A Mother’s Day letter. For the mothered, the unmothered, the ones who bore children, the ones who did not, and the ones who have been mothering all along.
Thank you so for the gift of this essay Elayne. The section called “what a mother is” was particularly moving, and I passed it on to my daughter. It’s an unacknowledged truth that true mothering is not always complacent and soft, but tells the unwelcome truth and is fierce when needed.
Elayne, Oceans of thanks for your brilliant, incisive powerful essays.. and much love to you. I sm so grateful to have found you in the turbulent internet currents!
I have read all of your essays, wept often & shared them on… for I have been (with sister-colleagues) fighting all my life in these ‘trenches’ —& it is heart-breaking to see our toxic civilization (I call it Shrivelization) sliding backward in many ways, globally.
But I also witness radiant bolts of energy & beauty— like your mind & spirit—& I rejoice. I am a VERY old lady now.. blessed to be the mother of daughters—& grandmother to twin boys (I had hoped for girls, LOL—) but my daughter (a licensed counseling psychologist, & feisty wood-switch) & her husband (a ln activist for good & a Green Man in many good ways) are raising them with passionate love, humor & consistency—& I marvel… that these 18 month old boys have the amazing luck & a fighting chance to become Healthy Men. I pray to the Great Mother (in her thousand thousand forms) that this may be so.
And I pray for your well-being & that your words find and inspire/ignite a hundred million hearts & minds toward deep health & a new world. More thoughts to come,
Elayne, thank you from the deepest, most tender places of my Heart, for this moving, profound writing. It’s the medicine we deeply need.
As I sit in the fire of the loss of my beautiful son, I deeply mourn the many ways I failed to Mother him. I read your words with self judgment that I could not and did not rise to the occasion that he and our Great Mother asked of me, time and again. I forgive myself over and over, embrace the lessons, and move forward wiser and more compassionate for all of us.
I am full body, heartbreakingly , snotty sobbing after reading this. I am profoundly moved . You write with such exquisite tenderness and truth. The way you hold yourself - and all of us - with such tenderness, honesty and grace feels almost unbearable. I appreciate all that you are and all that you stand for.
Oh my love thank you for this note. You have reached out and touched straight into my heart. I feel so blessed to be able to share my deeper heart with you and the others who are reading. We all need each other so much at this point. Sending so much love to you. 🌹🙏🏽
Oh love, this is so beautiful. Thank you ♥️ My life has also been shaped by the Mother Wound, having also lost my own, after many years of illness, when we were both very young (she was 51, I was 25). I can't believe that was almost 30 years ago. That wound evolved into a wider grief for The Mother in our world. Her passing set me on the path. As I have shared in my own memoir. So many resonances dear sister. Much love to you ♥️
Thank you so much for what is perhaps the most central and important post on Sub Stack.
What stood out for me most was
"The world we are inside has been so starved of truthful mothering that most of us cannot tell the difference, anymore, between honest love and managed niceness ... the quiet ten-thousand-year erasure of an archetype, an energy, a way of being human that we have all been starved of."
I thought of our (especially men's) reaction to nursing mothers - often the subject of humor on sitcoms. A combination of disgust and sexual attraction, seldom a reaction of beauty, wonder, and "motherly love.) Also I thought of the "Madonna/prostitute complex" where us men separate women into motherly and sexual roles, with no idea, really what a whole woman is. We have to reach back so far into history to discover anything approaching a healthy understand of what a whole natural woman is like. Aspiring to return to matriarchy is certainly one aspect of amelioration, and so is inner work. Thanks again for sharing your travels toward a sane and complete existence, and for identifying the core issue so accurately.
I grew up in England, where Mothering Sunday happened and still happens on a different day from in the USA. My mother preferred us to call it by this older name, rather than 'Mother's Day', and wanted us to remember all mothers and all who mother, not just bring her flowers. Her sister, our aunt, who had not given birth (we never knew whether by choice or by mishap) was also 'like a second Mom' to us. I'm sure this is one reason Mom said this. But she also wanted us to honour Mother Earth.
Thank you so much for this moving and validating post, Elayne. I'm childless, too, and it has been such a painful, even excruciating, reproductive journey. But, yes, we all mother. And, hopefully, we all find peace in that mothering, as we move into what must be the most powerful archetype, the most stunning role, it is possible to inhabit.
Thank you Elayne. The personal pieces you share here are potent and so tender. I am more and more devoted to bringing the life force of real love, freedom, eros and generosity back into our feminine lineages. This can happen in so many different ways, and it needs to. Like mycellium, sprouting in every direction at once. And to enter into the beauty of what youhave described, the experience of knowing my mother now, after she has left this earth, and holding her in deep love, is a miracle in itself. Even as I choose/we choose to live in alignment with different stars, to begin to embody ourselves fully and freely on this earth.
Thanks for speaking to the richness of mothering: Allo parents. Beyond life-death and linear time. The feeding. The acceptance. The sacred bodies.
As I am becoming an Evolved Nest Ambassador, I am reminded of the power of the original instructions for child rearing. I think you and your readers would resonate with the kinship worldview and the evolved nest of care, attachment and nature/village/cosmos connection. Check out Kindredmedia.org and the work of dr Darcia Narvaez.
What moved me most while reading this is that perhaps the deepest form of mothering is not holding on.
It is loving even when you cannot hold.
Because we often imagine the Mother as the one who protects, shelters, keeps safe, keeps close. But some mothers never had that luxury. Some loved while releasing. Some prayed while losing control. Some stood on the edge of the river with empty hands and no certainty except love itself.
And maybe that is where motherhood becomes sacred.
Not in control.
Not in perfection.
But in remaining tender inside powerlessness.
The story of Musa’s mother has always felt unbearable to me for this reason. She is not simply a mother protecting her child. She is a mother forced to place love into uncertainty. To release what she would die to keep. To trust while terrified. To continue loving when love no longer guarantees safety.
And I think many women still live inside that river.
Because today Pharaoh no longer arrives only with soldiers. Sometimes he arrives through systems, speed, comparison, loneliness, algorithms, pressure, performance, emotional absence. Mothers are still standing at the edge of waters they cannot fully control, watching the world pull at the souls of their children.
That is why I think motherhood is deeper than care.
Motherhood is the refusal to let fear destroy tenderness.
It is the refusal to pass down despair.
It is the ability to keep loving in a world that constantly teaches people to harden themselves in order to survive.
And maybe the deepest wound of the unmothered world is not simply that many people were not loved enough.
It is that so many mothers themselves were never held while trying to hold everyone else.
Sometimes the mother could not mother because nobody ever mothered her.
And still, somehow, she loved with the little warmth she had left.
To me, that is one of the holiest forms of human existence.
Tears. I weep for and with the Mother inside of me, and my mom all the moms who have mothered me. Your work Elayne, has catalyzed something in me that I have not fully appreciated. Thank you!
I really needed this today...... it put into words the parts of my "mothering" life that I have never been able to express. I chose not to have children due to my mother's abusive nature, but I was a massage therapist for 25 years, am an aunt, and great aunt, a Witch and Priestess, and all of those pieces are now beautifully in place. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this beautiful piece. I lost my mother at 22, and Mother's Day has always been problematic for me, even though I went on to mother three daughters who have grown up to be wonderful women of whom I'm very proud. You have given me a gift for which I am deeply grateful. 🙏
Thank you so for the gift of this essay Elayne. The section called “what a mother is” was particularly moving, and I passed it on to my daughter. It’s an unacknowledged truth that true mothering is not always complacent and soft, but tells the unwelcome truth and is fierce when needed.
I can’t wait to read your memoir ❤️
Elayne, Oceans of thanks for your brilliant, incisive powerful essays.. and much love to you. I sm so grateful to have found you in the turbulent internet currents!
I have read all of your essays, wept often & shared them on… for I have been (with sister-colleagues) fighting all my life in these ‘trenches’ —& it is heart-breaking to see our toxic civilization (I call it Shrivelization) sliding backward in many ways, globally.
But I also witness radiant bolts of energy & beauty— like your mind & spirit—& I rejoice. I am a VERY old lady now.. blessed to be the mother of daughters—& grandmother to twin boys (I had hoped for girls, LOL—) but my daughter (a licensed counseling psychologist, & feisty wood-switch) & her husband (a ln activist for good & a Green Man in many good ways) are raising them with passionate love, humor & consistency—& I marvel… that these 18 month old boys have the amazing luck & a fighting chance to become Healthy Men. I pray to the Great Mother (in her thousand thousand forms) that this may be so.
And I pray for your well-being & that your words find and inspire/ignite a hundred million hearts & minds toward deep health & a new world. More thoughts to come,
With love,
Diana
PS, that was: woods-witch, lol.
Elayne, thank you from the deepest, most tender places of my Heart, for this moving, profound writing. It’s the medicine we deeply need.
As I sit in the fire of the loss of my beautiful son, I deeply mourn the many ways I failed to Mother him. I read your words with self judgment that I could not and did not rise to the occasion that he and our Great Mother asked of me, time and again. I forgive myself over and over, embrace the lessons, and move forward wiser and more compassionate for all of us.
I am full body, heartbreakingly , snotty sobbing after reading this. I am profoundly moved . You write with such exquisite tenderness and truth. The way you hold yourself - and all of us - with such tenderness, honesty and grace feels almost unbearable. I appreciate all that you are and all that you stand for.
Oh my love thank you for this note. You have reached out and touched straight into my heart. I feel so blessed to be able to share my deeper heart with you and the others who are reading. We all need each other so much at this point. Sending so much love to you. 🌹🙏🏽
Oh love, this is so beautiful. Thank you ♥️ My life has also been shaped by the Mother Wound, having also lost my own, after many years of illness, when we were both very young (she was 51, I was 25). I can't believe that was almost 30 years ago. That wound evolved into a wider grief for The Mother in our world. Her passing set me on the path. As I have shared in my own memoir. So many resonances dear sister. Much love to you ♥️
Thank you so much for what is perhaps the most central and important post on Sub Stack.
What stood out for me most was
"The world we are inside has been so starved of truthful mothering that most of us cannot tell the difference, anymore, between honest love and managed niceness ... the quiet ten-thousand-year erasure of an archetype, an energy, a way of being human that we have all been starved of."
I thought of our (especially men's) reaction to nursing mothers - often the subject of humor on sitcoms. A combination of disgust and sexual attraction, seldom a reaction of beauty, wonder, and "motherly love.) Also I thought of the "Madonna/prostitute complex" where us men separate women into motherly and sexual roles, with no idea, really what a whole woman is. We have to reach back so far into history to discover anything approaching a healthy understand of what a whole natural woman is like. Aspiring to return to matriarchy is certainly one aspect of amelioration, and so is inner work. Thanks again for sharing your travels toward a sane and complete existence, and for identifying the core issue so accurately.
Thank you for this beautiful essay.
I grew up in England, where Mothering Sunday happened and still happens on a different day from in the USA. My mother preferred us to call it by this older name, rather than 'Mother's Day', and wanted us to remember all mothers and all who mother, not just bring her flowers. Her sister, our aunt, who had not given birth (we never knew whether by choice or by mishap) was also 'like a second Mom' to us. I'm sure this is one reason Mom said this. But she also wanted us to honour Mother Earth.
Thank you so much for this moving and validating post, Elayne. I'm childless, too, and it has been such a painful, even excruciating, reproductive journey. But, yes, we all mother. And, hopefully, we all find peace in that mothering, as we move into what must be the most powerful archetype, the most stunning role, it is possible to inhabit.
Thank you Elayne. The personal pieces you share here are potent and so tender. I am more and more devoted to bringing the life force of real love, freedom, eros and generosity back into our feminine lineages. This can happen in so many different ways, and it needs to. Like mycellium, sprouting in every direction at once. And to enter into the beauty of what youhave described, the experience of knowing my mother now, after she has left this earth, and holding her in deep love, is a miracle in itself. Even as I choose/we choose to live in alignment with different stars, to begin to embody ourselves fully and freely on this earth.
Thanks for speaking to the richness of mothering: Allo parents. Beyond life-death and linear time. The feeding. The acceptance. The sacred bodies.
As I am becoming an Evolved Nest Ambassador, I am reminded of the power of the original instructions for child rearing. I think you and your readers would resonate with the kinship worldview and the evolved nest of care, attachment and nature/village/cosmos connection. Check out Kindredmedia.org and the work of dr Darcia Narvaez.
Thanks for sharing your vulnerability.
What moved me most while reading this is that perhaps the deepest form of mothering is not holding on.
It is loving even when you cannot hold.
Because we often imagine the Mother as the one who protects, shelters, keeps safe, keeps close. But some mothers never had that luxury. Some loved while releasing. Some prayed while losing control. Some stood on the edge of the river with empty hands and no certainty except love itself.
And maybe that is where motherhood becomes sacred.
Not in control.
Not in perfection.
But in remaining tender inside powerlessness.
The story of Musa’s mother has always felt unbearable to me for this reason. She is not simply a mother protecting her child. She is a mother forced to place love into uncertainty. To release what she would die to keep. To trust while terrified. To continue loving when love no longer guarantees safety.
And I think many women still live inside that river.
Because today Pharaoh no longer arrives only with soldiers. Sometimes he arrives through systems, speed, comparison, loneliness, algorithms, pressure, performance, emotional absence. Mothers are still standing at the edge of waters they cannot fully control, watching the world pull at the souls of their children.
That is why I think motherhood is deeper than care.
Motherhood is the refusal to let fear destroy tenderness.
It is the refusal to pass down despair.
It is the ability to keep loving in a world that constantly teaches people to harden themselves in order to survive.
And maybe the deepest wound of the unmothered world is not simply that many people were not loved enough.
It is that so many mothers themselves were never held while trying to hold everyone else.
Sometimes the mother could not mother because nobody ever mothered her.
And still, somehow, she loved with the little warmth she had left.
To me, that is one of the holiest forms of human existence.
Tears. I weep for and with the Mother inside of me, and my mom all the moms who have mothered me. Your work Elayne, has catalyzed something in me that I have not fully appreciated. Thank you!
I really needed this today...... it put into words the parts of my "mothering" life that I have never been able to express. I chose not to have children due to my mother's abusive nature, but I was a massage therapist for 25 years, am an aunt, and great aunt, a Witch and Priestess, and all of those pieces are now beautifully in place. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this beautiful piece. I lost my mother at 22, and Mother's Day has always been problematic for me, even though I went on to mother three daughters who have grown up to be wonderful women of whom I'm very proud. You have given me a gift for which I am deeply grateful. 🙏
So so beautiful. I will be thinking on these things for quite sometime. Thank you for the blessings and brilliance of your wisdom.
Thank you, Sister. May all those who mother in their own, unique way, know how loved they are.❤️❤️❤️