Founder Letter: The Fierce Mother Light

Dear Rosies,  

By now, most of you know that Mother’s Day began as a protest against war. A collective almost unreasonable fierce claim that we should not sacrifice our children in nation-state conflicts. 

Mother’s Day was a crying out from a yearning desire to not have our hearts broken over and over, that we allow the essence of our children’s light and life come to full mature fruition.

The women behind the first Mother’s Day asked that our governmental resources not be used in war. It was a wish that the cycle of violence, and the cultures of separation that create it, end once and for all.

Yet, like many fierce movements emerging from the heart, especially those that challenge entrench systems, the holiday was coopted and watered down until we have this day of pleasant tropes: brunching and botanical gardens, of (often) semi-obligatory honoring, or maybe a sort of mom’s-day-off thing where the nurturing goes the other way for a hot minute.

So today I’m feeling into the actual origin story, and the fierceness of a mother’s love. 

Honoring the mother is honoring life and its unending creative potential.

It also honors the investment in time, treasure and energy: the endless moments of bringing up a being. The risk of death in bearing, the shift in identity, the confusion, the midnight phone calls, the doctor and the dentist and the cliques and the carpool. The attempt to see their essence and guide them in a world that where change is accelerating and things feel less steady, to guide them to shine their light and be the love that they are anyway. To guide them to a path of joy and authenticity.

As we tap into the collective consideration of “mother”, I see some possibilities, can you see them with me?

I see that every being can rediscover their own radiant light, even if it wasn’t reflected in the face or actions of their mother or other early caregivers.

Every being can unwind any remaining stories of the mother (including ourselves if we are mothers), of not doing enough or being enough, not loving enough or being affectionate enough, and instead know that she did the best she could, and simply bow down to the life giving pulse.

We do the work to recognize our adaptations to our mother’s way of being, but we own our adult responses, and we know we can shift anything by bringing conscious attention to it. We make a commitment to take our joy and happiness into our own hands from here on out.

I see also that we can take the pressure off of the mother: who people become isn’t solely a “parenting outcome”. Kids come in with their own karma and genetics and soul’s mission, and these mix in with culture and family and have their own direct experiences.

I bring to mind this day the mothers worried about her children. All of the mothers who are weeping for their children during the wars going on today, right now, around the world. The mothers who are numb, or in the grief of loss. Anyone who is alienated from their child, or whose child has a physical or mental illness, or a child who has forgotten their light. We see you. 

It’s complex, how we our related to our first teacher and mirror, with the portal for our embodied life. Some people dream of the mother’s love, some celebrate the mother’s love, some carry resentments and frustrations.  It’s always going to be perfectly imperfect, intertwined with karma, intertwined with long multiple lifetime narratives of what we’re here to do on this planet.

The answer, for me, is as it always is: more love, more compassion, more mercy.

May all of our mother-child relationships become deeply celebratory of life.

May we one day see a world without war or state sponsored violence of any kind.

Happy Mother’s Day, Rosies, whether you are a daughter, or a mother or both.

All love, 

Christine

XO

Christine Marie Mason

Founder, Rosebud Woman

Host The Rose Woman Podcast on Love and Liberation