bear mother speaks

Bear mother speaks.

The language of the heart.

Strong back, soft front.

Bear mother speaks.

Remember the wisdom of the mothers who’ve come before.

The mothers whose hearts have broken in pain and then broken open.

The mothers who gazed upon burning flames and felt their internal sparks ignite.

The mothers who sharpened their claws while softening their hearts.

The mothers who held the sacred medicines in their hands and on their tongues.

The mothers who sang and drummed themselves back to strength.

The mothers who gathered and welcomed them all into their soft flesh, a safe place to land.

The mothers who laid naked on the earth, feeling her heartbeat below their bellies.

The mothers who remembered the sweetness of the fruits.

The mothers who took their tears and rubbed them on their third eyes.

Bear mother speaks.

The language of the heart.

Strong back, soft front.

I wrote the above poem last week while processing challenging news about my daughter. I sat on the shaky grounds of uncertainty as I witnessed my daughter experience the unknown in a whole new way. I held back my tears while I wiped hers across her third eye (a beautiful practice I learned from Azalea Kemp). I tried my best to stay both strong and soft.

I was reminded of my deep connection with my beloved guardian, the bear mother. The bear mother symbolizes protection, healing, and courage. She walks through life with a strong back and a soft front.

Strong back, soft front is a beautiful Buddhist teaching originated by Zen Buddhist Roshi Joan Halifax. She describes it as follows:

“All too often our so-called strength comes from fear, not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open, representing choiceless compassion. The place in your body where these two meet—strong back and soft front—is the brave, tender ground in which to root our caring deeply.” — Roshi Joan Halifax

Strong back, soft front truly feels like the medicine for our times. I know so many of us feel crushed by the presidential election results. I know that for BIPOC people in this country, it’s even more crushing. I find myself wondering how we could have ever gotten to such a horrible place, how we could have ever allowed this terrible man to become president. And then I remember that this country was founded on racism and domination. In many ways, these election results and the ensuing harms to come are nothing new. A country repeating its patterns.

Related to motherhood — I want to mention the reflective place I find myself in as my children grow and get older. For much of my mothering journey, I’ve shared my children’s experiences openly with my online community. It was a way for me to connect with other moms and parents, to feel less alone in the challenges of mothering. But as my children get older I’m attuning to the need to protect their privacy, to receive their consent when sharing their stories and photos online. I also realize looking back that I should have been more thoughtful when sharing their experiences publically with my online community. I’m living and learning and I’m glad I’m more aware of this now. If you have young ones, I encourage you to think about this too. It’s a fine line between sharing openly and vulnerably with online communities and the need to respect and honor privacy.

I want to close this writing with a quote from my friend Syliva Linstead’s most recent Substack piece. She has a video of her singing in this piece and I wept as I listened. I also wept as I read her words. I hope you find a place deep inside to also tend your sorrows.

“I’ve been thinking about all the white women who voted for Trump— and asking myself how damaged are we, and how far back, that so many said yes to this? And I want to say, though I’m sure not many of them would want to hear me— before the divine right of kings, before the law of warlords and bands of young men rushing out of the steppe on horseback to pillage communities and abduct women, before the Christian state that insisted your body was not your own but always your husbands, before absolute hatred and mistrust of our sexuality set in, there were women now buried in the earth of Old Europe who could shapeshift into birds. And I want to say, these are your women. There were women whose power of sight and communion with the divine was so strong that they were consulted by their communities for healing, the kind of healing always in service to the balance of life. These are your women. There was a time when it was known on European soil that Earth’s justice was the law of the land and ordained by elder women, and the goddesses had the heads of waterbirds, and the grandmothers had houses with chicken legs, and they could be ruthless and fierce when needed, in service of life. They were not afraid of the dark, and taught their daughters not to be afraid either, and to paint their cheeks with woad, and their soles with yellow saffron, and their navels with ochre, and dance until the moon I once dreamed had been shot out of the sky was lifted back up to where it belongs. These are our women, these are the mothers our great-grandmothers so desperately needed and mostly didn’t have, and these women would not hesitate to stand for and enact justice upon the one you elected, for they are women of integrity and of peace, and of Earth’s law.” — Sylvia Linsteadt

with love,

Waverly

1 - Blue Ridge Abortion Fund, Planned Parenthood, NDN Collective, PFLAG, and so many other organizations whose work to protect women, trans, queer, BIPOC, and marginalized people of all kinds is needed now more than ever. Please support these organizations and other orgs doing this work in any way you can.

2 - Community and generosity, also needed now more than ever. We can lift each other up, hold each other close, and know that we will get through this, together. We must put our privileges to good and make use of what we have to give. It all starts with the land we live on and the communities we exist within.

until next time ♡