WRITING WITH ROX WEEKLY PROMPT—ALL ROADS LEAD TO MA

How was your weekend? Mine was good. The usual. I birthed my inner star. You?


You see, I went to a training/healing workshop with William Emerson, which was deeply healing, nourishing, awakening, etc, etc, to say the very least, as these sorts of weekends tend to be. * The focus, "healing the wounds of spirit, retrieving the roots of soul," would be a bit heavy to get into for a writing prompt (don'tcha think?), but the experience, to be sure, could easily fill the pages of my soon to be released memoiretta, "Book of Pocket Prompts for the Here and Now." (Yes, I'm kidding. Maybe). 


The point is that at one point when we were all sitting around circularlia floor fashion, someone wondered aloud if in some ways we were all motherless, to which I replied, "Of course! Why else would we be here?! All roads lead to mom, yes?"


 Now. Now. Now. Please don't get all up and up and up about dear mother. I know, I know. I am one for Tilly's sake! And lord knows how I love Ma. How that love is now true, true in the way of my newly birthed inner star. Oh Jesus... I can just hear Dada now... "Oh Jesus, Woman!"


(((((((((((*THE BACKSTORY: I'm a "work on myself" junkie. I dedicate myself to deep healing retreats at least twice per year in honor and discipline of reasons many. Last September I was buried in the sand as part of Shamanic ritual in order to surrender to "dark mother"; this past Mother's Day weekend, I apparently surrendered to my spirit and soul body by viscerally remembering myself pre, post, and moment of conception, as well as pre, post, and moment of birth. As an incubator baby, I went back and birthed myself out of the despair that consumed me during that time.  ))))))))))))))


Got that?


That's okay. I'm still getting it. But I like it. Because there I was on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in a St Paul lushly and cosmically colored basement floor, spread octagonally and then some with little dippers of starlight streaking inward and outward ad infinitum. 

Old Star

As soon as I declared myself a star ("I'm a star!"), I realized the high hilari-rony  of my proclamation, for I am rooted in mythology, part of the collective offspring of stars gone bad. Conceived on the same block where dreams were dreamt and sold, I was a tumble seedling of the Los Angeles facade, wombed only by the debris of an old Hollywood set gone feral, aiming aimlessly for rebirth on the big screen... in other words...stardom. Though I've long ago given up the dream of life on the silver screen, there has always remained a part of me that has deeply longed to be seen in a big way.  I won't go into any detail, but at the risk of sounding full of woo, thanks to this weekend, I have finally been acquainted with the true star I am and was always meant to be. 

New Star

So how does this relate to all roads leading to Ma and what on earth is the prompt?  


Ma and I have had a long haul. We ebb and flow. Neither is very good at assuming their familial role, admittedly on both ends. This has been so extreme at times that we have gone our separate ways, said things we'd regret, etc. I can't speak for Ma, but I personally had to do a lot of therapy (and writing!) to at last individuate from her, a process that begins at birth and peaks in adolescence, which many theories of development will illustrate in far finer language than I. But instead of getting lost in all that theory anyway, I'll just share my Mother's Day clarity: 


As usual Ma sent flowers and a sweet card full of loving flowing momlove. And as usual my thoughts swelled with defense mechanism, saying, "well... yeah, but... she... well... yeah...no she doesn't..." which has been a resounding echo of energy since, well, I guess, according to what I learned this weekend anyway, the moment of conception, possibly before. "Hmmm" I thought listening to those familiar words, observing the self-protective compliance they carried, "perhaps I oughta reconsider these thoughts..." And as I listened, I realized I'd been inwardly reciting this love-denying mantra for a very long time, long before words carved this "knowing" into a painful personal mythology. But  as I glanced the swirls of her familiar cursive, so like pink icing on a white cake, there was a spark of light, of love, so clearly alive in those mom letters. "This is love," the letters seemed to be saying, each and every taloned one. "Take it or leave it." 


I took it.








Of course this is neither end nor means to the end of suffering. This does not guarantee forever dissipation of issues and dysfunction and intense snarls with Ma, Jude, Dada...intimates future and past. This does not mean there is not a very epic story that precedes this one. But I shall not give it away here and now; I'll save it for the memoiretta. 


What mother issues do you have? It's okay. We all do. For some of us they are still in the embryonic stage,  but when we work them through, birth and love them, we soar...much like stars reborn. 

Fin (for now)............ 


PS: A PSA FOR YOU! And... if ya believe me, why not join my Tuesday Evening Healing Group, beginning June 14 on Healing and Dealing with Mother Stuff. 

Jude Star