[ Note: this is an old post from one of my original blogs. As I transition to the new site, I’ll be (re) publishing some relevant pieces. Enjoy, and share your thoughts. ]
There’s a storm outside tonight. The big Mama Maple tree out front looks like a wild Medusa’s head — leaves ripping off and flying away, leaving naked branches twisting and turning like angry snakes. Our house is nestled alongside a small ridge that protects us from storms when they come barreling down the valley from the ocean’s shore. But you can still hear Her as she beats that shore into submission.
There was a time, years back, when I would have loved to go out in a storm like this. Something in me comes alive in storms and I feel a kinship with the elements that I don’t so readily feel on calm days. I recall feeling crazy and possessed, riding the wind with my arms spread wide, a big delicious grin on my face– I could easily lose all sense of time and place, my consciousness freed from the confines of a corporeal form as it bled together with the plasma of the elements.
What separates us from crazy and “not”? One fine line, one single moment when we either let go or hold on. Stay in the storm of one’s mind or seek shelter. After I started to learn about energy work – how to ride it, carry it, send it – I had to acknowledge eventually that this wasn’t always a good thing, my love of storms, especially the whipping wind. On the turn of a dime, one can get lost in that kind of energy. Consumed by it, carried away and left naked in the storm. But if you know when to come inside and cover up, the momentary abandon is exhilarating.
There were times in my life I relished being that open, that raw, that careless with my life force – and I miss it now, very much. But tonight I’m cozy and safe in my home, nothing naked or raw here except my nerves. My storms are created by two whirling dervishes that call me “Mama” and bid me to dance for them, read to them, feed them and hold them endlessly. To keep them safe from the storm outside. To find magic in other ways than feeding my primal urges.
Sometimes, like tonight, I desperately wish that I could go outside and get lost in the storm for just one more time. I’m not sure I can ever allow myself that abandon again, now that I’m a mother.
Or maybe, now, it’s about embracing new forms of abandon I would not have tried before?
Have the demands of motherhood challenged you to discover spiritual aspects of yourself you did not know were there? What are they? Are they wonderful and empowering, or maybe frightening and discouraging? On the path of the mystic, it’s all worthy. Share your thoughts, Mystic Mama!
