On Mother’s Day – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

As we approach Mother’s Day, it is crucial that we recognize the power that Mother has, the impact that Mother has, the potential effect that Mother has not only on her individual child, but also on the entire world.

William Ross Wallace acknowledged this aptly and poignantly …

“For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.”*

Reflect on the mothers who have been nourishing, supportive, inspiring, honest, kind, compassionate, loving, who have been what I would call “Truth and Love woven together” – mothers who have helped their children become their True Selves.

And reflect on the mothers who – out of their own wounding and the wounding in their cultures – have been less than that, even the opposite. Mothers who have either not protected their children or mothers who have been indifferent, neglectful, or even cruel to their children … often under the guise of their “rights” as mother or “for your own good.”

Ponder the mother whose child became a leader of a country or even an empire. What was the impact of that leader on his or her country? What was the impact on our world? Was the leader damaging to the people, to the earth, to him/herself? Was s/he damaging under the guise of “goodness”? Under the normalization by a culture that accepted such damage and the guise justifying it? Was the culture that of an empire, a country, a business, a family?

As a member of many cultures, we each have the opportunity and the responsibility to affect how our leaders are chosen and how they lead. Are you claiming and acting upon your opportunities and responsibility? And are you doing so in a way that is healthy and woven of Truth and Love?

As a member of many cultures, we each have the opportunity and the responsibility to be a leader in our own way. Are you claiming and acting upon your opportunities and responsibility in your cultures – whether the culture of your family, your school, your church, your workplace, your community …?

Reflect upon how the patriarchal cultures of our world have impacted the experiences of our mothers, their mothers, and the mothers before them. Reflect upon how the individual mother impacts the culture, and the culture impacts the individual mother …and each of her children, and then generations to come. It is a vicious cycle, or a maze as I teach my clients. We need to find our ways out of the vicious cycle … individually and culturally. It takes our doing our personal inner healing work one by one by one. It takes our educating people in our cultures. It takes our reweaving the fabric from the inside out.

Wonder about your own mother. Seek to find, beneath the surface, in the very depths of your being – the impact your mother had on you, on every fiber of your being, on every one you touch … on you as you impact our world.

If you are a mother, wonder about your own mothering. Are there things you can discover about your mothering that you still have a chance to heal – for yourself, for your children … for both of you … and for our world?

*****

It is with Mother that we first have the opportunity to attach, that we first have the opportunity to bond …in healthy ways needed for us to become all we have the potential to be.

It is with Mother that we first have the opportunity to experience in the outer world the essence of the Divine.

If we don’t have a mother with whom we have these crucial experiences … everything else is awry for us until we do our healing. And this impacts not only us, but the world around us and the world as a whole.

As we approach Mother’s Day, let’s go beneath the surface possibilities of the day. Let’s go through the experience deeply and fully – in Truth and Love – discovering and working with what is calling to be healed from the inside out … personally and communally.

© Judith Barr, 2015

*From his poem The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World (published 1865)
https://emp.byui.edu/satterfieldb/quotes/Hand%20that%20rocks%20the%20cradle.html

“WHO NEEDS A PERIOD?” – A POLITICAL CONFLICT

Recently, I read an article on CNN.com* that explored the use of birth control to suppress a woman’s monthly period…and the startling fact that 72% of women said they “did not like having a period” and  40% of women would prefer never to have one!  And now birth control pills are being utilized to avoid our periods almost completely. 

My heart cried out as I read this article, and the words of women quoted in it who, consciously or unconsciously, thought of their periods as a curse or a burden. In response, I wrote the post below, in the hope that it will put some perspective on the sacredness of menstruation, and why our monthly period is so crucial . . .

In a world where misogyny is rampant . . .
In a world where, even with the advances women have made, women are still treated horribly . . .
In a world where, perhaps because of the fear of the advances women have made, women are being treated worse than ever . . .
In a world where, if the abusive, cruel treatment of women were done to Jews, African Americans, Gays, or some other minority, the actions would be called hate crimes and prosecuted . . .
For women to suppress their menstrual bleeding, a natural part of their being, a crucial part of their innate, inborn power . . .
is tantamount to colluding with the patriarchal attempts to discount, diminish,  control, and have power over women.  It is the equivalent of an alcoholic’s spouse enabling or colluding with the alcoholic.

A woman’s period is not simply the mechanism through which she is able to conceive and give birth to human babies. It is also the cycle that helps a woman be truly connected to herself — her body, her mind, her heart, and her own soul — and to root herself more and more deeply with her own instincts, her own knowings, her own strength and courage, her own gifts. 

To suppress or give that up . . . is to give herself and her inner power away!

To suppress or give that up . . . is to be seduced into believing her menstrual bleeding is a curse.
Or at the very least to not have been taught the powerful truth about the immense possibilities of menstruation  . . .
by a mother who grew up believing her period was a curse.

To suppress or give that up . . . is to give herself and her inner power away!

This is not just a personal choice and action. This is a communal choice and action and a political choice and action.

We will be shocked and horrified, if we continue this blind trend, by the dire consequences of our actions  –
in the actions of men toward us, in the actions of other women toward us, in our actions toward other women, 
and in our actions toward ourselves.

Who will help us if we continue?
Who will help us if we don’t help ourselves?

* https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/06/period.monthly.menstruation/index.html?hpt=C2 

NOTE: If you would like to learn more . . . here are four sources I can recommend. The first three are books, the fourth is an audio cassette: The Wild Genie, Alexandra Pope; Her Blood Is Gold, Lara Owen; Mysteries of the Dark Moon, Demetra George; The Call of My Blood Mysteries, Judith Barr

(c) Judith Barr, 2010