The nuances of motherhood

Each week I participate in a tea ceremony. I’ve written about it here before. It’s become my anchor, a safe place to be true to the moment and be held in the experience of it.

It’s also become a silent sisterhood of the women present. Mostly we don’t talk, perhaps a short share at the end of each sit, but sometimes women walk in and out of this space without even knowing the other’s name. I love the sacred nature of this, to be invisible yet visible at the same time.

On Monday a few of us hung back afterwards and shared an additional social cup of tea. The conversation turned to Mother’s Day, which had been the day prior. There was an empty cushion separating the four women still sitting, as if a line was being drawn between us. It turned out this line divided the biological mothers and the non-biological mothers in the room.

When the biological mothers started to talk about motherhood, I initially felt a very familiar heat rise in my body. It’s a shadow energy that tells me to run and hide. To not let the fact I haven’t mothered come out into the open. It’s the energy of past comments or observations made at my ‘confession’. The sad, pitying or surprised looks. The “ohhh…” that feels like it never ends. The abrupt closing down of the conversation. It’s also simply my own, now much reduced, shame around the subject — the fact of being childless and not out of choice.

I sat in the heat for a moment, being with it, not resisting it and allowing it to have its own process. Around the same time it began to fade, the woman next to me shared to the others that she hadn’t been a mother and what that meant for her. Listening to her I exhaled and softened deeper into my cushion. When she finished I then shared my story, knowing that this time the conversation would be different.

And it was.

Something happened in the room, maybe the hangover of the medicinal tea, maybe the divine energy we co-create in that ceremony, maybe just simply each of us sharing uninhibited our truth and feeling beyond the labels and titles. And mostly, the fact we listened to the other, with compassion and openness.

Instead of the divide getting bigger between the have’s and have not’s, it got smaller. Actually we harmonised. The empty cushion was still there but the line wasn’t.

One of the biological mothers shared how rare this type of conversation was, usually the mothers sticking to themselves and the non-mothers staying in their lane too. It was so heartwarming to know she’d also recognised this, it wasn’t just me, on the other side, that felt the division.

I’ve been told more times than I can count that I won’t know love until I’m a mother. I’ve been told I won’t know my power as a woman until I’ve birthed. I’ve been told not to give children advice unless I have one. I’ve been dismissed in conversation and also disregarded.

These are the very comments that have left an imprint in me that stirs up the rising heat when the topic surfaces as it did on Monday morning. It has given me great fodder for inner work, but has also added to my own contours. We can’t help but be moulded by our experiences of life. Although they don’t define us, they definitely shape us.

Not being a mother has let me with an underlying ever-present curiosity about motherhood.

Not being a mother has made my breast and womb ache for not having fed or birthed.

Not being a mother has made my ears search, sometimes desperately, for the words ‘mummy’.

Yet it no longer makes me feel less, which has taken me years and years to come to appreciate. What it has given me is a different experience and perspective of life as a woman.

It’s true I do not know what it’s like to be a biological mother.

However, just as true as that statement is the one that biological mothers don’t know what it’s like to not be one. It’s not the same as pre-child days, as some mothers like to argue. Nor is it the same as being the eternal maiden, because we are not. I still traversed the four stages of womanhood, including the mother stage and now entering the wise woman phase — just without child. To not be a biological mother is a world of its own and can only be understood by those who are in this world.

Some years ago when talking about this with a wise mentor, she said, “Sharon we come to love in many ways, sometimes from what we get and sometimes from what we don’t get”.

This is how I created equanimity on motherhood.

Being a mother can be tough, as cannot being one.

Being a mother can be life changing, as cannot being one.

Being a mother can crack your heart open, as cannot being one.

Monday’s post-tea chat made me appreciate just how tribal we’ve become, especially women. We share with those ‘like’ us, and in doing so we miss out on the diverse experiences of those ‘not like’ us.

Our chat was important, necessary and insightful. It was a blessed opportunity of two parties being willing to enter a no-go zone and remove the signage.

It’s helped me to see that speaking more about this, rather than less, is key. To understand how as women we can both deepen or soften the wounds of one another; we contribute to the scaring and the healing. Staying on our side of the fence only makes the fence taller and stronger. To understand the other, we need to enter the nuances and cross the line.