Motherhood...

MOTHERHOOD is a GREAT BIG GIVE AWAY CEREMONY

Please enjoy this piece I wrote honoring the reality of Motherhood. Every egg generating being has some kind of story about motherhood, the longing for, the release from, the loss within, the boundless joy of, the confusion in, the detachment from, and … Every HUMAN has some story too … YO, we all came out of there!!!

This Sunday, we are encouraging every body to be with your own story. Movement Mass will go quiet this week. We will dance again on May 21st. Please join us at the Avalon, 10:45am. We will journey together onto the front lines of our collective becoming.

LOVING YOU all the while.

MOTHERHOOD.
Regardless if we conceived our child in a field of love and gestated her life in a safe and nourishing womb or conceived him through some kind of violation and gestated zir in a womb filled with ambivalence and instability, we as mothers all share a mandate.

Show up and Serve.

The degree to which we strive to do this shapes the journey for all involved. We do not get to decide who is going to come live in our bellies for nine months or arrive from the womb of another woman. We do not get to decide what the planetary culture will be like during the course of our children’s lives, the quality of the food available, the degree of social or environmental toxins, or the political climate. But, we do get to choose how we show up for the ones sent to us, created through us, the ones we call our children. And yes, some of us do not even get to bring our babies into form, yet we are clearly mothers.

Motherhood is a golden path through the most complex terrain imaginable. We are entrusted with life and asked to steward and bless it every day … for decades. Our children march us straight to the altar of our unresolved issues, our deepest fears, and our widest potential as human beings. They do not come in times that are easy. They come into a challenged world with their own personal quests to make. We are here to birth them, bathe them in love, believe in them, walk with them, witness, and guide them, protect, and then release them.
Motherhood is the ultimate give away ceremony.

Motherhood is a humbling journey that publicly mirrors to us our biggest wounds and our greatest gifts. As the birth mother of two daughters, the surrogate mother of three others, the step parent of three more, and as one who has also served as midwife for 100’s of youth from around the world as they journey through adolescence into adulthood, it is clear that mothering ignites spiritual initiation, emotional literacy, political activism, physical endurance, and nothing less than daily acts of magic. We do not necessarily choose our children, but we do choose how we embrace all that their lives invite into our lives.

We meet our personal edges and discover how to meet life’s difficult offerings with grace, with humility, with endurance, and with fierce dedication to the opportunity to love on life’s terms. Motherhood is a daily initiation into the raw landscape of love in action. Mothers are part of a fabric of people working with great ferocity to create sanity in the middle of unbelievable challenge, to establish order where there is chaos, to protect life when the world around us is not necessarily life giving.

Please, please honor what you are doing and discovering as a mother. Every one of our stories contributes to our collective understanding about how to serve life. Share your stories. Listen to the stories of your friends and colleagues and even strangers. Let us come out of isolation and judgment about what we have done or have not done. Let us join together to weep and to celebrate, to hold each other close as we, one person at a time, we navigate the unwieldy terrain of bringing forth life in these rugged times.

We look to our mother earth to remind us that sometimes the way to meet the children is with abundant fields of flowers and color. Other times, a mighty earth – quake will be needed. Pruning. Burning. Making room for new life. With respect and awe, let’s continue to honor and discover the many faces of motherhood, including all those brave women who lose their children or do not even get to conceive them.

Together let’s SEND TRUE LOVE to the mamas of the world.

By Melissa Michaels ©2010/2017

Photo ~ Mother’s Bodies:
Annie preparing to birth and Melissa just having released her womb
Image by Melissa Michaels, ©2017

Originally posted at: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.michaels.587/posts/1525528987480145