Are you my Mother?
Are you my Mother?
Do you remember that book?—I remember Its hilarity, sure, but alsoits particular heartbreak: the abandoned child, the absent mother, and afaint anxiety about its premise that lingered after the details of thestory had faded, despite the happy ending. With Mother's Day on mymind, I went looking for this book the other day, in boxes of savedchildren's books. Though I did (happily!) find Goodnight Moon, and Pat the Bunny, I never did find Are you my Mother?.
Mother's Day is Sunday. Like a lot of us, I both am a mother andhave a mother. While I cherish and love my own mother and feel deeplyconnected to my identify as a mother, I can't help but reflect on otherforms of mothering I have given and received in my lifetime, unrelatedto biology or family of origin. If we are lucky, we have all done ourshare of mothering and being mothered, in all sorts of ways. Think aboutteachers, mentors, nurses, therapists, dear friends. And Shakti—thecreative divine mother said to express herself through all beings.
Every Mother's Day I recall my 14-year old self, and my first boyfriend,Jon. His mother, Elise, took me to my very first yoga class. I creditElise with my deep, heartfelt connection to this practice, and to itsroots of love, caretaking, and compassion. Elise was beautiful, vibrant,nurturing, maternal, loving and easy to talk to, and I connected withher in a way that I was not able to do with my own mother, at that time.Like a lot of teenage girls on the brink of early adulthood, I putdistance between myself and my parents, but was still hungry formaternal affection. Long after Jon and I broke up, Elise and I remainedclose. She took me to yoga classes, we went on long walks, she spoke tome like an adult, and listened attentively. Deeply shy at 14, I sharedwith Elise my most tortured fears and giddy dreams, emboldened by herwarm encouragement. Years later, when my own children were toddlers and Iwas living in Southern California, struggling with a kind of continual,sleep-deprived identity crisis, I tried to track her down, and foundout she had died of breast cancer, less than 6 months before. For 2 daysI cried continuously. My chiropractor, gently adjusting my neck,suggested that I might be grieving something more than the loss of onewoman I hadn't seen in 8 or more years, and I got mad, cried harder, andwent home still grief soaked. Over time I came to recognize that insome essential way, he was exactly right. Elise was my model for motherlove, and without her in the world, who was I? I loved my own mother butfelt Elise's death tear at the very fabric of me. It was around thistime that, after a 2-year hiatus, I began to teach yoga again. I foundthat my energy as a toddler-wrangling, haggard, newish mother lentitself rather well to teaching yoga, and I began to see teaching as akind of offering. I noticed that teaching energized me, rather thandepleting me, when I saw it simply as an opportunity to offer somethingof myself, something that was rooted in love, in nurturing, inacceptance. It didn't matter that I was leaking milk, frequentlyexhausted from lack of sleep, and not terribly fit. I felt my own"mother energy" re-awakened by teaching yoga once again. Replenished, Iwould return home after teaching a class to my beautiful babies, andfeel full of patience and love.
The divine mother is within all of us, male and female. We findcreativity, unconditional love, compassion, wisdom, beauty, gentleness,patience, acceptance, forgiveness, intuition, and healing all carried bythe divine feminine or divine mother. It is a powerful force that givesus inspiration and power to create anything and everything, even lifeitself. If you invite Shakti into your yoga practice—make each breath adevotion to her—you will find your yoga transformed into a joyfulcelebration of the spirit.
I hope that this Mother's Day, as you honor the mothers and motherfigures in your life, you will honor also the energy of Shakti withinyourself. We all have biological mothers, adoptive mothers, or variousother mother-figures, men and women, who have loved us and shaped us.Regardless of where you are or have been across this spectrum ofmother-love, I wish you all a happy Mother's Day and hope the light andlove of Shakti shines brightly upon you and from within you