Mothers of the Past

Notes from the Cosmic Collective

Below are weavings I have been tracking from various in-person and online communities that strike me as particularly relevant to share with you today.

Woven through these weavings is my own story of place, purpose and not-knowing.


1. Intergenerational Trauma

A friend recently was telling me of a study done on pregnant mice. There were two groups of pregnant mice. Both groups were exposed to a red flashing cloth. One group, in addition to the red cloth, was given a simultaneous electrical shock. The other group had no shock. The fascinating finding of this study showed that the offspring of the mice whose mothers had experienced the shock, also showed heightened levels of stress when exposed to the red cloth, even though they had never experienced the electrical shock as individuals outside the womb. In other words, the babies of the mothers who were traumatized, experienced the same or similar trauma to the same external stimulus, even though they themselves had never experienced the trauma.

The scientists were then curious to see how many generations the stress response carried on, without adding any more electrical trauma to any further generations. By watching the stress level response of the generations to come, when exposed just to the flashing red cloth, they discovered that the trauma response carried through SEVEN generations.

We are not mice, and we have not been electrocuted as part of an experiment (or have we?), but there’s something extremely important revealed in this study. Turns out there are many, many more studies revealing similar findings in worms, crickets, etc. The multi-generational impact of trauma on parents carries on through generations, at least two. From the altering of gene expression to variation in physical development (weight, shape, etc) and hormonal response, we can see, clearly, that what happens to the mother happens to the child, to the grandchild, to the great grandchild.

So then I became curious: what is a generation and what sort of things were happening seven generations ago? A generation is typically considered the time it takes for a child to grow and have their own babies. It differs from culture to culture. Somewhere in the world a generation, based on this definition, is 15 years. In ours, it’s more like 30. So for our modern minds and purposes, let’s say a generation is 30 years. Seven generations ago would be 210 years ago from today. 210 years ago brings us to 1813.

What was going on in 1813?

The War of 1812 (1812-1815) was going on between the US and its Native American allies against the UK and its indigenous allies. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) in Europe, originating from the French Revolution were being fought. Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously in London. The Malta plague epidemic spread from Egypt (1813-1814). Richard Wagner was born. Tecumseh, Shawnee chief and warrior, was killed in the Battle of the Thames, on October 5th.

Does any of this matter? Does it affect us? Where were your ancestors seven generations ago? Do you sense any rippling of those times alive in you today?

For those of us with European ancestry it is worth mentioning that between 1300-1700 in indigenous Europe, an estimated 6 million women were killed (tortured, burned at the stake, mutilated, drowned, etc) by the Catholic Church. The slaughter was to such a degree that by the end of it, it was said that many villages were left with absolutely no women alive in them. These women were herbalists, midwives, healers, wise women.

How does that affect our mother line? Our relationship to women? How does that affect our father line? Our relationship to Nature? Does it matter?

What was your mother telling herself about the “way things are” while she was pregnant with you? What was your grandmother telling herself about “the way things are” when she was pregnant with your mother?

How are the beliefs of our mothers carried on through the generations? There’s an old saying I didn’t understand until recently: “if you want to take care of the future (the environment, etc), take care of the mothers.”

How are the beliefs of the mothers carried on through the generations? How is the future shaped by the beliefs and traumas and thoughts of the mothers of the past?

And how do we bring mothers and children back into a healthy center of the Circle? To honor them, their processes, their needs. How do we mend this rippling wave of imbalance?


2. Masculine and Feminine Energy

There has been obvious and major distortions of healthy masculine and healthy feminine energies in long time recent cultural past. The expectation, expression, the taboos and limitations, the lack of authentic honoring of each of these aspects of creation has been thoroughly warped to suit cultural agenda and norm. Today there seems to me to be a collective reckoning, a pointing to the remembrance of the sacred qualities of both masculine and feminine energies. The expansion and contraction of the universe. The rise and fall of civilizations. The nurturing and the protecting of life. Restoring the integrity, balance and purpose of both energies, and, for all intents and purposes, allowing the feminine to RISE, to give her voice, listen to her voice and to centralize her as a representation of Life and future, feels relevant and helpful amidst the turning of the ages we find ourselves in today.
 

3. The Nuclear Family

The term “nuclear family” made its first appearance in the 1920’s. That is to say, one hundred years ago. Given the context of humanity’s dwelling upon the earth for at least 40,000 years (oldest homo sapien remains found to date), it is a relatively new concept as a structural norm: the mother, father and children constellation, compared to the historically common mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, auntie, uncle, children, cousins constellation; aka the Tribe, the Village, the extensive hoop of life that is necessary to sustain integrity, health and protection of a people.

We are seeing incredible rates of marital breakdown. Divorce is common, expected, anticipated, understood, normal. What is breaking down the family? From our point of view, it’s obvious: the nuclear family is unsustainable. The nuclear family is just that, explosive. We weren’t meant, as a species, to be “nuclear”. The stress load of two adults maintaining financial demands, children, home, domestics, all the things, is enough to break them down. It’s not actually very humane. How many families do I hear say, well, yea, but my family lives so far away, so we cope like this… Maybe it’s time we shed that strange anomaly of the nuclear family and reopen our hearts and minds to the extended family reality as a means to sustain thriving life on earth.

So, today we have the historically “new” naked nuclear family structure, blasted over with monthly indebtedness, to insurance companies, phone companies, the town, the county, the country, the water companies, the electrical companies, the bank, etc, and somehow we are baffled that two adults wedged in this tight world of demands experience total break down.

What does Marriage within the container of Belonging look like?

How does an integral, multi-generational community breath life into new parents? How does lack of real community create total breakdown between two people trying to realize some form of success into today’s world? Furthermore, how does marital breakdown pass on through the generations?

Do we care?


4. What Does it Mean to Be Indigenous?

The word “indigenous” comes from Latin “indigenus”, broken down from indi meaning “in” and gen meaning “to give birth to” (like in “generation”). In Ancient Greek it is translated as “born in the house”. In the 17th century, the definition of indigenous came to include “native to a land or region, especially before an intrusion.” In numerous ancient contexts however, it translates simply as “born in the house”.

Was the first intrusion, culturally speaking, the intrusion of the Church into the homes of birthing women?

How far back does the wave of “intrusion” go? What were the daily realities that gave birth to conquest? How many peoples across the earth were displaced, seven, ten, eleven generations ago? Who is being displaced from their homelands today? What makes a land home? Does it matter?

Does “being indigenous” change depending on who is defining it? If a Native American tells me we are all indigenous, does it hold more weight than if a white professor tells me I am a colonizer? Does my shame and guilt of being white serve life? Does being white make me bad? Am I a thief? Is white guilt of today different than black guilt of the 20’s? Does it serve us to continue to divide humanity by the color of our skin?

Who is the authority on what it means to be indigenous and how does it affect my living relationship to land?


5. Water/Grief

There are bubbling conversations everywhere reminiscent of the stories of floods spoken of in many ancient traditions across the earth. The shifting tectonic plates beneath the ocean. The melting of the big ice. Rain that never stops. Islands and continents disappearing. From prophecy to scientific finding, there are correlations of massive earth shifts to come throughout the diversity of human narratives today.

Where does your water come from? Do you have a boat? How to you clean your water? What IS water? Where does it come from?

And in alignment with all this talk of rising tides, we wonder, what are the untended to aspects of our own ancestral grief? What grieving was my grandmother unable to tend to? Why is our culture’s relationship to grief so weird? We hear “He’s with you in Spirit” when a loved ones dies, or “Keep busy” to not dwell in the feelings of loss, or the knee-jerk reaction to fix someone’s grief, to make them stop crying, make it better. Why are we so uncomfortable with tears? And to share in those tears with a friend? Why have we distorted the naked innocence and certainty of grief into something to be ashamed of, to hide from our friends, to hold in and pretend not to experience?

Does the rising water point to our humanity’s collective need to grieve?


6. It’s Not Slowing Down Anytime Soon

There is a sort of consensus among various schools of thought that the mega earth/societal/economic shifts we are seeing today are hinting at greater changes on their way. In other words, there is no reason to believe things are going to get easier any time soon. In other words, how do you clean your water and where does it come from?


* * *

a poem on magnetic shifting

the wind and the spinning earth
are giving birth
to new realities in our home

white ash
blown backwards
from chimney to stove into home

finds perfect stillness
Suspended
in a beam of sunlight

* * *

May your water run free, and clean and unashamed.

Love,
Leah