Re-Membering the Mother

As I wake today, I’m greeted by the widely celebrated Christian holiday of “Easter.” My phone dings with “Happy Easter” messages, accompanied with cutsie bunny and egg emojis. Meanwhile, families are hiding Easter eggs around their house-anticipating the smiles of their children, as they wake to excitedly search for the eggs the Easter Bunny hid. Soon, some of these families will be dressing in their Spring attire and heading to Church, or to their dining room tables to listen and tell another patriarchal story of Jesus rising from the dead. Some years, I’ve participated in sending disassociated messages of “Happy Easter” back to friends and family. Most years I’ve shown up in my cute Spring attire to share the joy of Easter egg hunting, because I believe in the magic of ritual, and wanted my daughter to experience that.

This year…it feels a little different.

This morning, my daughter isn’t here, she’s now 13 years old and doesn’t believe in the Easter Bunny, and I will not be traveling to spend time with my family. So, instead of shifting my nervous system toward a disassociated participation in a holiday that has had a presence in my life, this year I am choosing to consciously lean in…but not towards the masculine story. Last night and today, my engagement with Easter is one of re-membering the Divine Feminine and weaving her back into the tapestry.

I stayed up by candlelight last night, with the moon and star nation, contemplating the story of re-birth and renewal. I swayed my hips to instrumental lo-fi music and moved around my living room space like water. I finished planting all the starters I had grown through the winter and brought new life into this humble abode. I showered and lathered my body with pleasure, before crawling into bed with my red light and book: “Untie the Strong Woman” by Dr. Clarissa Pikola Estés.

 Synchronistically, or not, I opened to “The Mary’s of Mother Africa,” which read:

         “Like the Great Mother, Mother Africa for hundreds of years has groaned under many humans who have harmed her by looting her treasures, setting enmity between peoples, and by forcing stones atop the people's greatest minds and hearts so that people could not grow into their full magnitude.

But, also I sense from knowing many souls who were born into the earth there, that in mother Africa, there is rooted a mysterious Heart of the World, oddly ever vulnerable…yet ever invincible…ever wounded…yet ever covered with flowers of acacia, the honey of which flows like deep amber sweetwater.

Though the crown that Mother Africa has been forced to wear is made of piercing thorn branches, because of her immaculate generosity of heart those barbed branches are ever bursting with fragrant blossoms.

And always present anywhere there is so much death and so much resurrection, there are the Marys.”

———

“The Marys everywhere in the world are the ones who endured despite, and in a way because of, all attacks, all indecencies, against them. The Marys are the ones who were made to carry the World Heart in a basket woven strong from one's own courage bones, from spiritual brawn, from scar tissue, from the coiled hairs of one's own head. Beautiful.

Creator knew the pulse of the world would be safe with those who had suffered and yet persevered. Creator knew they would pass forward ‘that which cannot be allowed to perish from the face of the earth,’ hand to hand, heart to heart, generation to generation—hiding the Great Heart next to their own hearts during night treks from village to village, no matter what crosswinds.

 And most especially, the Marys would pass the Heart of the World soul to soul through stories that tell not just what is treasure, but that tell exactly how to hold to the strong center of the Mother no matter what.”

———

Whoa, did Dr. Estés lull me to bed with a different story about Easter and resurrection? Perhaps it was some kind of sacred request to spend my day remembering the Mother and a reminder to keep the mother at the center of my pain and suffering…to return to my rosary. For when I feel the prayers of the mother, my aches dissolve into relief.

As I sipped my coffee, lit my candles, and set up my rosary altar this morning, I sat with the stories that I grew up with in the Catholic church. I remembered seeing pictures of Mary at the foot of the cross during the crucifixion but could not recall many other details related to the mother or the feminine. I know much attention isn’t given toward the significance of the women, such as Mary Magdalene, who gathered at the tomb before dawn. Mary Magdalene is important, she carries to us the medicine of anointing, what it means to use our voice and so much more…

I asked myself, “What if we held the Great Mother in the story of the resurrection?” I know the Gospel omits that after the resurrection, the first appearance of Jesus was to his mother. There’s beautiful symbolism in the son appearing to his mother first. Is it not his mother who birthed him and to the Great Mother that he belongs? Is it not the mother who birthed us all, and the Great Mother that we belong?

Was it not his mother who sat as his feet, likely bringing him grace, comfort and peace while the Roman colonizers crucified him? Is it not the mothers who are roaring and screaming at the loss of their children to power hungry tyrants all over the Earth? Is it not the mothers who are currently crying for mercy, as bombs continue to be dropped on Gaza? And was it not the apparition of La Virgen de Guadalupe that kept the Nahuatl people alive when the Spanish were colonizing Mexico?

Maybe it’s actually the mother who lovingly holds the sacred mirror of resurrection for us, reminding us to surrender to what is, so that we too can die to what was, and be re-born? Maybe the story of Easter this year must hold the mother, so that we have capacity to keep the Palestinian people in our hearts and continue to call for a cease fire while we celebrate…

We must begin to tip the scales and bring along the matriarchal stories with the patriarchal ones, for they inform each other. As a dear friend has recently reminded me: Without both, there is no form.

In the mestizo heritage there is a name that strives for us to see both sides, all sides, of all things. A name that asks us to open our eyes in all the directions, to see the masculine and the feminine, to see land and cosmos, water and fire, ways of suffering and the ways of revolution that can bring us back to liberation and joy. This word is Ometeotl. It became more intimate for me after my pilgrimage to Teotihuacán and Tepeyac. It's a sacred Nahuatl word that has helped me remember the importance of both. ‘Father God’ + ‘Holy Mother,’ is the sacred formula to the ‘Son’ (& the daughter), in the Holy Trinity.

If we can begin to re-member and embody the masculine and the feminine energies within ourselves, we might birth something new. We might remember who we are and what we are made of. When we learn to honor the light and the dark, we too may resurrect and ascend beyond the boundaries of our mind. We might strip the skin of the one we used to be and become who we were meant to be.

———

Let us call back the Great Mother in our lives, give her our seeds, protect her waters, take care of her animals, and love one another. Let us lay on the mother, rest more in her womb, give her our tears, and let her transform our pain. Let us honor and remember both she and her son. Let us remember she is our mother, and we are her daughters.

May we fall into the sweet mothers arms as we embrace death and the grief that comes with, for death is not the end…

It is just the beginning. Just like Ma Mary knew for her son.

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However you celebrate Easter today, I hope you can create space for your own story of re-birth, see the eggs you share together as an abundant manifestation of her gift of life to you. May the rabbits remind you of the sacred cycle of renewal, as we continue to usher in Spring! May you laugh, play and find deep joy. May you feast with pleasure!

Happy Easter! 🐰🐣

With Love & Ometeotl 🙏🏻🌹✨