Chapter 01: An Introduction
A friend recently shared with me a powerful story of her dog, Lottie, shortly after giving birth to her puppies. It is the epitome of everything behind this writing. Lottie is a labrador whose key passion and joy in life is her ball. 24/7, she just loves to play fetch and chase her ball around. She lives for that playful pleasure. Lottie isn’t especially young by dog years, but that puppy spirit and love of play endured.
Just a day or two after giving birth to a large litter of puppies, my friend heard a great cry and whimper from Lottie. So my friend visited her in the safe space she had created at the top of the house. She found Lottie standing in front of her puppies with a ball in her mouth, torn as she stood between two lives. She felt the responsibility as a new mum while also being unable to repress her desire to play. She was frozen in turmoil until my friend closed the door behind the puppies and took her out to play with the ball. She managed just three throws of pure abandon and joy before she paused, turned her head from the ball, and walked up in peace to be a mum with her pups again, after a much-needed moment to express her own inner playful identity.
The dog’s experience of torment at the division between two competing identities (the carefree versus the caregiver) captures the struggle I had unconsciously navigated throughout my 30s and one I later realized that most of my girlfriends had also faced. This was a fundamental right of passage: the journey of moving from maiden to mother. Something that used to be held in ritual and honour but was lost as we moved into modern society, favouring dualism and dividing our identity between self and other.
Without a ceremony, a map, or an example, I felt like I was failing at being a woman. Confused with feelings about what I thought I wanted versus what society wanted for me. This is my story of how I uncomfortably, and at times ungracefully, navigated the transition from the maiden lifestage to the mother lifestage. All whilst keeping my womanness whole and full. It is my journey of reclaiming the sovereignty of the feminine cycles while still living in a predominantly masculine-constructed world. It is not just a story for fully embracing the motherhood of a child but also for any woman that feels the call to give birth to a creation that will outlive them: their art, their business, their community, or their cause. I felt something profound within me that longed to be born. The times in my life that I wasn’t creating felt like madness and torture. Even during times of deep grief and difficulty, as long as I was creating, I would feel like I had a root back to life.
According to Kae Tempest:
Love said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
But if you do not bring forth, what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you"
My vision is to shift into a society where women feel empowered and excited by this life stage. See it as a transformation and creation rather than paralyzed by it as a season of loss. I wish that we not only honour the movement from maiden to mother but evolve it into something that captures our full creative potential as women in the 21st century.