Embracing the Mother & Releasing the Maiden.

On maturity and cycles.

Not sure of the artist, but I had this for my lock screen on my phone the whole time the girls were with me last winter. It felt right for this post.

Recently I worked a ritual, the details of which I will keep to myself for now.

What I will share is what I “offered up”—my sacrifice.

The Maiden. Not the archetype, that would be impossible, but my own relationship with her and specifically with the immature aspects of her and with the places where I am still grasping onto her and the machinations I developed to serve and defend her.

True, the maiden fades when she will and she may not ever entirely fade, but I will not attempt to resuscitate her as so many women in our culture do, as I myself have done, clinging to her eternal spring as if maturity is some curse that must be warded off.

I welcome maturity. I embrace it and motherhood.

And I can still feel her—the Maiden.

I feel her in my giggle which will never fade. She dwells forever at the corner of my smile, in my dimples, as well most specifically, in the way I bite my lower lip when they twitch in a flirt. She may lurk at the edges of my sense of humor, though I detect more Crone there in recent years.

What the Maiden will no longer be doing is ruling my psyche or my body.

Though I have not entirely been ruled by the Maiden for a long, long time she has been a (too) dominant force in my consciousness at times—suppressed, hyper alert, and pulling strings in ways I am ready to relinquish.

I was 18 when I became a mother—17 at my daughter’s annunciation. However, I was not ready. I was not ready for motherhood, though in some ways I was instantly reshaped by it. I was a devoted mom to my infant girl. I have been a devotee to The Mother my whole life, and I have clung to aspects of my own immaturity as if… as if what? I can’t even answer that.

Well, I can, let’s let it unfold.

What I know is that I live in a society that praises youth and beauty and in a culture that makes billions of dollars off of women’s insecurities. Most of the modern world only recognizes the aspects of the Maiden as having any value—sex, youth, objectivity, a blank screen upon which to project and fantasize—and what little value is left over is ascribed to the physical attributes of childrearing. And even then “mothering” must be done “perfectly”. You are not allowed to actually be reshaped by motherhood, let alone to age. You must “whip” your body back into shape after making another body from it. You must work. You must get the kids to all the activities. Have sex. Have friends. Stay in. Go out. And you must look good doing all of it.

Maybe that is why true Motherhood is resisted in our culture. There is so much fucking pressure, shame, and perfectionism attached to it. So, though nobody genuinely resists maturity, being devalued, shamed, exhausted, and eventually disappeared…yeah, not a lot of glory in that.

Motherhood was also tied to addiction for me. Not long after my daughter was born, I resumed my “dance” with illicit substances. And though I continued to care for her, at one point I lost my ability to do so and relinquished custody. It wasn’t that long I was out of her life, but even once I got her back, re-committing to motherhood had this guilt attached to it. I had failed her, my marriage, and myself. How could I be worthy of this sacred calling or even functional enough to perform basic duties? It was a regrowth experience for both of us—mother and daughter.

It was hard to deepen into the places where I needed to hold ground not only for my daughter, but for myself. Discipline is hard when you are glazed in guilt. It’s hard to create structure from scratch, and it’s even harder to repair a foundation with an actively growing building sitting on top of it.

I was not the mother I would have liked to have been. I was not the mother I am capable of being now. How often did I retreat into the shallows of my own underdeveloped maidenhood? So many times. It provided a respite from responsibility. A thing I could not only hide in but get high on.

It was taken from me at a young age. Younger than I knew for a long time. My maidenhood—my innocence.

This happens to way too many of us and I am not “special”, rather unfortunately. I am one of millions or billions of boys and girls who gets infiltrated by something nasty long before we have the consciousness or skills to deal with it. What happens when something like this happens to us? A few things are possible, but one thing is inevitable: we bond with the consciousness of the perpetrator. And when I say “perpetrator” I mean not only our own personal manifestation of it, but with the universal archetype as well. We become prey. But there is something that happens to us internally as well. It attaches to us often “freezing” a “part” of us at whatever age we are when we have that encounter.

Some people later in life become perpetrators themselves. Some people get very good at internal predation. We terrorize and criticize ourselves into silence, obedience, into “smallness”. It makes sense in that it keeps us where we are most in need of being met, but we need something older and wiser to meet us there besides our own fledging self-hatred and confusion.

This is where the Mother comes in. We need Her. Not just the human ones who can and will fail no matter how “good” they are. We need a Big Mamma, a Bear Mamma, a Universal Momma who is capable of holding all of us and who can raise Her growl at those destructive forces—inner and outer—that attempt to hold us back, hold us down, and keep us silent.

This is who I am becoming. In some ways, who I have been for all my life, but a young body can only do so much, can only hold so much, can only roar so loud.

This body—this woman’s body—is no longer trying to catch the wandering eye, is no longer courting the predator, but is ousting him from all those places he dared to dominate and hide within her psyche. This woman—this woman’s body—who made a baby, whose body then went on to make babies of her own is a temple and force of nature. There is no place for simpering and cajoling, for secretly wishing to be abused so she can stay “small” and not have to claim Her largess.

This woman—this woman’s body—has hips which hold villages and legs which move mountains. Her dreams are oracular and she has the gall to interpret them and know their meaning and take them in and live them through her heart.

This woman—this woman’s body—will no longer be used for currency. Her presence is the beginning and end of all negotiations. And in that aura she stands firmly, but she feels so soft.

She feels so soft!

So soft…

Without the armor there is no need for gimmicks, for hooks, for games. It’s safe to drop all artifice and be as Creation made me. Naked. Volatile. Sweet. Wise. Caring and oh so deeply protective.

Make no mistake: these claws are sharp, the teeth too, and the sheer weight of spiritual bulk behind them is enough to crush any unsuspecting fool.

I see the Maiden, me. Young. Fresh. Unmolested. She can dance freely now because a Mamma Bear is watching.

Lotsa love and thanks for reading.

For my paid subscribers I am preparing some dream content to share with you about primal wisdom and freeing ourselves from internal predation. Stay tuned!

~Justice