It's Not About Motherhood

I have been on a personal quest to understand the link between spirituality and motherhood. Working with mothers, observing mothers, and being a mother I can see the spiritual journey (I am using this to define the journey of one’s soul) that each one is on, and yet because they are mothers in a modern world they have little to no capacity, quite frankly energy left to share the answers of the universe with anyone.

Yes, I am saying that mothers hold the secrets of the universe. It is a great irony of life. Here you are a portal between two worlds and you create life inside of you. You create life inside of you simply by being and then you break open to hold this new capacity you have never held. You do all this while still being a functioning human in modern society. So yes, mothers hold the secrets to the universe, and yet…

One of the first times I met a dear friend of mine I was telling her about my career and how I work with women. She said she loved the way I thought about therapy and helping women except “it’s not actually about motherhood”.

To this day I still come back to that thought…it is not actually about motherhood. Mothers hold the secrets to the universe and yet it is not about motherhood. The real connection to becoming and living out your true soul’s desire (spiritual journey) has nothing to do with being a mother. Motherhood is often the door that women walk through that causes them to see their power. Seeing their power is the first step in coming home to themselves and often seeing their power can be so overwhelming that they get stuck in the motherhood loop.

Continuing on the quest of the connection between motherhood and spirituality, another friend presented me with some channeled novels by Gates McKibbin. (You can purchase them here, I highly recommend) In these novels, you follow the evolution of a love story across lifetimes. The woman, who in this case is a representation of the divine feminine, never bears any children, and this fact by book three stuck out to me. How is it that this woman representing divine feminine doesn’t bear any children by the third book!

My thoughts spun around my head, isn’t the goal of being a woman to bear children? Don’t we tell women they lack something without children? Society does this dance where on the one hand you MUST bear children because you can and on the other how dare you bring more children into this world when there are so many problems. The constant conflict that is tossed around on the interwebs, in private circles, in tv shows, in movies, and in schooling is confusing and draining. So, I thought, she must certainly have a child in book four. Spoiler alert: She never bears children herself.

Then it hit me, one of those full body moments, the answer to my quest: If the lead in this book about divine feminine had a child she brought forth herself then it would be too easy to add to the confusion that women are here only to be a mother. It isn’t about motherhood. What is it you ask? The meaning of your life as a female on this planet.

Motherhood is a path, a beautiful, chaotic, spiritual, sky-rocketing growth path. Motherhood is not the only path and it is not the end goal of the path. Motherhood is the door to your magic and power. It is a moment when you can tangibly hold how creative you are as a being. It is a marker in life where you see that with very little effort (effort is the key word here) YOU can create a whole new being. You have the power to create worlds.

Motherhood is the door. The destination is becoming so yourself that you cultivate wild beauty around you. The destination is that you are free from the limitations you once held about your being.

Mary Sanker