Woman in Repose: Divine Mother, Part 3
Woman in Repose
On a bed of moss
by a river bank,
along a crescent of sand
at lake’s edge,
atop a patch of lawn
outside my bedroom,
I lie in repose.
How sensual it can be,
having a watery and glittering
world inside my womb.
I cup one hand over the
globe of my belly—
cradling the galaxy of his coming
in a curved palm—
the other over the soft hill
of my breast.
Eyes closed, I touch the milkweed
silk of my cheeks,
twine-like whips of hair at
the nape of my neck.
The breeze blows.
A lotus of pain
hovers in my back,
the pressure in my pelvis
sharp and strangely reassuring.
Sensations of pregnancy
swell with the contraction and
expansion of divine mystery:
I created this sacred and
sacral being, nourish him into life,
will birth him to a new day.
As the planet of another,
tiny person rounds the boundaries
of my midline, my personhood,
I surrender into the
contours of the landscape—
awaken, embody, feel.
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REFLECTION:
If my understanding of the Divine Mother is part Mrs. Rabbit (comfort, safety) and part Divine Mother Tree (nourishment, soul) the third aspect involves sensuality and embodiment: I’ll call it “Woman in Repose.”
I am now 36 weeks pregnant. My belly has “popped,” as they say; it looks like I have a basketball under my shirt. This final stage of pregnancy has brought an increase in pain: most notably in my back. Much of my daily experience has been about managing pain with a lively, quarantined toddler.
“Are you really managing your pain, or are you just tolerating it?” someone recently asked me.
I was, of course, tolerating it—ignoring the sometimes crippling spasms and soldiering through the day as though I had no choice. I’d fold onesies, stock drawers with newborn diapers, and clean out closets while pretending not to notice the pangs from my hip flexor to my tailbone. I’d wince, take Tylenol, and keep going. This worked for a little while, but I began to grow discouraged about how disconnected I felt from my body and the baby growing within it. I felt stiff and sore and full of discontent. I felt “off track” from my larger, personal journey with my sexuality.
My therapist suggested that I start doing meditations about the radical acceptance of pain. The mediation guide—psychologist and teacher Tara Brach—calls to open oneself to pain instead of resisting it, to accept it with non-reactive awareness. “Any physical suffering that presents is pointing to resistance,” she says. “It offers an invitation to release, to surrender, to allow.”
Simultaneous to doing these meditations, I began drawing a card from my oracle deck daily. Something about the post-mediation state made me feel open to whatever message the universe needed to send me. Day after day, I drew the same card. It was the image of a pregnant woman lying on a bed of moss, her eyes closed and tilted toward the sky. She held a naked breast, her long fingernails dangling at its base. Her belly, which she cradled with one arm, was an image of planet earth. She looked surrendered, present, and sensually in-touch with the pleasures of carrying a child.
I envied her connectedness—to her body, to the spirit in her belly, to sensation.
I wanted such rapture.
As I studied the Woman in Repose, I started to think of the pain as a bridge to feel pleasant sensations during pregnancy: that I would have to feel it, to accept it, in order to feel the also lovely sensations of being pregnant. I accepted that ignoring the pain also meant blocking pleasure—a state that the Woman in Repose so clearly represented, that I so clearly longed for. I loved the idea of a Divine Mother being more sexual than an apron-wearing rabbit or strong and stately tree. Perhaps sensuality could co-exist with the pains—both physical and emotional—of motherhood. Perhaps it was not too late to embody.
Motivated by this idea, I did my pain meditations morning after morning. I felt into the band of constriction behind my pelvis. I pictured myself on a bed of moss, transcending the pain and feeling pleasure. Slowly, I started to make friends with the pain—to ask it what would make it feel better. This very act of self-love led to the care that likely would have prevented it: stretching, bathing in Epsom salt, not lifting my daughter unless it was absolutely necessary, resting at nap time. Over the course of a few weeks, the acuteness of my back pain faded into a dull ache.
As I became more mobile, I started seeking out places in nature to mimic the Woman in Repose’s surrendered state. I lay on a bank next to a river, a sandy lake beach, the grassy knoll outside my bedroom. Each time I would call in the safe and comforted feeling of Mrs. Rabbit—as though I were in a furry embrace—and picture my feet as the Divine Tree roots, drawing nourishment into my body and soul. I would breathe in and out, just feeling the new dimensions and textures of my body.
In these moments—captured partially in the poem above—I felt radiant and glowing and full of mystery and life and wonder. I was moved by the absolute miracle of conception, pregnancy and birth—the deep splendor of being a woman with child.
Of course, this enlightened state does not last every minute of the day. I had to walk out of the woods, off the beach, back into my house. Real life persisted, but one effect of these exercises did, too: I am more awake to fetal movements—feel them more throughout the day—more able to notice the rosy “glow” of pregnancy in the mirror, more apt to let my thickening hair down and touch my softer-than-normal cheeks and earlobes. I am more likely to feel a state of rapture—to embody.
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Post-script: comments on the “risk” of only identifying with the first two aspects of the Divine Mother:
If the risk of identifying solely with Mrs. Rabbit is draining oneself, the risk for me of identifying solely with a Divine Tree is that after nourishing, I feel guilty for the time this took away from my family (just Google “mother guilt”). I return to my normal state of doing what’s necessary and ignore my need to connect to my sexuality. Then, I start to feel like I will drown in asexual domesticity. Because the truth is, even deeper than my identity as mother, is my identity as woman.
In other words, when I skip the stage of connecting to the Woman in Repose, I drain, I refill, and then I enter the cycle all over again without stopping to feel the result of being safe and nourished. For me, telltale signs of this are: ignoring pain (“pregnancy isn’t meant to be comfortable,” I tell myself), resenting my comparative immobility and productivity (“I am so tired I can’t even do the dishes”) and denying the resulting emotions (“I’m doing fine.”).
I feel incomplete and off-balance.
So I am challenging myself to think of the Woman in Repose as necessary. Because she often comes after accessing the first two parts (let’s face it, if I don’t feel safe, I am not going to close my eyes and cradle my belly in nature; if I don’t feel nourished, I am not going to prioritize the experience of pleasure or sensuality), it takes time to access her. And I am worth taking the time.
Thinking of these three aspects the Divine Motherhood as a trinity—a God-head of sorts—helps. When considered together, Mrs. Rabbit, the Divine Mother Tree, and Woman in Repose are like a three-legged stool. They form a sturdy foundation. I can call on each of them at different times, as each serves a different purpose and represents a different aspect of me. Without each of them, I feel incomplete. With each of them, I feel safe, nourished, and embodied. Most importantly, I feel whole in my experience of mother as woman.
