𓆏 motherline
On toads, ancestry, archetypes and storytelling. Missive on (er, around) the pink moon.
𓆏
My mother’s mother loved frogs and toads. Her living spaces were always chock full of ‘em.
One early April in northern Michigan, around the age of eight, I was playing in the spring my grandfather had dug by hand decades before. I found a frozen toad poking out of the melting snow.
I plucked the toad from the earth, ran it to my grandmother. She assured me that the wee thing had made a choice, that it froze on purpose, that it didn’t get lost or confused, that it intuitively knew what to do.
I placed my toad friend back where I found it, whispered that I would be back in the summer to check in on things.
Of course, that summer I found a toad. And every summer since. And even now, I whisper hello to my grandmother whenever I find a toad (or frog) - little conduits for my messages to the great beyond. Small reminders that intuition knows best.
a return
I sit my tired arse on a clump of dock, the likes of which I've been eradicating from our garden all morning.
There is a stone in my pocket, rubbed smooth by eons in the ocean. Last week, a three year old at school held it in his small hand for a few hours. “Miss Kat, I put good energy into the things I hold”, he told me.
I return to raking away last year's detritus. This is when I find them: poets narcissus, wild iris and motherwort. My allies. My lanterns. My friends. The ones I love tending to most, who tend to me in return.
mothering is
a healing modality
a form of resistance
an act of revolt
poetry is
a healing modality
a form of resistance
an act of revolt
storytelling is
a healing modality
a form of resistance
an act of revolt
motherline
My aforementioned grandmother was everything one might hope a granny to be: giver of plush hugs, a tinkling laugh, catchphrases like “oh golly" and “play the field”. She spoke to me of her rosary and devotion, her birds, her sister. How she met my grandfather in second grade. Her dreams of becoming a nurse. Stories of her own stern-as-could-be, Irish-Catholic mother. We spent summers up north together at the cottage my grandfather built, along with every holiday between one year and the next. In my late childhood, I'd bring my friends to her place for dinner, sleep over on the pull out couch in the basement.
Not so long ago, but well after my grandmother passed, I learned that her mothering and her grand-mothering were two very different stories. These stories aren't mine to tell, and I won't forsake the love and attention my grandmother gave me by trying to tell them. Suffice it to say, there was rage in my mother's childhood home.
This update to the story of my family came, oddly, as a sigh of relief to me. It meant that rage was more common than I thought. It meant that I could move beyond my own one day.
It also explained much about my own up bringing. After all, we are each products of our environments. Lately, thoughts of my grandmother and my mother have been waking me at night. Old stories that used to affect me differently than they do now.
Questions are also waking me in the middle of the night. Questions I’d like to ask many women in my life. Questions like how many miscarriages? How many babies? Were they planned? How many deaths? What did postpartum support look like? Was there any support at all? What did she have to give up in order to be a mother? What were the expectations placed upon her? You know the sort - questions for anyone and everyone.
There is an invisible thread that holds a mother and her child together. So, too, is there an invisible thread which holds the pieces of a mother together- the artist, the vagabond, the other identities that, for now, lay dormant. Whether or not a mother realizes it, within every thread, there is something of activism.
These threads give shape and color to the tapestry of culture. They weave themselves back, back and back some more, generations long.
Centuries of mothers have existed within systems that were designed to keep them busy in the home, in the kitchen, with the children, with child. These are by no means bad places or tasks in and of themselves. On the contrary, they are the most important work a human can do, in the most sacred of spaces. Yet the work of mothers and caregivers, past and present, is largely overlooked, undervalued, unthanked (and, hi, unpaid). I’m not referencing family members, but broader networks of control. Our governments, politicians and various other local community systems. In short, entities which benefit from the work of mothers, the work that keeps capitalism in place and the economy moving forward.
These past and present stories shape who you and I are in this moment, whether or not we are mothers ourselves. These stories are simultaneously responsible for the tapestry of future culture, being woven in this moment.
I’m imagining how a generational understanding of matrescence could help us understand our grandmothers, our mothers, ourselves.
Matrescence is not simply for the mother looking to understand herself better, not simply to validate the lack of support she feels from the systems she exists within.
Matrescence is for the masses.
Story shapes culture. One part salve, one part soil, story has the power to shift harmful generational narratives, to lay the foundation for resilient, empowered individuals to root and blossom.
I am not sure what to do with these thoughts just yet. Perhaps a virtual workshop, or an in person writing gathering (if there is any interest, holler). All I know is, the subject feels immense and necessary and timely enough that I just want to talk about it all the time. Motherline. Yours and mine.
April’s book nook
a garland, a miscellany
I map out my own archetypes. Why not? At some point, someone mapped them out. Why not design one’s own?
I am coming to find storytelling through archetypes to be a powerful tool. Part medicine, part pathwork.
What archetypes are you interested in working with in your writing (or elsewhere)? The aspects of self or surroundings you wish to lean into, to roar with, to swim quietly beside? Below is a list of divine feminine archetypes I’ve been writing with. At the bottom, I’ve included some archetypes in nature I’m currently writing alongside as well. What’s fun about assigning nature archetypes is this: we get to choose what it is they symbolize.
The Lady of Communion
The Warrior
The Wild Woman
The Visionary
The Midwife
The Mother
The Matriarch
The Wise Woman
The Crone
The Stone
The Toad
The Meadow
The Raindrop
I’m not entirely sure what's going on, but a LOT of folks have invited spirit food into their lives this week. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being here. In case we've never met (virtually or otherwise), my name is Kat, and connection is the name of my game. My art doesn't unfold in hopes of reaching the masses, it grows with hope of small-scale quality connection. As such, I would love to hear from you, what you're writing about, what you're reading, what's in your garden, the shitty/hilarious thing your toddler said, what you make of this motherhood thing - it's all welcome here. Except bigotry… get lost with that noise.
With daffodils,
your poetry pal,
Kat
So much of what you shared about motherhood deeply resonates with me. I've been thinking so much about those same pieces that make up a mother, all of the different layers of who we are (or who we're "allowed" to be out in the open). The parts of us we hide, the parts of us we push away, the parts we don't even realize informs who we are as mothers because we're too afraid to speak the truth. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Kat. Hollering over here! ;)
“Motherline.” I love this. It suggests straightness, but when you think of the thread being woven—anything but. Just like our stories. Our mothers. Ourselves.
The stories in my family are less layered. My family has always been good at talking, addressing problems, transparency. But, they’re still tangled.
Thank you for the invitation to stay-with the knots, follow where they sprawl.