A mother is the womb or earth/ground of our earliest existance. She provides a home for us as a cell deep within her and we grow there. We have no control over what affects our mother while we are forming inside her. We are not separate to her for so very long, the development or process of separation is a very long one and we carry her inside of us in many ways. Now that I see just how much my mother’s body has had to carry, I am feeling the terrible enormity of what it is to live in a body. This is interesting as Mercury transits backwards through Sagittarius as in myth, Sag’s ruler Jupiter was a sky God who took flight. He was never faithful to Hera his wife and he abandoned her in many ways. According to astrologers such a Liz Greene this is what is most profoundly experience by humans in that we all have a split between the mental/spiritual and physical/earthly/bodily aspect of us. Some of us take refuge in the mind and flight from the body leaving the body angry or disturbed/betrayed abandoned in some way.
I don’t know if I am explaining it well but when we sometimes see the schism between our idea of how reality is and what will transpire if we act on our hopes dreams and desires and then the true reality that results. If we are out of kilter in some way the results or consequences may be either shocking, harsh, levelling or humbling.
This is really what I experiencing as I am seeing how my mother’s body is laboring not only under the affects of illnes and age but also the long term affects of all the drugs being pumped into her at present as the result of a fall which came hot on the heels of a trauma which triggered old trauma imprints.
The hospital room she is in has a terrible smell which I also remember from the care home my disabled sister lived in for so many years. I would leave there at times so grateful to be back in fresh air but sometimes the smell would linger. Its a smell of decay in some way. Its hard to experience.
I do not think my Mum can come back from this. She told me today “I wish I could just go out as Judy (my older sister) went out, I really don’t want to live like this.” Hearing these words I feel powerless I want to hug my Mum and take away her pain and burdens but that is not possible and I know it, so I just breakdown and cry but then I need to let those tears free and rise again from the deep dark place.
I want to go on living SO MUCH now. I just spoke to my other sister who seems to being dragged back under at the moment. With her bi polar she struggles to eat. At 3 pm she still has not had lunch. One thing I know going through all of this stress, if I want to keep a positive outlook I need to eat and eat good food. To me food is life, when I don’t want to eat I don’t want to live. I don’t have to eat all the time but I do have to nourish myself and how well I do this shows how well I am mothering and nurturing body mind and soul.
I must admit to have been feeling very scared this afternoon contemplating what will happen to Mum and how we can care for her when she needs to leave the hospital. We cannot let her go home alone, she is just too frail. We may have to put her in care, if she makes it that far. She isnt eating much and they have oxygen on her this afternoon. I think tonight I will take her up some avocado and something else nutritious. The affect of the drugs she is on has been to make her feel so nauseated she doesnt want to eat. The endone painkiller always upsets her and at other times she has refused it, and at the moment she is receiving this as well as antibotics all of which harm our intestines and intestinal flora. She was coming off the pain patch prior to my nephews visit and I had got her a good probiotic to help to heal her tummy and bowel. That now has all gone out the window. A visit we hoped would end in connection, ended in a terrible fall for my Mum.
Like it or not our bodies are finite in terms of the stress and emotion they can carry. There does come a time when the body says ‘enough’, we may fall or things may come undone because nature is setting a limit and telling us we need to be more aware. Reversions of energy always accompany backward (or retrograde) transits of Mercury. This one started with a meeting of Mercury and Saturn and Saturn wont stand for human and natural limits being transgressed. With Mars now in Scorpio it can also feel like we are swimming through a mud or swamp energy wise. Intense things happen and we need to dig deep emotionally. We may have to confront emotional things from the past that got buried or hidden.
I saw this happen for my nephew over the past day. He got a lift back down from Sydney where his daughter is in hospital to spend two hours with Mum this morning Mum told me he was crying and broke down with her completely. He told me last night that his grandma is the only Mum he really ever knew. He was separated from his own mother at 6 years old. His step mother was awful to both he and his brother. He was then sent to boarding school, we didn’t see them both for over 10 years. Wounds and separations in our family run so deep.
There seems to be such a focus on mother at the moment in my own life as well as the importance of our deep connection to her as being and body. I know I need now to mother myself in the best way I can. I find I am needing to be a kind of mother too to both my living sister and my nephew. It occured to me today when I was having lunch that cells cant just break off and decide they dont want to communicate with others cells without disease happening to them. So do we need to keep up some kind of connection with the cells that gave rise to us. I am not articulating this well. I just know at hard times like this we need both internal and external support, our cells and bodies thrive on both sustenance and connection. I know this as for so many years I was a broken off cell just barely surviving at all and thinking that was okay. I was also disconnected from my Mum when I could have connected and my body really started to suffer and go through intense symptoms from then on.
That said there have been a lot of times my relationship with my Mum has been frustrating emotionally and I could not gain nurturance there. In my own life when no loving mother is present I go to the Great or archetypal mother. I think of the Goddess Hera all alone after Jupiter/Zeus left her to have other conquests. I think too of the absent masculine in our maternal lineage. I then feel that I also have to be that for myself too. Strong boundaries of self care, husbanding my energy in positive life affirming ways. Being strong but also vulnerable.
I can’t at this point in writing help thinking of some words from one of my favourite spiritual texts the Tao Te Ching “she who knows the masculine but keeps to the feminine, will cradle the world, when you lovingly hold the world you will know eternal goodness and will become again as a little child. ”
A child of wonder sees and knows many things, loosing or undoing the corruption of social conditioning, love wisdom enlightenment seems to lay at the basis of this kind of knowing. This may or may not make sense to readers. However I do feel we need both forces in our life (masculine and feminine/child and mother/mother and father), in some kind of balance if we wish to walk with grace and keep a light open deep inside our hearts and minds. Maybe Mercury’s retrograde transit has much to do with these kind of issues. At least it seems to for me. Its all in formation as Mercury is only one week into its backward transit and more will be revealed in time.
For now I am in my own life striving to balance both masculine and feminine, activity and rest, contemplation and connection, digging deep and reaching out as I navigate this next challenge along my life’s journey that is fraught with such depth and intensity of feeling. I am so glad to have a way inside to relate to it all, whether or not my blog makes sense I dont have to worry about it being accurate or ‘right’, its just a stumbling bumbling attempt to express myself in the best way I know how for now.
Emerging From The Dark Night 