International Women’s Day: Prayer for Mothers

The world needs you.
Sing your strengths
dance your passions
smile your successes
hug yourself with compassion
for your painful moments
take a second to drink it up
and to rest in powerful certainty
that you are enough

Breathe out
breathe in
soft shoulders
soft belly
strong legs
strong woman

A mother who is seen
who is heard
who is appreciated
who is valued.

In and out
Mama, you’re amazing

(3/8/2013)

Today, on International Women’s Day, when I went down to the woods I spoke (wrote?!) a Prayer for Mothers that I then published on my other blog. After a pause, I added the above words as well.

My children have a “thing” about losing their shoes. Every time we leave the house, it feels like mass chaos of shoe locating, even though we have a specific place where shoes are supposed to be kept. Recently, after scouring the house for ages, giving up, and finally digging out some different, older shoes for my toddler, we then eventually located her shoes in the cupboard with the bread machine. This week, one of those same favorite blue shoes went missing and we haven’t been able to find it anywhere, so she’s been wearing her pink shoes instead. Today, when I stepped out to go down to the woods, the missing shoe was waiting for me at the bottom of the deck stairs.

When I’d headed out to the woods today I’d been thinking, again, about the balance between mothering and “personing” and how difficult it feels a lot of the time to meet everyone in the house’s needs. I persist in thinking it is possible to actually live our family affirmation: our family works in harmony to meet each member’s needs. However, last night and this morning it felt like anything but! So, finding the shoe seemed like a little message. I’d brought out a pendant that my husband made for me using several items of meaning to me. I think of it as one of my priestess necklaces. The moon goddess pendant in the middle is one of a set of matching pendants that I gave to my mom and my friend when we went to the Gaea Goddess Gathering together last fall (I’ve bought some more of them recently to give to the other members of our circle so eventually we can all have matching necklaces). While at the GGG, a lot of issues came up for me about family harmony and I bought matching stone “doughnut” pendants from one of the vendors for my husband, kids, and myself. We wear them during our family full moon rituals each month. My friend and my mom each gave me one of the stone points during a “mother” ceremony at the GGG and during that time I felt very acknowledged and “seen” by my friend in the priestess role I’m growing into with our women’s circle. So, today, it felt like an integrative experience to take a picture of the shoe and pendant together.

Then, when I went to pick my kids back up from my dad’s house, we couldn’t find my daughter’s pink shoes anywhere and had to come home without them!

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For past International Women’s Day thoughts about birth activism and feminism see this post.