I am the mother of two sons who are now exceptionally good men. And I do not hesitate to take mothering credit where mothering credit is due because, in order to learn who I am through the mothering experience, I’ve had to learn to honour the big work that it is in a world that still holds the power of mother in shadow.
One day many years ago when my younger son was five years old, I took him to our local church in the community where we lived to attend his children’s choir practice. He’d missed the previous week’s practice due to illness and he still wasn’t feeling well enough to sing but his choir teacher wanted him there anyway because they had an upcoming performance. It was a reasonable request.
So he and I made an agreement with her. He wasn’t required to join the choir on stage for practice. He could sit in the pews to watch and listen while resting. That way he’d benefit from being at practice while still supporting his ability to recover his health. So with the agreement in place, he was comfortable with me leaving him for the hour of practice while I went grocery shopping for our family.
When I returned to the church less than an hour later to bring him home, I was surprised to see him on the stage with the other children. He did not look happy. I wondered why he was up there. As rehearsal ended, he made his way to me when the children were dismissed. And as we headed out of the church, he grabbed my hand with a firmer than usual grip. I sensed his distress as we walked to our car.
“I am never singing in this choir again.”
“Why? What happened?”
“As soon as you left, Mrs. Braden told me I had to get up on the stage.”
“But we had an agreement that you wouldn’t need to. That’s why you stayed and I left.”
“I know! You cannot trust Mrs. Braden, Mom. The minute you were gone she looked at me with angry eyes and told me what to do.”
“Really?”
“I’m never going back. I’m done with this choir.”
And that was that.
The mother in me knew not to second-guess him. I knew his trust in me was on the line if I didn’t follow his lead. He was only five years old. I could over-power him with my ideas about who he needed to be or I could empower him in the decision he had made on his own. For he had called to himself his own learning.
I chose to support him fully even though I knew his choir teacher would think I was a weak mother for doing so. But what did she know? I trusted my son more than I trusted her because he was abundantly clear, and she had purposely deceived me.
So when I called her the next day to pull him out of choir, she made it clear to me that she felt I was letting him get away with things (whatever that means). But I never wavered in my decision to support him. I knew that he would learn more through his feelings around his teacher than anything she wanted to impose on him.
This was one of my son’s early encounters with negative mother, an aspect of the dark feminine energy in the human psyche, activated and expressed through women and men both. Mothering is not gender-specific. Negative mother powers over a child through judgment and control. Her message is, “You will do as I say, and be who I want you to be because I know you better than you know yourself, and I know what is best for you.”
My son was not going to allow himself to be over-powered. It was one instant among many when I was given the opportunity to lend my adult authority and privilege to my children in order to embolden them in their own sense of self. They depended on me to have their backs. And I did (still do). For conscious mother never engages in power plays with children.
Adults misuse their power in relationship to children all the time and call it normal. To undermine a child’s mothering bond is unholy. To be sure, there are times when the mother-child relationship needs a sacred seer to help traverse the inner terrain of the soul contract that binds them, but that is to be handled by one with wisdom. Anything less is simply interference in the name of making a child do what an adult wants. For this there are consequences. And the mother in me instinctively knew it to be true.
Instinct is the knowledge of the soul. It is a good teacher. Follow it and you will naturally bump up against patriarchal training that has been passed down through the ages. Blame, shame, resentment and even fury are only some of the dark feminine energies that come through the experience of being human based on the history we have lived collectively. We don’t deny this history. But it’s time to move beyond it. Children face these harmful energies when adults are asleep to their own consciousness, the story that is living them. So we must awaken from our slumber in order to not become a conduit for archetypal forces that hold us hostage to the past. Conscious mother is the light remedy. Through her we are shown a path beyond what’s been kept in shadow. She demands presence and deep listening for when we truly hear our children, something new is revealed. It is the way we mother in wisdom, support our children so they may become exceptional adults, and grow ourselves up.
Listen to children. They have come with what they need.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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