be a planet that orbits around your gravity — pulled to you, to us, with devotion. I hope he will always make you feel safe and secure — you will never question his love for you.
I hope you will always know your belonging in the family of things3.
I hope to be your protector, nurturer, and guide for as long as you need me to be. For all the days of your life.
Tracy
My favorite Mary Oliver poem in existence and
the deepest love letter to my home state.
From Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.
I *feel* this so hard <3