photo: Bruno Souza
At this point in my life, I am well into the experience my Saturn Return initiated me into. I could not think of anything more divine and blessed than my son, my first born, as the guide of that initiation. They often say that a woman has a son when she needs to know what true love feels like, and I couldn't agree more. But what should never be my child's responsibility is my ability to transition and embrace my role as a mother. While I think our society has really flourished in its discovery of the mother archetype and in its acceptance of all its colors, there is still so much pressure upon us to be a certain way. Maybe that is just inherent with the role when you move screaming, sweating, and contracting into your new position in life to feel wholly inadequate and unprepared!
I think anytime we shift in life stages it takes a while to find your own pace, your own grace, and your own place within the many forms it can take on. For me, in my personal journey, the continuation of working hard, showing up, and putting strength over all else as a family legacy shifted into the Era of Supermom; and it really didn't encompass anything that felt super-natural to me as a mother. I felt pressured to be everything for my kids, to sacrifice any basic human need if it conflicted with holding space for them. I needed to be a perfect wife, the perfect stepmom (which is an entirely other story in itself), I was balancing a newborn with predetermined routines and personalities of a new bonus family, and putting myself last in order to be a harbinger of peace in a time that was nothing but peaceful. For a long time I didn't mind the pressure and the challenge because I was so used to showing up in this climate as an individual...my entire life. It was what was valued and rewarded in my family for so many reasons! And it's given me much to love about myself. But over time I could feel resentment and exhaustion creeping in, and the more I vehemently shoved it out due to guilt and determination to be a certain way and fill certain values that defined motherhood by those before me, the worse things got. I crumbled and became a shell of who I was before children. (PS: that's the point of a Saturn Return).
They say with every birth story, you are initiated by your child; that you learn something about yourself and about life. Babies represent ideas in dreams and so I don't see why they wouldn't also be a divine embodiment of them in our waking life, too. When my second came, my little hellion on golden hooves, I already knew that I was capable of doing anything, and I simply had zero time for anyone's shit...and thank god because she was born in the hellscape and fuckery that was 2020. She brought a fire back into my life that had been pretty successfully quenched in the chaos of a complete overhaul of reality that I absolutely hadn't planned for or anticipated. While my son was my saving grace, my angel from heaven, and the ray of sunshine in stormy times, my daughter was pure animal, feral, wild feminine strength returning to an Earth that had gone too long without it. It wasn't until after her pregnancy that I realized, the way you change during pregnancy is an expression of what you take on as a host for another human, and less about raging hormones. It's a totally magical experience and divinatory act! Carrying her in my body tossed me onto a trajectory where I would find myself fighting to retain some of the fight and fire I had in my twenties. And I think this is the point in motherhood when a woman realizes she gave her entire self away to the nurturing of her babies, that she haddied in the process. She seeks to return to what was known in order to get a little footing back in her own individual world. I think it's normal to do this and natural for anyone to want to go backwards and find a start point, like a giant retrograde, and retrace your steps in search of yourself. I think it's unavoidable and needed, if I'm being honest. You have to pick up the parts of you that you set down when you became a mother (or at your saturn return), in order to carry them into the present. And so that's what I really think I have been doing since Atlas was born.
You know that you can't be that woman again, and yet figuring out how to reincorporate her into a mother version of who she was is painful, sad, and really challenging. You have to know what things can't be anymore and where other parts just need a different outfit, so to speak. For me, it made it really hard to want to prioritize my kids and a lot of fighting about offloading all that I had chosen to take on in my death passage from maiden to mother happened. I fought guilt, as Atlas still really needed/needs me in a way I wasn't sure I was meant to show up for her, and struggled to find the balance of being the mom I want to be to my daughter and the person I know I needed to evolve into individually if I was going to be able to do that for her. Like I said, every child comes in to this world requiring something unique of you, something that you are, and for her, I had to find myself again. I had to find that badass, free spirited, take shit from no one cowgirl that had been sacrificed the second I met my (now) husband. And I couldn't do that if I was still lost in the mommy with no face phase of my life. Again, it isn't easy because you are trying to embody something you aren't anymore, really. Your body isn't the same, so you try to get that back, knowing deep down that it isn't the way or the issue, that you do on some level have to embrace the physical change you have made as a badass who literally created two humans. You try to regain a style or vibe that was once your go to and feel really silly and fake. I mean the effort to pull things back is really endless, and none of them work. Until! Until you realize you have to draw the idea and the energy of those things into a present expression. And I realized...I'm already badass for having birthed two children, and for showing up for all my kids (bio and step) in hard times the best way I knew how, without hesitation. That take no shit attitude? That became my "in trouble, do your chores, take pride in yourself" voice, it became the energy I brought to the table when they needed someone to stand up for them and defend them. That free spirit? Well she painted her kids doors like portals so their room felt like their own world to escape into. She hosted and created silly game nights that allowed everyone in the family to let loose and laugh. The girl who was often coveted for her beauty? She existed too, in the eyes of her husband, who is openly obsessed with her. She also started showing up in the mirror as a Venusian curved, open hearted, impenetrably sensitive and loving goddess.
And that's what I've been doing; really sinking into the season of my life as a Mother, my way. I'm not a super mom. I don't make Pinterest worthy lunch boxes and write love letters on their mirrors every day. We watch way too much TV and eat a tons of snacks. I don't shut down screen time for carefully crafted family bonding at 5 o'clock, and you know what? We are lucky if we are all sitting in the same room for dinner. But I have a home of eccentric, strong willed, individuals. I have a home full of inventors and artists and psychics and feral spirits. We (and by that I mean me) were never going to thrive as that family anyway, so I had to set down my grandmother's torch for someone else in that family and pick up the creative and eclectic paintbrush of another ancestor. And I like to think I honor that ancestor every day by rebelling against the expectations she couldn't quite seem to escape herself, not fully. I think she started the exit, my mother picked up the pace in her own way, and I'm here to take it to the finish line so my children do not feel encumbered to be anything but themselves as a parent, knowing fully that their children picked them for that reason alone.
Things are changing within me as I settle into a sense of self in my Now, without having to call anything else back into my system. Maybe I don't ride horses anymore in the literal way, but I'm still traveling the worlds unseen on the back of a magical steed and shapeshifting into a horse myself so that divine beings can speak their voices here on Earth (you know if I've ever channeled anything for you). And so you see, like a snake, we shed our skin but never lose who we are in heart and soul. It's okay, and encouraged to shift! We have the blessing to simply change form, to pick up new brushes and paint with new colors.
And, now with the transiting Saturn finally clear of it's opposition to my Leo stellium, and no longer squaring any of my fixed energies, I am fully ready to live this phase of feral housewife, creator of magical worlds, witch mother energy just in time for my Uranus opposition in a few years. From Saturn Return to Uranus Opposition, this is truly the pique of motherhood energy and I intend to use it and live intentionally and with power.
Comments