Where is The Mother in me?

Ancestral Mother Part One

Pod 3 (

Elian M. Ortiz

Natalie Stoemmer

MariJean Elizabeth Wegert

and

Sarah Spurlock

) 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. 

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The Zoom link will be shared in our chat for paid subscribers. We can’t wait to see you there.

Natalie Stoemmer

Where is the Mother in me? Whenever I sit down to write into this prompt, so many threads that I could pull on start to show themselves. I could explore the part of me that has always known that she doesn’t want any children of her own. Or the part that is excited to take care of her nieces and nephews one day. Or the part that has played caretaker to countless ex-boyfriends, friends, and colleagues over the years. Or the part of me that feels otherworldly pride when my best friend’s 3-year-old child looks at the full moon and tells mommy to call me, because on full moon nights “we have to call Nana!” Or the part of me that talks to (/curses at) her deceased grandmother whenever I bake a particularly difficult recipe of hers. Or the part of me that feels like a wolf mother, fiercely wanting to protect all children of the world. Or the part of me that has such a hard time deeply connecting with my mother, although—truly—we are not that different.

Each of these could make for a good piece of writing. But the one that is screaming to be explored right now is the part of me that can’t ask “Where is the Mother in me?” without feeling the pain that so many parts of my ancestral motherline have suffered, and acknowledging those parts of my ancestral motherline that have, in turn, caused pain.

I am spending the night in one of my old rooms in the house that used to be my home. Obviously, everything has changed since I last lived here. My mother moved back from a long stint in China five years ago, my father followed a couple of years after. There are books everywhere—my family’s collective TBR pile is a medium-sized library. But there is one rather well-read book in particular that keeps catching my eye: “African Creeks I Have Been Up” by Sue Spencer, first published in 1963. This copy was a gift to my grandmother (her nickname was Tini)—there is an inscription on the inside of the cover page that reads “Dear Tini, I hope you get a few laughs out of this.” The blurb is too racist to quote even one sentence here. I can’t bring myself to crack it open as I doubt I would be getting any laughs out of it, but this seems to be more of a token I needed to find, anyway—a very intimate remnant of my family’s white colonial life.

I look around the room, only to find more evidence of it: a large piece of jade, ancient Bavarian deer antlers, a traditional Chinese character hand-painted on glass, an old Northern African mask with bristly hair attached all around its face, an Arab coffee set, a Cantonese hat box... These items used to hang in the den my brother and I got to sleep in whenever we spent the summers at my grandmother’s house in Tucson, Arizona. All of these items evoke a sense of comfort and familiarity that brings a smile to my lips. And, I now also see how these items are proof of a life lived in the name of American capitalist colonialism.

Walking through this house that used to be my home, I find even more evidence of my mother’s unconventional upbringing and my grandmother’s colonial participation in the foundations of what we today call the “Middle East Crisis”, and all I can think about is this piece that I am supposed to be writing about the Ancestral Mother.

We need the Mother archetype more than ever right now. I know this. I watch Palestinian children being bombed in Gaza and taken from their homes in the West Bank on my damn phone screen—the same phone that is built by resources that children in Congo are dying for. Intellectually, I understand the assignment. Somatically, too: I feel the truth in the crevices of my breaking heart, that I have to fight for all of our children, or none of them.

And despite this, I cannot find the Mother in me. All I see in my motherline is pain, disappointed dreams, white privilege, lost opportunities, oppression, and unfulfilled desires. I am a white European woman who has lived “an international lifestyle” and has considered herself a “third culture kid.” I am deconstructing these things as I am bearing witness to a kind of pain I cannot even begin to fathom. And I cannot sit here and write a hopeful piece about how we can revive this Mother energy in us, as we are being called to. I cannot even process my own lineage’s complicity in this current crisis.

Is that maybe where the Mother in me is? Is this maybe my version of the assignment? To look closer at these facts, no judgments, but radical accountability, heal those wounds, make amends, create meaningful change in the world so these spirals of ignorant white oppression can end?

I cannot ask ‘“where is the Mother in me?”, without also asking “where is the Too-Good Mother in me? Where is the Devouring Mother in me? Where is the Patriarchal Mother in me? Where is the Colonizing Mother in me?”

I cannot ask “where is the Mother in me?”, without looking at the anxious avoidant attachment style I inherited from mine. The fierce and hyper-vigilant independence I was peddled as a source of my own personal liberation. “Never make yourself dependent on a man.” I am still breaking out of this mantra, while I am watching Palestinian men digging their loved ones’ bodies out from under the rubble, and all I can think is “Well, aren’t we all dependent on each other?!”

I cannot ask “where is the Mother in me?”, without looking at the patterns of abuse and hurt egos and weaponized wounding that have invaded our collective white feminist movement, including my own motherline.

One of my ancestors, probably my great-grandmother’s mother, was a midwife. This must have been around the time of the First World War, in southern Germany. I can see how her life, her profession, must have been both a calling from deep within and an answer to a collective cry for help from all around her. I am watching people going through worse circumstances right now, I am watching these women, mothers, and aunties lose any last shred of autonomy, their families, and their entire lives. So, yes, we could wait a couple decades, and then honor these women for their fierce magic or strong resilience or whatever the equivalent to “badass witchery” will be then. Or we could call in this Mother energy today, to fight against the forces who continue to kill, abuse, molest, and torture our children. In the name of all of our children. It is not enough to erect shrines and altars in the name of the Mother. We have to stand the fuck up now. I am understanding the assignment more and more. I am here to support and strengthen the mothers in my life. I am here to fight for the children in my life as if every last one of them was my own. I am here to dissolve my ego and do whatever is necessary to co-create a healthier world for all of our children.

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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.