Divine Mother as Tree: Part 2
Divine Mother Tree
Splayed open mid-pine
is a woman in a cloak,
her outline the shape of the ceramic
shines of the Christ mother, Mary.
She is carved into, or out of,
a thick rim of bark—
an icon both of sacrifice and shelter.
Can one exist without the other?
she asks, arms outstretched,
roots gripping ground,
their under-earth capillaries
osmosing water to womb,
limbs, heart-space, soul.
She is the shape of how it feels
to be loved unconditionally.
An alter of fertile soil at her base—
a seat for mystery and ecology,
beetles dwelling and loved ones
kneeling, needing to be filled.
Midday sun beats onto
her bared-open chest,
radiant light reflecting off
a tender wood abdomen.
Arms open to hold sacred space
for all who worship, or wonder.
Welcome, she invites.
If I lay inside her like a coffin,
she would round into human form.
And yet, she is more whole than hollow.
Her trunk is striated with scars,
crevices of where pain wedged
her open, then healed,
then whittled into a soft cavern.
Born of arbor rings and spirit,
she is the manifestation of divinity,
the reminder of self-nourishing to give—
the transforming of suffering to grace.
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REFLECTION:
Last week, I wrote about how Mrs. Rabbit, from the Beatrix Potter books, represents one part of my understanding of the Divine Mother. In this week’s reflection, I want to address how—while honoring the comfort of this aspect of the Divine Mother—there is a risk of solely identifying with Mrs. Rabbit as motherhood divine.
The risk, for me, is that in Mrs. Rabbit’s perpetual state of giving, she drains herself. I noticed this about my own mother when I was young, but didn’t understand it: she would spend all day with us, making mud cakes, stacking sandwiches, drawing bath water. At the end of the day, her eyes were heavy and she would fall asleep on the couch, or eat chocolate as a way to (ineffectively) refill what she had generously poured out.
I follow much the same pattern in my mothering—the excessive outpourings followed by the unmet need for nourishment. I started this COVID-19 quarantine by creating a bubble of magical experiences for my daughter: trips to the beach, nature walks through different forests, drives to new sights. A couple weeks into the shelter-in-place orders, I could see her grappling to understand her new routine away from preschool, library story time, her play group. “What kind of day is it, Momma?” she would ask when I got her out of her crib.
“It’s a Momma day,” I’d say. As if to compensate for that fact, I’d add, “Guess what kind of adventure we’re going to go on TODAY?”
She would rocket up, wide-eyed. “Where we going?!”
I would review our day and she would squeal with excitement. By design, she did not even understand there was a pandemic beyond the boundaries of our plans.
During the same stretch of time, my husband’s business was being deeply affected by the mandated social distancing, as so many peoples’ have been. For the first few weeks of quarantine, I saw this as an opportunity for unity: I worked with him to develop a new strategy to weather the at-home orders; I wrote press releases and blogs and marketing materials. We recorded videos to support his product sales, contemplated which vertical markets would be most likely to purchase his equipment, planned how to “sell” during a time of economic upheaval without fear mongering.
Meanwhile, my back started to ache as my third trimester bore on. I ignored the pain—the physical manifestation, of course, of all my giving to help my family avoid their own adjustments. Despite the spasming, I met each day with new activities for my daughter, new ideas for my husband. I made healthy dinners. And then, I’d fall asleep early and eat chocolate as a way to (ineffectively) refill.
I was draining in much the same way I imagine Mrs. Rabbit draining after an endless series of comfort-giving days. How could her back NOT ache after perpetually bending: to hug her babies, to wash dishes, to diaper? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my mother discovered her breast cancer lump while bending over the washing machine.
I could feel my discontent rising a month into quarantine, a tell-tale sign that I am not paying attention to my own needs. Finally, I booked an appointment with my therapist—the same therapist who helped start me on my journey to understand my sexuality. I told her about how feeling depleted also left me feeling disconnected from my sensual and sexual self.
“What are you doing to nourish yourself?” she asked. Immediately I saw the problem—the resurgence of the old narrative I use when I am avoiding pain, or change: “self-care is selfish.”
I needed to refill.
And so I took to the woods for nourishment, as I often do. Half a mile down a dirt path, I found a tree I had noticed a few weeks before and could not stop thinking about. It looked to me like the outline of a woman. It reminded me (as noted in the poem above) of the light-bulb lit shrines to Mother Mary, the Christian figure with whom I most identify. I have always been impressed by her strength, her understated power, her ability to flow with the dictates of her life. And I have always wondered how she appeared to stay so sane, so upright, so together despite the anguish of seeing her child suffer—how she managed not to “drain” despite particularly draining circumstances.
I stood the base of the Divine Mother Tree and admired her. She stood so tall. I traced her with my hands, feeling the roughness of her bark, the softness of her cavity. I placed a piece of rose quartz and a white feather on her alter. I bent to the roots clawed into the soil beneath her.
What power she held. Majesty. Mystery. She had the spiritual essence of what I was seeking: the ability to nurture and remain standing upright despite conditions. She was grounded in her need to feed herself to survive. Day after day she stood, not bending.
An image came to me as I sat with Divine Mother Tree: it was the much-documented picture of a tree root system transposed into a human chest, indicating the anatomical likeness of tree roots and pulmonary bronchi. Breathe, the image reminded me.
I took a deep breath and pulled out my leather journal. I sketched the tree and its root system, then wrote the poem that appears above. I considered a new philosophy: so often science, and even religion, tells us that we must empty to fill, but the Divine Mother tree suggested an alternative—albeit, circular—route: one must fill to empty to prevent the spiritual toll of feeling drained.
I set my journal down, rose to stand with my back against the tree and did a meditation that I have replicated daily as a reminder that I cannot nurture without my own nourishment: that self-care is not selfish, but a sign of wisdom and enlightenment:
I pictured my legs becoming tree roots. Out of the soles of my feet, I imagined a bronchial tree spreading beneath me, like a spider veins, down in the center of earth. I breathed through these tributaries, drawing prana – life energy – through my body. As the energy flowed through my toes, my calves, my thighs, my uterus, my chest, my throat, I felt my arms stretch outward in the shape of the tree shrine behind me. Instinctively, my head lifted toward the sun, then fell in reverence toward the earth.
I did this again and again—acting as though I were the tree’s veins and lungs. I drew in water from unconfined aquifers, oxygen from the forest air. I stood in the power of my solar plexus. Grounded and refueled.
I felt sated and full. Able to empty again, as mothers do.
As I breathed in and out like tree, I remembered how simple “refilling” can be—that replenishment often only requires the awareness that my spirit needs nourishment, a root system, and the conscious drawing of breath.
