INTERWOVEN
When Maiden intertwines with Mother
Hi Dear Ones,
How are you all feeling after the Solar Eclipse? It was quite intense over here! We landed back home after a week in Mexico City and Tepoztlán just a few days before.
Slowly integrating the lessons!
On our trip to Mexico City I had the opportunity to sit for Tea at EKAM Atelier, a space curated for tea and adornment. I had been wanting to visit this space since their opening! Typically I am in the seat of service when it comes to tea and it was such a gift to receive as a guest.
During this sit, away from the everyday mundane normalities, I was able to tap into the identity of Motherhood. Countless times, I’ve heard women say that they’ve lost “themselves” in motherhood and that they no longer know who they are outside of being a mother. I also hear women wanting to become mothers, yet they hold the fear of change. I believe that this is a failing of our society. As cyclical beings, women are meant to change, grow, and expand the capacity of their identities. The Maiden fears becoming the Mother because the Mother must release control of who she will become.
On the car ride home from the hospital after Aluna’s birth (we’ll save her birth story for another day), I was laying flat in the back seat with my head close to her car seat (there were a few complications that made it so I was unable to sit up). We were driving from Santa Monica to Venice on a route that I had taken pretty much everyday. Laying there, watching the route that I knew so well upside-down, I felt that everything had changed. A feeling filled my body, and from the moment on, I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. This was the ultimate truth. Our lives will never be the same again once we bare children, they shouldn’t be. For many, there is a grieving process that come along with this. Grief is natural and needed in the transformation from Maiden to Mother. However, what I often witness instead of grieving is a clinging, a holding on tight to what no longer is. The transition from Maiden to Mother requires us to come face to face with our shadow.
“Our emotional and spiritual world consists of an illuminated area and a dark area which exists even though we may not see it. It is the task of each human being to go through this early life in search of our own shadow in an effort to shed light on it and walk our own healing path.” Laura Gutman, Materity, Coming Face to Face with your Own Shadow
And yet when women pass through the threshold of Motherhood, our society doesn’t witness this. My INNATE Postpartum Care teacher, Rachelle Seliga, talks about how we often have ceremonies and blessing ways for these Rites of Passage. These can be incredibly beautiful markers yet, if on the other side of them our community doesn’t recognize the immense change the woman moves through, what’s the point? We can have a Blessing Way ceremony for a mother to be, shower her with gifts, flowers, and blessings but if this support in not maintained as the Maiden transitions to Mother we will continue to live in a Maiden-Centric society. Without society’s acknowledgment, Mother’s often get stuck in the wounded Maiden archetype, never reaching full maturation. This can look blaming other’s, helplessness, wanting to be saved, and lacking autonomy.
Personally, I’ve been sitting with what it feels like to take full responsibility for my needs and to so unapologetically. In the archetype of the Mother, we take full authority for this. Over the last 5 years, this has been my work and as I received tea in Mexico City, I felt the cumulation of all of it. I felt the identity of my past intertwined with the Mother I am today.
The gratitude, grief, expansion…
All of it.
Mostly, I felt ready to share what has been moving through me. For a while, I thought I wasn’t ready because I didn’t feel fully embodied in the archetype of the Mother. However, I’ve realized in the last weeks that this work is living and breathing through me and that’s why it needs to be shared. For this is what I’ve been present in my daily life, this is my medicine.
And with that, I’m excited to announce…
Interwoven is a 3 week virtual journey for both Maidens & Mothers. We will meet on Tuesday’s beginning May 7th.
Moving from Maiden to Mother is a Rite of Passage and part of the maturation cycle of women. In this three week virtual journey, we will discover both the Maiden and Mother archetypes and well as physical differences. We will explore the symbiotic relationship between Mothers and Maidens and how their existence relies upon each other.
Full details and registration will be coming out Monday, April 22nd. If you already feel the calling, feel free to email me at potz.emma@gmail.com.
For now, I’m wishing you all a weekend full of abundance and joy!
Blessings & Love,
Emma
Current Offerings
Click Here or our weekly tea schedule in San Pancho, MX
Connect here about offering tea at a retreat, celebration, or intentional gathering
To connect about in person or virtual Postpartum Care please email me at: potz.emma@gmail.com
Registration for Interwoven begins April 22nd!
