The Body My Mother Created - Reinstating the Sacred Female
This body was not God given. It was Mother given.
Dear sister, as I birth this blog, I feel it is only right to begin with sharing my own journey into this world. If you choose to join me on the path I’m embarking upon – a path of reinstating the Sacred Female – we have a lot of get to knowing to do. So let’s start from the beginning. This took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1989.
It begins with Mother. My mother.
In her dark, nourishing womb my soul found form. I just appeared there, because that’s the kind of magic my mother possessed. She allowed me space inside her, she allowed me flesh. She allowed me womb, and the powers and magic of womb. When I grew inside her, I knew she was sacred. I knew she was Divine Creatress. I knew she was one with the currents of this endless universe that makes life appear again and again.
Then I was born and I forgot.
The story of my birth was always told by my father. My mother died of cancer when I was five, so I never got a chance to tell me her own version.
The story goes that my mother was in labor for 48 hours and then I got stuck. My head was too big, my dad said. The heroine is not my mother, but the one doctor who came back late at night after her shift to deliver me by forceps. She was the only one at the hospital familiar with this technique. I grew up learning to be in awe of this talented doctor who saved my mother and me from a c-section. I did not grow up to appreciate the fact that my mother gave me life.
This slight against my mother might seem a simple, ordinary one. But it holds a deep and symbolic meaning. It is telling of the fact that our society no longer hold women and women’s bodies as sacred (we used to, way back in the days). If we did, the story of my birth would have a different heroine.
Forgive me, Mother, for forgetting.
Sister, this is the tragedy we’ve all grown up with. The tragedy that is the loss of the Sacred Female. Our society neither respects nor reveres womanhood. It’s easy to become numb to this fact from the very ordinariness of it.
When we forget to honor our mothers, we forget to honor ourselves as women.
I remember walking through a mall where my husband and I lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, a couple of months after I gave birth to our first child. My baby was sleeping in the carrier, his head resting against my heart. I stopped for a moment and looked around at all the people. Young, old, fat, skinny, dark, light. And I thought: every single one of these came from a woman. I felt a reverence that seemed ancient rush over me, like the breath of some long forgotten Goddess.
For every human, living or dead, there is a womb. There is a Mother. There is a woman.
Sister, if we can begin to honor the life-giving powers of our mothers and ourselves, we slowly begin to open our eyes to the possibility of the Sacred Female. The possibility that our Mother (however imperfect) was one and that we are, too.
Recognizing the life-giving abilities of womanhood is a starting point. It is not our whole story. Sacred Womanhood, in its depth and beauty, is something we will explore together as we travel this path, and She (me, you) is so many things. Most importantly, she is woman as wholeness. She is the woman who does not have to choose. She is both life-giving and death-wielding, both intellect and emotion, both soul and body, both ancient and brand new.
The Sacred Female (or Sacred She, as I like to call her) has been lost for millennia now, and her story is almost forgotten. But she has left traces for us to discover. Read scientists like Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas and you will begin to remember.
Her forgotten presence speaks to us through Goddess figurines, 30.000 years old, appearing from the Earth. Through temple entrances in the shape of labia and temples in the shape of wombs. Through the use of the cowrie shells, reminiscent of female genitalia, as sacred objects.
We were sacred once and we will be sacred again.
Sister, your woman’s body, the one your Mother made for you, is sacred. She is a temple. Sister, I need you to remember this about yourself. Your flesh is not meat to be consumed by others at their convenience. Every cell in your body is illuminated by the presence of your vast soul. Honor yourself.
(Photo by Gabrielle Gachelin)
Sister, I offer you some poetry for this journey. This is the only way I know how to speak to you. I speak not to your brain, but to your womb and heart. I speak to the parts of you that wants to remember. That you are the fruit of a sacred womb, and that you yourself possess the magic of womanhood. This is the only way we can birth a new reality for ourselves and our daughters.
Stories and songs written on the inner walls of my womb
the voices of my mothers and grandmothers
they whisper their burden and their wisdom
I look into this dark-red mother temple
I trace the lines of their stories
I close my eyes and an ancient hymn rises to greet me
it's my own voice that sings it
yet I don't understand the words
I meet you here in my womb
we are born sisters of this story
The Sister Who Whispered to the River
Carries your words to me, sister
She tells me of songs you sang for the earth
She whispers of husband and child
She tells me you knew what oneness was
And that when your time came, you went unafraid
I listen by the river, I beg for more
So much forgotten, a vastness to learn
from my womb flows art, solutions, inventions, healing, humans
and countless manifestations of my unique genius
my being is the kind of eternal beauty
the deep, reverent, lush beauty of complete freedom
because I trust in sisterhood
I change the course of history
by coming home to myself as a Sacred She.
