Mothering Your Creative Life
“I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is.”
-oprah
Last week, I had a very profound journey with the wondrous and motherly Summer Bear Spirit, as she called herself. I was feeling a bit heavy-down about showing up as my full self, about trusting the art in me that yearns to be known...
As she made a fire and then lovingly braided my hair, she shared a strong message about play, encouraging me to "be childlike in the summer of your life." I was feeling this summer energy of playfulness around the Solstice too.
But sometimes, I find play very challenging. Naturally adventurous and a lover of life, I wonder why? Why does play sometimes elude me so much? Intellectually, we can see that the culture has come to so overvalue work that we call play a luxury, not a birthright. Still, emotionally I couldn't get to the essence of my blindspot around play...
This morning, an insight struck me, as I was reading a chapter about the power of the motherly instinct. And it is this: We have to be properly and consistently mothered in order to truly feel playful, to readily access our creative impulse.
My mother was playful at times and was also very adventurous, and yet she herself was woefully under-mothered, as was her mother before and perhaps many Grandmothers back...
Women and many spirited men have kept the thread going as best we could, and yet the whole world suffers under-mothering. We want to make change in the world, to do what we love, to make a difference and experience true happiness... and yet, the conditions for this kind of creative life must be in place.
And those conditions are really the stuff of MOTHER... We need exactly that safe, nurturing, encouraging and protective energy around us that a healthy mother provides. We need to know, in our soul, that we are good and we are enough, no matter how the project turns out, or how we stumble and fumble in our becoming.
Mothering takes all worthiness and places it firmly and unwaveringly within. This creates space for the masterpiece to emerge. Mother energy creates the unconditional love that sets us free...
Not only to create life-affirming art and businesses and children... but to create the very atmosphere needed to fully be ourselves. We need mothering to face our wounds- personal and cultural- and heal them fully under a loving eye that values seeing things through to completion...
If we are a motherless child, if we were un-mothered or under-mothered (and arguably we all have been in the patriarchal model), we have to take up this big role ourselves, empowering ourselves and each other and the world with mature mothering.
As we do so, we are singing a vast creative spirit back into the world. Then, the act of making change- both personal and professional- will become easier, safer, more effective and ingenious. Above all, our creative pursuits- whatever they may be- will become so much more PLAYFUL!!