Once a Mom… Always a Goddess

Once a mom…always a mom. I think that is one of the reasons that until I was over 30 I was certain I would never have children. It is so… um well, irreversible. There are irreversible changes in brain chemistry once you are in a motherly way. At least that is the way it is supposed to work. Broody phase and all that. You know when the hen has an overwhelming urge to sit on her nest until the eggs hatch. Women's brains do something similar, except it isn't a phase that ever ends, at least not completely.

Biology lesson time. There is a trajectory in mammalian evolution toward the retention of juvenile characteristics; this is also known as neoteny. And as I have said, so many times, over and over again, there are no unidirectional processes. While offspring change, parents probably change too. Staying dependent, a juvenile characteristic, for long periods of time requires parents stay in parenting mode for long periods of time. The change that allowed for lots of learning required lots of teaching. Everything moves in multiple directions. That is one of the things that most amazes me about life. Nothing has but one facet; well except for Möbius strips (those are slices of a Klein bottle.) There are multiple truths for every single fact. Truth is about interpretation. No two people will ever have the exactly identical interpretation of anything. We are unique individuals. Even if somehow we had the identical biological identity, as with identical twins, the environment of gestation, before birth, will not be identical and will shape the forming persons differently.

So, that is enough bio lesson for now, but women have evolved to be, and this is metaphor folks, lifelong wombs. I love the Gaian concept of the planet Earth being our mother. There is a largest level of life on this planet that can be understood as a single living system. The misconceptions about this theory are staggering in their shear numbers alone. Living systems are so complex that we cannot untangle all the relationships to understand them. So we have ways of understanding that are simplifications. Science simplifies. Religion simplifies. All ways of knowing are simplifications where only part of the truth that exists can be conveyed from one being to another. To have words be perfect representations would mean that the description and the thing would be identical. And that is impossible. Just speaking is simplification. Rarely do our words match the elegance of our thoughts.

Gaia, the Goddess, and motherhood are, for me interrelated concepts. I play with concepts in a way that most people would find strange at best. But I love thinking about thinking. And I believe that we as a people, and as a planet, need to incorporate as much of the feminine into our models or representations of our world and our understanding as is possible. Others may not see it that way. That is fine. I just wonder if there is any way to coexist with peacefully with people who insist that everyone else in the world has to agree with them on a particular point. Mothers know that every child has a unique sensitivities and gifts. Truth changes a tiny bit with the interpretive filter we each put it through. Nearly all women and girls have the spark of a caring nurturer and fierce protector in their hearts, that essence becomes active within every cell of our bodies during gestation, and I am convinced that once activated it cannot be turned off.

The feminine divine, the inspired mother, the sacred feminine, and the holy mother are all ways we as a culture marvel at the mystical power to bring new life into the world. I am not sure we can ever know where one state of being stops and another begins. And maybe that is the lesson we are to learn. The Mother Goddess within us all is Mother Möbius where there is no beginning nor end.

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