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In a culture that undervalues mothering, that seeks to contort mothering into a role that requires you to sacrifice yourself, your power, your creation, your sensuality – our mothers are sick. Sarah’s work centers on the richness of mid-life & maturation, the wisdom of the archetypal mother & the need for her at this time on the planet.
”We all age, but not all of us mature”
In this discussion with Jenna & Sarah we explore:
- In a culture obsessed with youth & anti-aging how we can instead embrace maturing as women & the clues to contemplate how far into your own maturation you are
- Patriarchal fairy tales: what are they & some tales Sarah has decommissioned in her own life
- The necessary role of grief & death-of-identity in becoming a biological mother
- Mothering the world – how the mature feminine moves from helplessness to helpful to humanity
Resources
Resources mentioned in this podcast:
- This conversation was first offered as part of The Future Is Embodied Conference
- You can find Sarah’s work via her website themotherspirit.com & Instagram instagram.com/themotherspirit
- The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdoch
- Shanti Zimmermann
- The Cinderella Complex: Womens’ Hidden Fear of Independence by Colette Dowling
- Warming The Stone Child by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist - Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification
“In ‘maiden’ my heart was one-room flat. In ‘mother’ it’s a mansion, it has to hold so much and another.”
About Sarah
Sarah Durham Wilson is the mother of the archetypal Maiden to Mother movement. She midwives women from the wounded patriarchalized feminine across the bridge to the archetypal mother or mature feminine.
Before her service to the Goddess, she was a rock journalist in New York City, beginning with an internship at Rolling Stone and culminating as an editor at Interview magazine.
Her soul work began with a witch awakening in 2011, which evolved into priestess work in 2015 and then into building the bridge from the immature to mature feminine — which involves exorcising poisonous patriarchal patterning and resurrecting the ancient healing ways of feminine wisdom.
She’s an Avalonian Wisdom Keeper, solo mother to a little girl, and currently working on a Maiden-to-Mother book for Sounds True. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard.
Transcript
Prefer to read, here is the full transcript of the interview here:
Jenna Ward:
A very warm welcome to our guest today, Sarah Durham Wilson. Sarah is the founder of The Mother Spirit and mama to the Archetypal Maiden to Mother Movement. She midwives women from the wounded patriarchalized feminine across the bridge to the archetypal mother or the mature feminine. Oh, we’re going to have such a rich conversation today and I’m really personally very much looking forward to it because I’ve known Sarah for many years. I first interviewed Sarah back in 2016 and we were both very different women then, subsequently. Since that time, we now both have a child, a daughter each, and Sarah’s body of work has continued to blossom into something very unique that I’m very excited to be sharing with us today.
So as we begin, I would love to invite everyone to acknowledge the earth, the lands that we’re all respectively joining this conversation from today. I’m joining us from Rotterdam in the Netherlands and a very warm welcome to you, Sarah. Where are you joining us from today?
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Michael’s Vineyard a little Island off Massachusetts in the States.
Jenna Ward:
So beautiful. A really warm welcome. So let’s kick things off. I know that your work really centers the richness of the mid-life transition, the phase of feminine maturation, the wisdom of the archetypal mother and the need for us to remember and embody this on the planet. And so I first wanted to start this conversation at the surface level and speak about what the difference is from your lens, your perspective, around what we see as aging versus what you’re actually speaking about, maturation. What is the difference between these two ideas, aging and maturation?
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Sure. Well we all age, but not all of us mature. Yeah. Everything, I want to bless the land we’re on and I want to bless my mom whenever I talk about this, because from the wounds of my mother came this great gift of my work. So my mother died at 45 and she never matured. She never had a life of her own. She never bloomed. She never found her true gifts. She never found her rootedness, herself sourcedness, her sub remedy, her inner beauty. She never accessed any of that, so she was still really infantilized by the patriarchal culture that would love to keep women this small and pleasing and polite and subservient to the father. And so she was really still culturized to believe that her work was outside of her, what she looked that, she could only be loved if she played small and did whatever everybody else wanted her to do. And she was dominated and guided by other people’s opinions of her, and that her worth came from them accepting her and approving of her. So that was really hard. And so Maureen Murdoch and The Heroine’s Journey talks about, which is a great book for everybody, every woman to read, but she talks about this moment when, well, it’s sort of what happened to me is that I came in as a child and it’s really beautiful having a young daughter who talks about where she was before she was with me. She believes she was with the fairies and she tells me about it and then she says… and then I knew it was time to come to you and it’s really so cool. I’m like, “Tell me more.” But I remembered coming from Avalon. So I remembered that and was gas-lid and told I was making it up and that there was something wrong with me, not the culture, but I knew from a young age, there’s something very wrong here, with the culture. I didn’t sense the goddess. I didn’t have a name for it as a child, but I didn’t sense the goddess. I didn’t sense the great mother. I didn’t sense the reverence for the earth. I didn’t sense magic. I knew there was something terribly wrong. And then what happens in the split between mother and daughter and here, I see a woman older than me, my mother, and I assume this woman is going to have the power of the goddess the way that I remember it as is that from Avalon, this is going to be a goddess, a strong, beautiful wise woman. And she wasn’t that, she was weak and subservient to the father and the culture of fathers. And so I remember sort of turning my back on my mother, which is what happens. Okay, well, the feminine in this place is weak, right, so we must serve the masculine or serve the fathers to stay safe. So that’s how I became very subservient to the masculine to hoping that they would protect me. Of course, that’s not what happened.
So yeah, so my mother never matured, she never bloomed, she never found herself. And I think that this culture is full of maidens who become wounded because you think of water flowing and that’s the feminine really and then that it gets stuck. If water gets stuck, we’re made of 80% water, our bodies, so we are meant to keep moving and flowing and evolving through our life. But if there’s no passage into our next evolution, if it gets blocked, water gets sick, so do we. Or if you think about a flower naturally trying to evolve and to bloom, but staying in the bud, what would happen? It would get dark and crusty and it would start to die inside. And I actually feel that’s what happens when we don’t get to bloom open to our, you could call it self-actualization, you could call it maturation. You can look at anything in nature and this hemisphere the way it shatters open and reveals its true self and true nature and becomes an offering and it’s juicy and ripe and ready. It’s a full yes. I never got to see that in my mother. I saw someone very scared of life, someone who acted weak, who played small. I believe these are roles we take on. Who seemed just terrified of life itself, and of course, I would turn my back on that as a child. I’d be like, “This isn’t safe. This won’t protect me. I’ve got to look for the fathers. I’ve gotta look for the men.” And then unfortunately in a toxic masculine society which the mothers couldn’t protect me and the men actually ended up harming me and the earth, the men that were in control. And so like a mentor of mine, Shanti Zimmermann says, as a young child, I said, Where are the grownups? Where are the adults? Because mature people are meant to be the safe people in the room, but I didn’t feel like anybody was safe because they didn’t feel safe themselves in a patriarchal culture. How can you feel safe in this world unless it’s really that deep inner work like we were talking about before, really descending within and dissenting from this and descending to the memory of the ancient, feminine that all women’s bodies hold.
Jenna Ward:
I adore what you’ve shared. And when you speak around, the language that you use to describe the blossoming, the actualization, the natural flowing passage of maturation, to me that involves the process of aging and the body maturing and changing and the language that you use, it’s almost like poetry which invokes such excitement within me, which is a totally different orientation and perspective on getting older, getting wrinkles, beauty, changing and evolving in a culture that if we look at how profitable the anti-aging industry is, which is an obsession with youth, we just see an orientation that is, I would suggest, maybe totally blind to the depth of aging, the depth of maturing that you’re really speaking about. And that turns me on so much more, and I feel like so many women are yearning and craving that without necessarily having the beautiful language that you’ve actually just offered to us and described to us around it.
Now you spoke about this process of maturing, or blossoming. You spoke about it involving almost decommissioning many different stories or tales that we’ve been sold. I’ve seen you refer to it previously as patriarchal fairytales. I’d really love to hear from you. You’ve shared some with us already but I’d love to hear from you what are some of the patriarchal fairytales, the really key themes or stories or narratives that you see impacting women that you’ve had to decommission in your own life?
Sarah Durham Wilson:
I personally felt I lived at the Cinderella complex. I think her name is Colette Dowling and she writes about The Cinderella Complex. Yeah. So for me it was like my father left, that’s how Cinderella starts is that the father leaves like, “Oh no, you’re not safe here with women.” So we’re pitted against ourselves and we’re pitted against the other women in the house. Immediately. “And the other women, if you shine, the other women will kill you. They will exile you too, you should go to the attic. They will exile you. But if you stay small, you won’t get hurt. Don’t threaten the other women.” We know this, I get chills talking about that. We know this so well, don’t threaten other women and you’ll be safe. Or if you shine, expect to walk alone because other women don’t want to be in that. They’ll compete with you or their exile, you one or the other.
So when my dad left the house when I was 11yrs old, it was my mother and my sister. And so there’s a triangulation there already where they were really close and I was the dark one, the witch. I was a witch right away. My church was nature, I always said the thing that freaked everybody out, I believed in magic from a very young age and that was not, I mean, we’ve done a ton of work, myself included, to de-stigmatize the witch, but back then in the ’80s, it wasn’t cool.
My mother was afraid of me and I know now she was afraid of her own power and the reflection of me and the wildness. Even like you showed a slide of the last call you and I ever did, six years ago, it was called Wild and Free and I still really believe that women should be wild and free, but we were sweet maidens just talking it, we hadn’t learned to walk it.
Jenna Ward:
We were that in 2016, I deeply agree. And I’m loathed to share the image, but I’ll put it in the interview below just for the sake of comparison, as it illustrates the point of maturation in blossoming so eloquently.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
I looked very patriarchalized. I was like, okay, perfect hair, perfect makeup, skinny and I mean, it’s fine whatever your body type is, it’s awesome, but I was starving myself in that picture and yeah, I wasn’t Wild and Free I’ll tell you that much. Closer to it every day now, closer to it every day.
So yeah, I had this stay in the cinders, stay on your knees and they won’t get mad at you. And I really learned to shut up. I really learned to play small, and that was my method of survival and I have to have a lot of compassion for that now.
So that’s a big one, Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Warming The Stone Child, which is an audio book, which is great. I always recommend it to the sort of women I work with which I call unmothered women before we learned to mother ourselves and then therefore be able to direct that mothering energy to the world going from inward facing wounded maidens are to outward facing as the mother. She talks about if your life were a fairytale, rewriting it with you as the savior, with you as the knight or the even you as the dragon. And for me, it’s always been that I waited under glass for a man.
Jenna Ward:
Yeah. Which is another, the damsel in distress waiting to be rescued, waiting for Prince charming to come with his silver slipper or gold, glass slipper, whatever it is.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Whatever the fuck it is.
Jenna Ward:
I’ve never had a man rescue me.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Mother saves herself and then now I’m dating at midlife which is a whole different thing, but I’m not looking to be saved. It’s a completely different ball game for me now. It’s like can you be as brave as me? Can you be as strong as me? Can you be as loving as me? Can you be as funny as me or more? But now that I’ve saved myself and fallen in love with myself, it’s very different out there.
Jenna Ward:
I’ve saved myself and fallen in love with myself, is that all that we have to do?
So just before you spoke about this and I wanted to circle back to it. You spoke about… it might’ve been even before this call.
Whereby for many women who identify as biological mothers, they are in a phase of life, motherhood happens, the baby arrives and all of a sudden the world turns upside down. They’re thrust into this rite of passage, this initiation, this transformation which we could have a whole discussion around our cultural readying of mothers for that, but it’s an intense phase, I think we will really both agree. And very often on the other side of going through that rite of passage that some women experience or choose to experience, or have the privilege to experience. I noticed within my circles, within my cultural circles, that on the other side of becoming a biological mother, there can be a lot of challenges around reorientating to who you are, and are you okay? And what does this now mean? And I see a lot of women searching for that re-identification of themselves. Searching for, “Okay, well, beyond mothering or in addition to mothering, what am I here for?” And asking really big questions. And I see this as THE norm. So many women that I know go through this phase and on the other side are looking around saying, “What the fuck?”
And so I’m really curious to hear from you in your work, which I know centers around a lot of the transition from maiden to mother. Now that’s an archetypal transition that all women can go through irrespective of whether they’re biological mothers or not. But I want to lend in on this transition for biological mothers, both you and I are, and many women listening to our conversation might be, and I want to get curious and just ask if you can share with us why you think this transition and this rediscovery of who am I as a woman post becoming a mother is so challenging for so many in our world.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Well, you said the culture prepares us, but were you being funny? Oh, okay. Did you say…?
Jenna Ward:
I touched on something like that? I’m not at all suggesting that culture prepares us for this.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
What culture are you in, I want to be in that culture.
Jenna Ward:
Well, I don’t know that culture. I had some powerful people around me that supported some aspects of me feeling prepared, but I don’t actually know if anything can fully prepare you. I think in terms of the expectations that our culture has for what a mother should be, what her priorities should be, none of that. Unspoken but pervasive expectation of the role of the mother, none of that helps or prepares you for being a woman who is also a mother because I feel like once we become mothers, for a lot of women, that identity and that role it’s like a solar eclipse, everything else becomes dark. And that can really be, and I know for you and for many women, a really intense and challenging time of who the fuck am I in all these.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Yeah. So when you asked me that first question, it was one thing to be in charge of this life. That was enough. And I didn’t do a great job at it. And then I was in charge of another life and it’s like nobody can prepare you to be in charge of another life. It’s a cliche now, but to now have my heart outside of my body, this thing, no one could prepare me a lot. I say in ‘maiden’ my heart was a one room flat and in ‘mother’ it’s a mansion, it has to hold so much and another.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
And then you learn you love something so much and then you’re like, “But wait, we’re going to die. That means one day I’ll be separate from this thing that is my entire life.” New motherhood for me felt like that I don’t want to project if that’s not how you feel. But so then I have to hold the joy and the grief all at once all the time. This thing that gives me so much joy is also going to die and I have to hold the truth of my death and then I have to be so present in my life and at the same time. And also sometimes it’s absolute psychological warfare to be a mother, right? I mean, it is. And the most humbling journey because you see all your wounds reflected and then you’re like, “Wait, I’m doing what my mother did, which I was emotionally abandon…” My mother emotionally abandoned me because she emotionally abandoned herself. So how could she be with the bigness of my emotions? Of course she was going to shut them down and shame them because she did that to herself. So then I have to be this wild cub of emotion, I have to be like, “All of this is welcome,” but that means I have to do that for me. It’s constant life school at the edge of life school, what my mentor calls the bloody edge of it. Just stay with it, stay with it. And then you get a break and you’re like, “I got this down.” And then the minute you think you’ve got motherhood down, the next day will be your hardest fucking day of motherhood. It’ll be like, “I’m terrible at this.”
There were many days when she was two, we would have a mother thread and I’d be like, “Well, I’m out of the running for mom of the year, everyone. I just want everyone to know… I will not be accepting any awards this year for what just went down.” So that’s okay. That’s okay. I always say I’m not a good mother, but I’m a loving mother. I’m not a perfect mother, but I’m a wild mother and I wanted a wild and loving mother, she’s gotten that.
So when you asked me at the beginning you said the difference between age and maturing, I also wanted to say there’s two pieces that I teach on and one’s about self mothering, one’s about biological mothers.
So I say it’s one thing to have had a mother, but it’s an entirely different thing to have been mothered, actively mother, right? So we all had mothers in some form, we all came out of a woman, but I think most of us because of patriarchalization weren’t mothered, right, by the wisdom, the guidance, the unconditional love, the presence, the sensuality, the compassion. Most of us didn’t have that. We had a mom, but then it was totally different. And then I say there are many women biologically who become a mother, but they don’t step into maturity, they stay wounded maidens, right? So I guess to answer your question, you don’t just pop out a kid and say, “I’m now a mother,” or you have a child and you are a mother, but you don’t come into that maturity. So I think the right of passage is that I’m talking about, so there’s no greater invitation to change for most women than becoming a biological mother, but what’s missing is the archetypal rite of passage and saying, okay, who you were is now dead. Let’s grieve that, let’s spend space in the time and honoring the space in between that. Because when you birthed the child, you were birthed into a mother.
And what does that mean? What kind of mother do you want to be? And that’s what I help women with. Without children it’s like we know what kind of mother you had, what kind of mother did you need? What kind of mother do you still need, and what kind of one mother does this world need, right? And so you make a model of that and you work with that model.
So yeah. It’s a death, but we’re also in a death phobic culture. So we don’t say that. We just say, “Congratulations,” but it’s like, no, it’s so much more nuance than that. And then postpartum depression because we’re without the village. So we are wired to mother, to raise children in villages and to be cared for and loved and honored for a minimum of 40 days after, but I was out of money and had to teach with a bleeding C-section and an infant. That’s fucked up.
Jenna Ward:
That’s so deeply fucked up.
And I adore what you’ve just described in terms of that archetypal blossoming and becoming in the mother, which might match or mirror an actual child coming into the world or not, but starting with grief and with loss and with who you were – dying. I experienced that in the first six months after my daughter came, an intense grief and loss and reduction of everything coming back before it decided what more it would be. And yeah, I agree. It’s a phase whereby there’s a lot to celebrate and your heart cracks open in all of the ways, but we probably don’t speak about that as much as we should, It’s normal, it’s necessary.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Yes. So you used the word Orientation which is the word that’s making me the wettest these days. I love that word. Sliding off my seat.
Well, it’s really hard for me to talk about sex after 40, because women think, “Oh, wait, I should disappear and go into a hut now.” And I’m like, “No, look at nature. We actually become our most sensual in this beautiful midlife zones, this sweet spot.” And it’s true we’re deeply in our bodies, but then the culture shames us like, “We don’t want to look at your wrinkles or your sags or whatever,” and so we shut it down. So I bring up wetness all the time now because, I mean, nature is unabashedly dripping out there.
Orientation is like you get that fog, that bossness. Wait, everything that mattered to me before this moment doesn’t matter to me anymore. That was who I was. That was where I was headed, that was what defined me. And I’m not going to go into the Anona journey right now because they teach it every day but that’s the whole point of rebirth, is to lose everything that you thought you were and figure out who you are with nothing. Everything that defined you. Who am I with nothing that defined me, nothing that kept me safe, nothing that oriented me, nothing that made me attractive or a viable product of this culture? Any of that, it’s all gone. And now we find out who am I with nothing? Everything. And then we moved back up into the world from that place. But without that descent, when the culture doesn’t allow that, that’s when we die inside and we don’t come back.
Jenna Ward:
We keep on living and life is animated, but it’s not inspiring of what’s actually moving through us.
Sarah Durham Wilson:
And then we resent the child, because we feel like with her birth came our death, but really what’s supposed to happen with her birth came my re-birth.
Jenna Ward:
I think that we could just sit in feeling that for days and hours, it’s so beautiful. And it is an experiencing which I think requires such bravery and such midwifery, and so I’d really love to just speak for a moment about the importance that you feel, is there for that process of having support a midwifery around whether it’s, again, biological or archetypal entering into the mothering, enter into really blossoming and that death of the man, the birth of the animated mother.
Can you just speak to a moment on how important it is or what you feel the role of midwifery in that should be in an ideal situation? If we can orientate or imagine for a minute a culture that celebrates mothers, that honors this rite of passage, that understands the potential and the healing and the immense quarters of love and energy that become available for humanity and for all people within it when mothers are revered and celebrated and supported in this way, can you just speak to us about the importance of midwifery in that?
Sarah Durham Wilson:
Sure. So that quote necessity is the mother of invention. So as an unmothered woman with what I call the triple mother wound, which was severance from the great goddess, severance from the earth. And that split we talked about with Marine Murdoch, where I was severed from my mother. So I had this triple mother wound, and then I was a mother without a mother suddenly, and then I had no village. I knew in order to be the woman my child needed me to be, I had to transform, but there was no village, there was no circle of elders, there was no one to walk me through this. Even my favorite guide, young analyst, Marion Woodman had dropped that there was such a thing as the immature feminine and there was such a thing as the mature feminine, but God has blessed her. She didn’t leave the bridge. I was like, “I know that I am the immature feminine and something is deeply fucking wrong with me. I am a child in a woman’s body at 37, send help.” But none was coming because the culture wants you to be that.
So I had to for years begin to piece that bridge together and I wrote it all down and it became my purpose up until this moment. And then I began to do that for other women like, “I’ve done it, I’m over here. You can do it.” I didn’t get to have a natural birth, but I imagine that’s a lot like a doula or something. “Keep going. You’re going to make it. You’re almost there. I’ve been here. Yes, this is the scariest part. This part just breathe. This part just pray.” you know what I mean?
Think about your worst Ex and just give it to them with a thrust, whatever it is. I don’t know because I didn’t get to do that either. But I know how invaluable that is as a woman to have one woman who’s been like, “I’ve been through this cave, I’ll stand on the other side of it.” Just as a baby has to go through a canal alone, I can’t go through it with you and you actually need to do this to see what you’re capable of and learn how to fight, but I’m on the other side. And so I feel like I’m a lot like a midwife out there.
Jenna Ward:
You are. I see that you are, you’re a midwife of mothers which is so needed because one of the things that you share and that you write about which I really love is you’ve written and you’ve spoken about it today, we descend into the body to heal, and then we rise to heal the world. And that has definitely been a big aspect over my years, my journey, this idea of the healing that has to happen personally, the reclamation of safety, the orientation to who am I, what is the power that exists in this body, discovering it, and then realizing there are so many resources here that are available to contribute an informed midwife to support, remember, and offer. And so I’d really love to hear from you around what has been your experience around shifting from that personal healing to that healing of the world? And I think that’s put into really stark contrast being a biological mother as well because it’s the world that your child is going to inherit. So there’s a double down of investment in terms of I need this to be a certain place for her and for everybody else’s child who also deserves us to leave this place in a better state than when we arrived here. We’d love to hear, Sarah, your thoughts around that necessity on the personal aspect of the healing and the responsibility that we also might hold around the collective, the cultural healing that really needs and must take place?
Sarah Durham Wilson:
I guess what’s coming up for me is the word Orientation, the maturation of my maiden to mother work is this program called The Arrival. So it’s like once we actually arrive in the seat of our lives, once we actually root so deeply into the earth and our bodies and source who we are and source our deep gifts and open those and offer those, we are now a mother. But now that we are a mother, the work is to orient toward wise elder. And so this program is around how do we orient toward legacy and leaving this world a better place. Together, we can’t do it alone. We were pitted against each other because divided, of course, women fell. And so now we come back and we rise together. So there is a sense of I want to honor a mentor of mine, Lynne Twist, who wrote the book, The Soul of Money.
And without naming, that mother energy is what the world needs. The way we can lift cars off children and things like that. We have this miraculous power in our lives and, of course, the world is only as well as its mothers. It’s only as healthy as its mothers and its mothers aren’t well for the most part. It’s a sick world because the mothers are sick, not supported and not centered. So Lynn Twist really, without naming it, sort of Marianne, they left me clues for my work. She sort of named that outward facing energy that women need. Now I know how to love so much that it is wild to me I have this capacity. What if I could direct this at the world?
So, yeah. So there is a difference for me, I’m going to just speak for me. When I would read about something like Myanmar or Rwanda or Lebanon before or someone’s child being shot in the street in America, there would be a bypass that would happen. I could read it and it wouldn’t destroy me. I could just be like, “What a bad world we live in. Not my problem.” And then I’m going to start crying, but then you have a kid and that could have been my kid. And you have this, that kid is exactly like my kid. A kid is innocent, that kid… Yeah. I mean, that kid is innocent, basically. And then wait, there’s no difference. Every child feels like my child and every child should be loved as if they were children of the world and they belong and they matter, and they should be protected. They are sacred.
And so then you can’t sleep at night and then you feel helpless and then it’s hard to get out of bed. And then the only thing that works is to take action. So the only way you’ll start to sleep at night is if you figure out how to go from helpless to helper. And that’s the mother is she’s gone from helpless to helper, and it’s the only way she can sleep is to know I’m trying, maybe I’ll change something. I’ll die trying for my kids and everyone else’s kids. And that’s the alchemy for me of patriarchalized feminine to the archetype of mother.
Jenna Ward:
I’m crying a little bit now too because I deeply relate and I’m really grateful that you brought that perspective because the healing of that helplessness is something that happens in our body and the action of that hopefullness and that contribution is something that comes from the power that we can discover and alchemize and refine and expand when we are in our bodies. So I’m curious, and I have one final question for you, if the future is to be one that is embodied, what do you feel? What thoughts or ideas practices or reminders would you leave us with, would you ask us to do, or to remember?
Sarah Durham Wilson:
I actually wanted to attend to, that you brought up something that I just kind of realized how to respond to it, which actually was also going to answer your next question, it’s about responsiveness over reaction, right? But you’re talking about a quote that I actually wrote. So the maiden talks it the mother walks it, right, and the real crucible is when you begin to walk your talk, right? We can all be keyboard warriors and be like, “Be brave, be strong,” and it’s like, “Are you doing that?” Okay, use your voice. Do it, actually do it, don’t just say it.
We talk about the difference with my clients between way tellers and way showers. Like, “Go that way, come back and let me know if it’s safe.” Or actually being the one who leads and walks that way as a way shower. And so the quote that you’re referring to is when a woman descends, when she descends to heal the cries of her own body. So when she learns how to become medicine woman or mother to herself, with those tools that she’s accessed and learned through her own healing, she can then rise with that self mothering energy to mother the world. So answering her own cries to then answer the cries of the world. I just wanted to wrap that back up for you.
So, I mean, there’s tons of things I teach, but one would be I always say, be the tree. In every room be the safest person in the room. And how do we do that? I look to mother trees. So you root so deeply, you get so strong, you breathe so deep, and then you are just that oxygen of the room. Do you notice how wounded maiden’s suck all the energy out of the room, all the air out of the room? The mother gives the energy and roots the room. So being that responsive in a room, I say, first we make ourselves safe, then we make the room safe and then we can make the world safe. Versus accessing that safety you talked about for ourselves, becoming self-sourced, rooting deeply and really imagining you’re the oak tree of the room, you’re the safest.
Jenna Ward:
I do all this. We use an analogy of the oak tree in our rootedness concepts within the way that we do feminine embodiment coaching over at my school. And just to bring this conversation full circle, we’re speaking about an ancient mature oak tree, reverence to that exact matured mother nature which is a beautiful orientation to hold in terms of bringing this conversation full circle.
Sarah, it has been as a ways, just a total roller-coaster of delight speaking with you. I’m going to include the links to your work with this interview so that people can find out more. I know you’re very poetic and expressive on Instagram in particular which is where I get a good dose of you regularly. Is there anything final that you’d like to express or share as we move towards wrapping up?
Thank you so much.
