Are you a woman who yearns to know the infinitely loving true MOther Who has always been within you?

There is an incredibly telling storybook that I remember reading as a child, about a baby bird separated from his mother’s nest, searching everywhere for his mother. He meets a dog, “are you my mother?” he asks. He meets a kitten, “are you my mother?” he asks. Eventually he meets a car, “are you my mother?” he asks. A plane. A boat. A dumptruck. By a stroke of luck, the dumptruck scoops up that baby bird and places it back into its mother’s nest and she returns with his food.

Many of us are that baby bird wandering the world asking, “are you my mother?” to everyone and everything we meet. Unconsciously through our behavior, we ask this question to our lovers, we ask this question to our friends, we ask this question to our government, we ask this question to our jobs, we ask this question to our social media followers, we ask this question to our country, to our community, to our land, we ask this question to the television, we ask this question to our food. We ask it to everything that we think might save us from our suffering.

We are lost, looking for the Mother that created us, confused and desperate for someone or something to be the very Source that can heal our deepest suffering arising from the unconscious belief that we are separate from the very nature that created us and could never actually leave us.

Who is the true Mother, and why have we forgotten Her?

It is actually rare to meet a woman who has emotionally, physically, and spiritually crossed the threshold from Maiden into Mother and is fully harnessing her power as creatrix, sustainer, nurturer, and protectress, all qualities that we witness in the birthing, dying, and regenerative nature of our Earth, our physical Mother.

This wisdom and the powerful rites of passage into Motherhood have been mostly hidden, buried, and forgotten over many generations through women's oppression. Regardless of our gender, we all yearn for Her love. This is the deep ache to remember Goddess and the Feminine that was once an essential integral part of our wholeness in union with God and the Masculine.

Because most of us were born into lineages of women that were made inferior in the eyes of the church and the government, and religiously inferior in the eyes of God, we were very likely birthed into the world through a womb that had not been awakened to its true power for many many generations. Consequently, rather than receiving the guidance from our Mothers to know how to become a true Mother (first and foremost of ourselves) we inherited all of the un-transmuted wounds of our Mother, and her Mother, and her Mother, and on and on. Our original divine human blueprint became distorted and lost.

Our Mother's womb was the first world that we experienced as a physical being and unconsciously formed all of our beliefs around how safe it is to be in a body, on Earth.

Whatever thoughts, beliefs, fears, traumas, and unconscious patterning Mother was holding in her womb became the world as we knew it. Painfully, as we matured our entire perception of reality was painted through Mother's eyes.

If it felt unsafe within Mother’s womb, and then within Mother’s arms, and eventually within Mother’s home, it is understandable that we would wish to go looking for that sanctuary elsewhere… in relationships, at our friend’s houses, through travel, through teachers, through mentors, or even through cults, alcohol, or drugs.

But for our full maturation and individuation to take place, eventually we have to stop looking, and we return back the one and only sanctuary we are actually given within our lifetime… which is our own body. We return to the womb within us, that is our own birthing vessel, and ask the primordial life force we each contain to rebirth us back to our original nature.

The womb is our doorway to God, it is the portals that makes spirit manifest, and this holy space has been demonized and desecrated for thousands of years.

When God became a man in the sky, rather than the cosmic womb and the earth womb that birth galaxies and volcanoes into being, so too did we forget that Source is not only all around us, Source is within our bodies.

To heal this wound of separation from Source and in turn heal our perception of everything that we encounter in life we must root ourselves back into the true original Mother, the primordial Creatrix of all life. Our Source. Mothering ourselves, and becoming Mothers in the world, whether of children, visions, or creations, requires that we reorient ourselves with the original blueprint of creation that is right here within our very own wombs.

Our healing journey begins when we return to the Earth and to the body, allowing the source of life to teach us what “Mother” truly means.

Summoning the inner Mother is a voyage in reclaiming our womb power as our innate direct connection with source and trusting the sacredness of our power as creator beings. It is about reclaiming the voice of our own inner authority and stripping away the voice of societal conditioning. It is about trusting our discernment and right to choose what within us lives and what within us dies. It is about being sovereign and queen of our own domain.

To be “Mother” is to know we are at one with all of creation, and that the dynamic impulse of life that animates existence is not something “other” or separate from us. It is creation breathing through us.

To heal this wound of separation and trust ourselves as unique expressions of the one source of life, we must heal the fragments of our own selves and give ourselves full permission to experience and embody the dynamism of our very nature.

The true Mother is everything, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, sadness, anger, fear, joy, desire, bliss, ecstasy, totality.

We cannot repress one aspect of life and expect to experience the other aspects of life. They are all interwoven, and if we are to reclaim our power as creators, and to fully harness the depth and magnitude of our love, we need to create safe space for ourselves to allow everything that is within us, especially those parts that have been repressed and demonized for a very very long time.

I invite and encourage us all to approach our own bodies, our own emotions, our own experiences, with the same neutrality and reverence that we would offer to the wild.

If you find yourself judging your grief, turn to the hurricanes and the waterfalls and the crashing waves for permission. If you find yourself judging your rage, summon the volcanoes of the Earth, the molten lava that emerges from the depths of the sea and creates entire ecosystems. If you find yourself judging your desires, gaze upon the succulent dew covered flowers that entice the birds and the bees to drink of their nectar so life can flourish.

Embodying the “Mother” is a journey of self reclamation, one that can be deeply enhanced through the support of the pure Mother, our Earth.

Here are some suggestions for exploring your relationship with your own inner Mother, learning to Mother others and your creations with wholeness, and birthing Her magnetism into the world for the well being of all…

1. Apprentice yourself to the wild. Observe the ways of Mother Nature. Watch the seasons. Notice the cycles of the moon. Slow down enough to see the movements of the tiniest creatures. Humble yourself to the grace of the feminine who can be so destructive and yet so merciful in both strengthening us through initiations and also feeding us with the essential magic of the mystery of life. The wild may challenge us, but it doesn’t create suffering. Separation from the wild is what creates suffering.

2. Let your body move you. We are so conditioned to be “masters” of our bodies, when in fact this ignorant control is actually what keeps us from being fully embodied and receiving the bliss through that union. In all ancient systems the feminine leads the masculine, and our bodies are no different. If we want to truly know life, we have to let life lead us. Beginning with our own life force. There is wisdom and stability to be gained through traditional yogic practices, but there is much to discover when we cultivate more feminine, intuitive practices that are less widely accessible but completely available through own surrender and trust. One of the most profound ways to meet with your own source of life is to come into stillness and through the guidance of music allow your own shakti, the serpent emerging from down in your root, to begin to awaken through movement that is pure impulse, pure life, completely authentic, and totally uniquely yours.

3. Bow to the temple of your womb. A woman’s womb is the portal that bridges the worlds of spirit and matter. Physically it is the place where we invite our Beloved into our bodies and through orgasmic union we conceive a co-creation. This can be a child or a vision or a desire/dream. Simply offering your attention to the fertile darkness of your own womb space and expanding that sanctuary all around you can catalyze powerful transformation in your life through reconnecting you with the love that transcends life and death and simultaneously anchors you into the physical world. Come explore our meditation to activate your own womb and root back into the womb of Mother Earth here.

4. Journey through your emotional waves. Many women have been conditioned to fear and to repress their emotions, when these emotions are actually the elemental forces of life that contain the pure essence of our power. (More about this in our article How We Heal Through the Initiations of Life, Death, and Rebirth.) I encourage us all to treat our emotions with reverence and to allow them to be our teachers and our guides. What medicine lives in our grief? What truth hides in our rage? What awakening is dancing through our fears? What wholeness is ready to emerge through our desires? What ease wants to open through our pure radiant joy?

5. Explore your “YES” and “NO.” Boundaries and clear inner knowing are perhaps the most necessary gifts that “Mother” can offer us. We cannot be everywhere all of the time. We cannot be everything for everyone all of the time. We cannot seed and birth and feed and nurture all of the things that come our way. To be “Mother” is to choose what is truly worthy of your energy, your attention, and your care, and to offer yourself in service to that, and to be strong and powerful enough to say “no” to everything else. Many of us have been so conditioned to self betray, beginning with tending to the emotional needs of our mothers and fathers above of our own needs, that knowing our “yes” and “no” can be very challenging at first. Cultivating a regular practice of exploring “YES” and “NO” in the body through our movement meditations and womb healings is essential for reclaiming this voice of discernment.

6. Hold your inner “Daughter” archetype. We are not only designed to be “Mother” in the world, we are ultimately Mothers of ourselves, of our own innocence. In the “New Age” spiritual paradigm, there is often talk about letting down our guard and our walls and treating everyone with love, but that can only authentically occur once our inner child feels safe and honored through being fed and having healthy boundaries. Love is both active and passive, we allow ourselves to love, we let love in, and we have healthy lines that we draw when “love” feels unsafe, unclean, or simply is not what we desire. Our devotion belongs first and foremost to ourselves, and to be a true Mother is to be the fierce protectress of our own inner light. We may choose to let that light shine, but sometimes, just like the moon we may need to step away and withdraw. Honoring and listening to our own needs is the only way to authentically merge, connect, birth, serve, nurture, create.

7. Explore your pleasure. Mother is not only the fierce warrior goddess Durga Ma or the gentle loving all embrace of Mother Mary. She is also the sensual gushing orgasmic pulse of life as Oshun, Lakshmi, and all of the Goddesses that show us sweetness and ease. Through women’s oppression many of us have seen our own mothers, seen mothers in the world, and perhaps also been the mothers, who feel depleted, haggard, and in desperate need of self care. Healing our feminine nature requires prioritizing our joy, our pleasure, and our sensuality as basic needs, to fill our own cups, and to dismantle the conditioning that shames a mother for loving herself, for being sensual, and for celebrating herself and her needs. Pleasure is more than taking bubble baths and doing exercises with yoni eggs (although those are wonderful too!) Pleasure can actually be our approach to every moment, when we remember to let this life be our lover, to savor this breath, to gently stroke our skin, to bring our attention back to the Beloved within that never leaves.

What is your relationship to your inner Mother? To our Mother Earth? To your own Mother? To the Creatrix of all life?

Journey deeper with us in our apprenticeship Whole Woman, where we summon the nine archetypes of the feminine: The Body, The Daughter, The Sister, The Lover, The Mother, The Queen, The Priestess, The Wise Woman, and The Soul as gateways into our power to heal the wound of separation and embody all that we are as sacred and whole.

Learn more here.