The Privilege of Parent

The Privilege of Parent

I am a High Priestess. I have been on this path in one way or another my whole life. It is hard sometimes. It is a duty that sometimes can feel overwhelming. The "things" that need to be done, the planning, the cleaning, the organizing, the careful inter play of energies coming, holding and releasing; it is hard work. Yet it is a boon. A gift and most of all a privilege.

I see things, know things, experience and allows others to experience amazing spiritual moments.

It is an honor.

So too the title Mother sits with me.

Something happened to me, right around the second trimester of my first pregnancy. Firstly I could feel a person inside me. Not a blob or a thing but the spirit of a whole persons, complex and interesting inside me. I could feel her aura. Her energy. Her hiccups. She felt like the smell of thunder storms, the blue before the setting sun, powerful, calm, deep and peaceful.

I also felt this doorway, a place inside me that I had not known before. A connectedness to something instinctual and powerful, a knowing, deep beyond measure. Something wild and fierce in me. 

My birth experience was not great and I ended up having an emergency C-section under general anesthetic. I awoke to find this screaming worm fighting against my body and to an agony in my womb I could not bear. 49%  of me wanted to push this weird creature that was hurting me away, 51% knew she was mine. MINE. There was a snarling dangerous beast in me that wanted to destroy anyone who came near her. 

My eldest daughter didn't nurse well. Didn't sleep well. I had no help other than TK who was working split shifts 6 days a week. It was just me and Mini-witch. I was fascinated by this person staring at me with these deep knowing (slightly judgmental) eyes. I would spend hours singing to her, talking to her (not that there was anyone else to talk to) holding her to my face. It was awful. It was amazing. I got no more than an hour and a half of sleep for 4 months. I barely ate. I spent anytime not with mini-witch (while she slept) cleaning. After we began supplementing breast feeds with soya milk formula and she started sleeping it became easier. 

I wanted to explore this new power in me, this whole ancient force flowing within me. More than that the idea I would give her to someone else to look after physically pained me. If I went somewhere, she came with me. If I was teaching she was there. If I did readings she would sit there too. Good as gold. Those large eyes looking the clients up and down too. 

Someone had said (I don't remember know) that if you didn't invite your children into your life and allow them to know you, experience you as a person, they would not have anything in common with you when they were adult. That showing them "parent" was not enough, that you needed to share yourself with them. This process for me (and the fact I was young) allowed me to find out who I was and share that journey with my daughter.

I LOVED (and still love) being a mother. TK and I decided to try for a sister for Mini-witch and I got pregnant straight away. The pregnancy was different. She was orange and heat and summer meadow. 

That is how Kara came into our lives. We had to move. There was a lot of stress. It was far from perfect, but it was amazing. The birth was long and difficult. My old C-section scar re-opened and and my sudden instance on a C-section saved our lives.Unlike last time I bounced back quickly and Kara slept straight through the night from the get go. I was teaching, working magick, caring for 2 kids under 2, yet it felt that I was doing what I was made for. Mini witch was not jealous but loving and impressed by this small warm person. She nursed straight away.

The morning we found Kara dead was oddly sunny for December 9th 2003. She was seven and a half months old. First came shock. Then pain. Pain the like of which you can not imagine. I don't want you to imagine. 

Loss.

Lost.

Agony.

That primal part of me roared and gnashed it's teeth.

I refused medication because there wasn't anything wrong with me. I did not want to numb the pain. I hurts because I miss her, It SHOULD hurt.

Yet that primal animal mother, got me out of bed. Made me read to my Mini-witch. Made me eat. Made me sing songs and care for her. That small but insistent voice made me live, not for my own sake, but because I had a purpose. I had someone to look after and she was all the more special because she was mine.

It is that part of me that rages in my heart and head when people piss on the word "mother". Or when I watch people ignore their children. Or lean over the pram with cigarette in mouth. Not because it isn't fair. Not because I did everything right but because they do not see their parenthood as a privilege. As something fragile and fleeting and more important than your facebook page, your ipad, or going out and getting drunk or working every hour. They are not sandbags that hold you down. They can be the most beautiful and powerful part of your whole life, if you spend sometime looking deep into their eyes and learn how to see your privilege.