Your mother self is your wildest self.

“Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.” -Clarissa Pinkola Estes

But it’s only recently words like mom rage and books like Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder exploring the untamed edges of motherhood have come onto the scene, weaving a picture of motherhood that honors the multidimensionality of maternal love and protection.

I’ve been noticing this trend going around on Instagram, where a mom shares a video of her tenderly holding a baby with the caption “I thought motherhood would make me softer, but here’s what it actually made me…”. The video then flashes forward to several frames of Mother Nature — think waves crashing, lions roaring, and volcanoes erupting. It’s clear with trends like these that millions of women are waking up to an archetype that hasn’t been reflected in modern day depictions of acceptable mothering.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes this best in Women Who Run With the Wolves when she writes,

“… and so it is in order to pursue further development that we exchange the hovering internal mother, which was so apt for us when we were young, for another kind of mother, one who lives even deeper in the psychic Wilderland, one who is both escort and teacher. She is a loving mother, but also fierce and demanding.”

She goes on to write that this loving mother is the archetypal wild woman,

“the one who dares, who creates as she destroys. She is a primitive and inventing soul that makes all creative acts and arts possible. She creates a forest around us and we begin to deal with life from that fraction and original perspective (Estes 110).”

Many mothers, myself included, enter motherhood with naïveté, not comprehending the profundity of the transformation or the depth of the forest we find ourselves in. I found early motherhood to be a raw, isolating place, where other women’s experiences rarely touched or guided me. It was as if I was dropped in this cave, expected to figure out my baby on my own terms. And while other women tried to be helpful by offering well-meaning advice and sharing their experiences, the responsibility of caring for this baby was all on me. I was his mother. I was his home-base and he only wanted me. His survival was my job and mine alone.

Having a baby is a massive initiation into trusting yourself and honing your intuition. Estes describes intuition as “the treasure of a woman’s psyche.” When we become mothers, we receive the fullness of this treasure as we offer it to our children through the work of nurture and attunement. I’m sure on your motherhood journey you can think of experiences or times when you had to mute the outside noise, cull outside opinions, and go within yourself to decide what was best for your child. Make no mistake, this is a profound act of rewilding, a radical reclamation of our embodied wisdom and animalistic instinct.

One of the first moments I clearly remember this intuitive self stepping forth was the first week I had my son. I hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time and was growing exhausted from having to get up and down with a C-section stitch to feed him in the middle of the night, on top of tracking medication every two hours. I had my son asleep in a Moses basket next to our floor bed and even that distance begin to feel like too much. I struggled to fall asleep without touching him or being able to feel his breath against me, and I sensed he also needed this kind of proximity, especially after an overwhelming hospital stay that interrupted us bonding peacefully, without interruption.

I had a friend who coslept with her baby and was starting to learn more about cosleeping thanks to Instagram accounts like The Happy Cosleeper, Good Night Moon Child, and Cosleepy, as well as researchers like Dr. James McKenna who wrote a book I fell in love with, Safe Infant Sleep. One night, I told my husband I would like to try bringing my son into the floor bed where I planned to sleep w him in the Cuddle Curl. Here, he had easy access to the breast and I could sleep safely on my side without disturbing my stitch or worrying about rolling onto him. I remember falling asleep with a sense of anticipation, like I was doing something labeled “forbidden” that actually felt completely natural and right.

To my delight, I was awakened a few hours later by my son, gently nibbling at my breast. The little stinker had breast-crawled for a feed without crying or needing any assistance! That first night was not only the beginning of a beautiful cosleeping and breast-feeding relationship, it was the beginning of me fully trusting my intuition as a mother.

In the first few weeks of cosleeping, I had some mothers in my village react with confusion or control. Their experiences were different, and while I understood they were reacting out of fear due to safety concerns, I felt reassured by the research and information I had read, as well as my own experience with my son. I felt both of our nervous systems settle into a trusting, restful rhythm with each other when we coslept. Cosleeping was right for us and no one could tell me otherwise.

It defies the parts of them that want to control or feel self-righteous in their own parenting approaches. I have learned that when women are cut off from their instinctual selves, often because of their own birth trauma or cultural conditioning, they will unknowingly try to cut you off from yours. They will feel threatened by you doing things differently because they see it as a rejection of their experiences. Rather than seeing these experiences as right for them, they simply see them as right for everybody because they bought into a narrative that there is one way to parent and one standard for how children should be.

I’ve encountered this several times on my motherhood journey, whether it was refusing to give my son tummy time and trusting his ability to put himself in positions when he was ready (he was walking confidently by nine months, so I know it paid off) or following a nutritional protocol called GAPS and using baby-led weaning to heal his C-section induced eczema. At this point, I’m used to fielding criticism or unsolicited advice because of other people’s ignorance or insecurity . The difference now as a pregnant mom with a toddler is that I don’t take these comments as personally.

I don’t participate in parent-led weaning, do feeding or sleep schedules, or facilitate development toward milestones with me dictating to my son how he should be. Motherhood has taught me to follow my son’s lead and be attuned to his developmental signs, attachment needs, and nervous system cues. In following his lead, I’ve come to trust my ability to mother instinctually. My son is healthy, thriving, and connected. To me, he is evidence of John O’Donohue’s sentiment that “To be natural is to be holy.” I want him to always trust his instincts and listen to his emotions like they are sacred messengers, and I know I have to model this as a mom to make this impression.

On our our motherhood journeys, all of us will reach a point where expert advice and other women’s guidance can only take us so far. Our children are our teachers. They show us who they are with what they need from us every day. Who we become in service of our children is often a version of ourselves that we need, too. We become wiser, more grounded, more compassionate, and more empowered as mothers. We become wilder in this sacred work.

Remember the wisdom of your instincts as you mother. Reclaim your wildest, truest self. It is a treasure in your relationship with your children. It is the touchstone of all things natural, holy, and good. And as Estes reminds us,

“Nature does not ask permission. Blossom and birth whenever you feel like it. As adults, we need little permission, but rather more engendering, much more encouraging of the wild cycles, much more original vision (Estes, 100).”

May you honor your original vision as you mother wildly,

~S

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