Pod 3 (
and ) has created this collaborative article as a call to action for all of us: to ask the question where is the Mother in me?We need Mother energy more than ever. How do we all embody that in our lives and our world? Mothering self, Mothering children, Mothering the world.
Join us tonight, Monday, May 27 for a book club for paid subscribers, exploring the first three chapters of Perdita Finn’s marvelous book, Take Back the Magic. Come rewild with us as we practice remembering – our intuitions, our bodies, our magic, and our connection to the universe and our own souls.
The Zoom link will be shared in our chat for paid subscribers. We can’t wait to see you there.
The mother in me - without human children of my own - is nurturing a magical web of ropes that weave me with the mothers who came before me. Each rope is painful and beautiful and different, yet none would exist without the others.
I don’t know much about the mothers in the web who came before me. I know they each searched for a more compassionate world. No improvement was too slight for these women. They summoned often-limited power to pass love and resilience around through the ropes; they scraped together forbidden agency to bequeath their mothers' love, legacy, and hope for freedom to all of us who came after them. By changing their world for their daughters, they changed it for all the mothers in the web. These ropes aren’t just my spiritual DNA but my physical; they shape my face and share my skin. They have given me my height, my slightly graying hair, my eyelashes, and my deep, strong hugs. My ropes are bound by biology and power.
I spent thirty years with one of those ropes slightly frayed. I loved my maternal grandmother very much, and she also loved me. She showed love by sewing me beautiful pink dresses (my favorite childhood possessions). But there were painful blocks to our connection. I often witnessed her pains that surfaced as excessive control, and as I grew older, I felt resentful of how hard it was for me to relate to her while she was alive. I wasn’t aware that my grandmother had her own frayed ropes. She passed away when I was 25.
I found my grandma’s sorority photo from the 1950s a few years ago and instantly saw myself in her face. I saw her in the sparkly wrinkles that, at nearly 37, have formed in my smile and cheeks. I saw her happiness and her struggles, her pent-up frustration about how much trauma the world wouldn’t let her work through herself - but I also saw the healing space she was no doubt determined to cleave out for the mothers who followed. I saw her love for me, my mom, aunts, and cousins. I put her photo on my altar. When I nurture my ropes, I nurture all of hers, too. What we weave together creates a sturdy, powerful net of motherhood, whether we have children or not.
I find it very fitting that my grandma’s last name is Weaver.
We would like to introduce you to Dr. Youssef Ashour from Gaza - Khan Yunis (Palestine).
He writes:
“We are now staying in a tent somewhere in Rafah in completely inhumane conditions, where the food has run out, there is no electricity, no water, no toilet, the weather is cold and rainy, there is bombing and terror, and we are waiting for death at every moment. .
We enter the fourth month of hell, terror and fear. This genocide has gone on for too long, and our mental health and lives are in constant danger. We truly cannot take any more (I cannot describe enough what I have been dealing with every day in the hospitals for the past 92 days. We have reached a point where there is no longer any hope for us here in Gaza, and we are sadly waiting for our turn to die. .) Even if a ceasefire is established, it will not be possible to quickly repair the damage in Gaza.”
They are trying to evacuate his elderly parents, himself and his wife, his four sisters and their husbands, as well as the 10 children between them all. We are asking that you consider donating to their GoFundMe and, even if that is not an option, sharing their story and information everywhere you can.
We found Dr Youssef Ashour through Operation Olive Branches ongoing list of vetted and verified families trying to save their lives.
What you’re weaving from those who went before and how that will be intertwined with those after you is stunning and powerful.