Anita

Rotten tomatoes were flying, and it wasn’t on her agenda.

As the oldest of four, Anita learned very quickly that being in control was the only way to survive. Her parents were essentially adult children, in need of parenting themselves, so she threw on the apron and stepped into the role of mother shortly after she hit double digits in age.  The basic needs of her and her siblings were met not by her troubled parents, but by her. Cooking family meals, cleaning everyone’s clothes, going to the grocery, buying all the school supplies… Anita did it all. She learned to organize with lists and agendas, and quickly found that control meant power and power meant safety. If she could control the world around her, if she could manage the chaos of poverty and instability into which she was born, she could keep herself and her siblings safe. So that smoldering summer day when her mom yelled get the hell out of the house and go pick the tomatoes!, Anita led her siblings to the garden and expected order.

“So off we go, out to pick the tomatoes,” she remembers. “Well, I don’t know who started it, but I know it wasn’t me because that would have been way out of place. But somebody picked up a rotten tomato and the next thing you know,” Anita smiles, “tomatoes are flying.”

This is the first time I have seen her smile when recalling her childhood. And it’s not just any smile… it’s the smile of a mischievous little girl who is having fun doing something the adults would call naughty. It’s this same smile, with a touch of mischief and sparkling eyes, that I see now when she tells me of the adventures she chooses as an adult. She has the visage of someone who is, at age sixty-two, trading in a too-tight suit of armor for a flowy white dress with lots of room to grow. From this new freedom, she is able to truly nurture the most important being in her life… her own soul.

Motherhood is such an integral part of what it means to be a woman, and maternal energy is at the core of the Sacred Feminine. But the role of “mom” is vastly different than the energy of mothering. Anita, from a very young age, stepped into the ROLE of mother. This was all action, all doing. This role was all about managing her external world in an effort to survive, and stuffing any connection to her inner wisdom in a dark corner closet with other forgettables, like joy and play. The Sacred Feminine Mother is about spiritual connection, nurturing, and creation. The role Anita played was about control and logistics. Pure survival. Anita taught herself to mother logistically and efficiently, her intuition stored away with the rest of her childhood dreams. Dreams and play would not put food into four hungry bellies.

Successfully raising her siblings to adulthood did eventually pay off... Anita became an aunt several times over. After deciding not to have children of her own, she poured her mothering instincts onto her nephews and nieces, taking them home with her for a week here and there and on special auntie vacations. The first few, the older ones, were all boys. And admittedly, they were easier. Anita knew how to mother through action and logistics, how to keep a physical body safe and fed, how to fix scraped knees and wipe mud off of carpets. This kind of mothering was familiar to her. Caring for her nephews definitely helped to shift the role of mother for her from a place of duty to a powerful choice… something she GOT to do instead of HAD to do. Yet the divinity of motherhood was still missing. The softness, the inner wisdom, and the soul connection was absent in those early years of being an aunt to boys.

Then Sarah was born.

There was something about her niece that was different. The boys had prepared her for the physicality of mothering. But Sarah, before she could speak, asked for something different. Logistics and efficiency were not enough for this little girl. Something more was needed, although Anita was not sure what that something was. So she kept on mothering the only way she knew how, the way that had worked for both her siblings and her nephews. Through action.

When Sarah was old enough, Anita booked a trip to Disney for just the two of them. Sitting on the plane watching the clouds pass below, the excitement of the trip was palpable. Sarah talked of all the things she wanted to do and see on their first day in the park, and Anita beamed with pride and joy. Anita’s childhood was riddled with poverty. Now a financially successful adult, she relished in the memories that the two of them were about to make. As Sarah spoke about all of the things she wanted to do and see, Anita’s logical mind started to make a plan. Thorough and efficient, action oriented and list loving, Anita was an expert at creating agendas for others to follow, and this trip with her niece was no exception.

By the time the lights went out in the hotel room that night, tiny Sarah tucked under the covers with her dreams, the itinerary for the most efficient and productive first Disney day ever was locked and loaded in Anita’s mind. They would start early, be out the door at a specific time, and conquer all that there was to conquer. They would master the list. They would win at Disney.

The next morning, Anita jumped right into her familiar role. Showered, sun-screened, and packed for a full day, Anita was eager to put the itinerary into motion. Sarah, it seems, was not. Exhausted from the travel, Sarah slept in. Anita made mental adjustments to the schedule. If Sarah got up soon the plan could still be saved. When Sarah finally woke, she moved through the hotel room with the land speed of a cold sloth coming out of hibernation. Anita mentally shifted her plan a little more, all the while growing irritated. Her control was slipping away. With every sign from Sarah that efficiency was not a top priority, Anita’s frustration rose. In her mind, this preteen moving across the carpet at a snail’s pace was not the beautiful miracle of God’s presence in niece form. She was a saboteur, undoing the intricate plan Anita had made with every tiny yawn and stretch. Finally, Anita broke.

Without realizing it, she raised her voice and asked, “Are you ready yet?”

Anita’s gaze focused on Sarah, eyebrows raised, the only answer from Sarah that could have righted the sinking ship was a definitive and emphatic “yes!”.  Instead, Anita watched in horror as Sarah wilted. She changed right in front of Anita’s eyes from a sleepy child waking up to the possibility of the day ahead into a sullen, withdrawn, and pissed off twelve year old. Action and agendas may have worked for the boys. Sarah, however, required something more.

In the seven year gap between the youngest nephew and Sarah, Anita grew quite a bit. A lot had happened in her life, and she had changed. Softened. She attributes this time of growth to what happened next in that Florida hotel room. Anita did not argue with Sarah. She did not rush her. She did not stay in the action of the mothering that she knew, or try to hold onto an unspoken agenda that clearly wasn’t working. Instead, Anita did something revolutionary.

She apologized. And then she asked for a do-over.

“I asked myself if I was really going to go this way with her, to push an agenda that was all in my head,” Anita remembers. “I literally stopped myself, turned around, and sat down. And I just asked her if I could start over. And it was so funny, that little face just turned and looked at me like, ‘what’s wrong with you? You are really crazy.’”

Anita continues, “I admitted that I was rushing, gave her the opportunity to understand that I’m human, and then asked her to give me a chance to do it differently. She did. And it changed everything.”

In that moment, something profound happened. The role of mother that Anita knew, the behaviors that had once worked to keep her and her siblings safe, fell apart. The miracle here is that rather than doubling down on the old behavior, she paused in recognition of what she had done and then she SHIFTED. Anita moved from a place of action and controlling all of the things “out there” to a place of surrender and connection with her niece from a deeper, internal space. When she chose to stop the toxic learned behavior and try on vulnerability, Anita tapped into the Sacred Feminine energy of motherhood. Ditching the plan allowed her to tune into her intuition, that soft space in her heart, and deliver what was needed in that present moment. For both of them. This is the beauty of the Divine Mother. The shift from external reaction to internal wisdom, from doing to being, from rigid to fluid, from fear to love, changed everything that day. Sarah accepted the apology and the rest of the vacation was magical.

At the time of this writing, Sarah is almost sixteen. She and Anita still take girls trips together, and Anita continues to learn through Sarah how to ditch the agenda and be present in the moment. The boys showed Anita that motherhood could be a joyful choice rather than a duty, and Sarah showed her that the best choice is always the one made in love and connection. Because of Sarah’s willingness to receive Anita’s vulnerability and forgive her mistakes, Anita is learning to be vulnerable and to forgive perhaps the most important person in her life… herself.

True Sacred Feminine Motherhood is not just for others. It is for us, too. This is the essence of re-parenting ourselves… inviting the grace of the Sacred Feminine into our hearts and nurturing our own inner child with that divine love. As an adult, Anita is learning to meet the needs of the little girl inside her heart who had to grow up way too fast, and she’s allowing herself to have fun in the process. At one time in her life, an impromptu rotten tomato fight was the only source of her joy. Now, Anita is climbing volcanic mountains, touching the backs of rodeo bulls, taking tons of art classes, and continuing to practice vulnerability and forgiveness. Joy, play, and love, once stuffed in a dark closet, are now abundant in her life.

The invitation moving forward, for Anita and the rest of us, is to keep going inward. The Sacred Feminine reminds us of this. All of the answers we seek we already have. All of the healing we crave is accessed through the compassionate strength in our hearts. All of the motherly nurturing, wisdom, and safety we desire we can give to ourselves through the power of the Sacred Feminine that lives within us, not outside of us. We are powerful, creative forces of love. Let us always remember to direct that power first to our own soul.

The Sacred Feminine painting for Anita is titled “Motherhood”. The Native American Grandmother, a spirit guide of hers since childhood, embodies the soft knowing and strength that comes through compassion and wisdom. She invites us to call on our deeper, internal knowing, where the real power lives. The Cougar, an important animal in her spiritual practice, symbolizes protection, and reminds us that the soft folds of our own inner divinity are where true safety lies.