My Mother’s House

I found myself standing at the threshold of wilderness, the unknown, feeling a deep pull to enter in. It was dark, but a bright and mesmerizing full moon lit this perceived dangerous path, casting shadows everywhere. I wasn’t supposed to go there, but the pull kept getting stronger.

I turned around to look back at where I had been. The sunlight illuminated every corner so I knew exactly what was coming, what to expect. I felt homesickness, a longing for what used to be. I knew the people, the language, the feeling of belonging. I knew the terrain like the back of my hand.

Why did I no longer feel at home there?  

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I stood at the place between these two worlds, the liminal space, for a very long time. It felt like moving forward into this darkness would kill me and it felt like turning around and going back to where I was would do the same. 

After taking some time to collect every last ounce of courage I had, I left behind the old and step forward into the new. As I took that first terrifying step, the comfortable, cozy, safe, warm sweater my religion gave me, caught on a branch, and with each step I took, it unraveled.

Bit by bit, it came completely undone. 

I stood there in the moonlight, my heart, my soul, my skin, and all my vulnerable humanity, laid bare.

I wanted to run and hide when suddenly the most powerful sense of connection and love began to fill me. It appeared to have its origin in the ground beneath my feet.

I knew I was connected to the earth. I understood the concept. I’d just never actually felt it before. Not like this anyway. Energy, distinctly different from anything I’d ever felt before, continued to flow through me until it filled parts of me I didn’t even know was empty. I felt an immense and unmistakable connection to every blade of grass, grain of sand, and drop of water on the earth.

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I grew up Mormon and was taught that I am a child of Heavenly Parents. I have a Mother and a Father. Only we were not encouraged to speak to or about our Mother. She was too sacred we were told. Father is protecting her.

We only spoke to or about Him.  

I knew this intense connection to the earth, must be Her. This energy was different than anything I’d felt before. It was full of vibrant, powerful connection, and an unspeakable amount of love. This is what I had been missing my entire life. This felt like a homecoming.

My Father’s house was built with all the qualities of the Divine Masculine.

It was organized and orderly.
It was full of hierarchy and structure.
Hard work, productivity, knowledge, and achievement were the way of doing things.
It was important to always remain positive and optimistic.

It was, as Barbara Brown Taylor calls it, “full solar spirituality”. It kept me safe and warm, protected and loved. Stay in the sunlight and avoid the darkness at all costs because darkness came from some other deity, who wanted to confuse and deceive me.

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But right there, in my naked vulnerability, in the darkest place I’d ever been, the place I was told to avoid, I found my Mother. And rather than being deceived by this dark place, I was filled with clarity and peace and unspeakable love.

Her house was built on Divine Feminine qualities.
Cycles and flow and creativity.
Her house was full of wisdom and rest.
Nurturing and stillness.

In my Father’s house I was told to strive to transcend my humanity and focus on my divinity. My humanity could not be trusted. It was a roadblock.

In my mother’s house, I was learning that my humanity was the portal to my divinity and that being human was the whole point.

I felt so much joy at this discovery!  How thrilled I was to know that She had been there all along. Supporting me. Holding me up. Giving me life. At the very same time, I experienced so much grief that this had been kept from me for so long. That was the great deception. Her suppression was my own.

So I planted my feet in the soft fertile soil. I watered the ground with rivers of my own tears and slowly, steadily, began to reclaim the Divine Feminine within the wilderness of me.

Here, the sun and moon both shine and work together in harmony. Here there is room for all of me.  
Here I am whole, I am complete, I am home.

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