Of my mother’s PRIDE
mBODYed is moving through yet another shift of identity as we look into the next year and consider who we serve, our community, how best to serve them, and the ways we connect. These are great moments, but as a Taurus, these times of growth are also unsettling as we are becoming embodied. I don’t like not knowing where the ground is. I have to remember that I know who I am and what I’m doing; the struggle and the growth is in finding the language that best describes that for the website and SEOs. This is not an identity problem, it’s a marketing problem. But this realization is only after weeks of churning and writing, searching inward to find the words…
Each morning I have woken to more insight. Today was especially powerful!
I’ve written about and discussed on the Becoming mBODYed Podcast that I come from a southern family. My family is one of matriarchs: strong, secure, and powerful women. My mother is the current matriarch and is truly a sight to see. She has such a profound, quiet strength now, but that’s not my memory. I remember her having firm boundaries and integrity with a quick and sharp tongue if you stepped on either of her boundaries or her integrity. I’m proud of those traits in me.
She has been through actual hell these past few years. Her body has suffered from peripheral vascular disease, powerfully presenting in her right leg. After years of surgical stints and vascular transplants, she was put on high doses of blood thinners, which caused intestinal bleeding that required multiple units of blood (transfusions) every week to stay alive. This culminated in the amputation of her right leg this past summer, and she is now healthy and happily off blood thinners and is here in Seattle with us for the first time in 6 years.
All through this, she struggled and fought for her existence but met each moment head-on with her fear in one hand and her determination in the other. She would say that she had no choice. But of course, she did. It was, however, her choice not to choose surrender.
I am cut from this same fabric, I am realizing.
As I have been thinking about who I am and what my work is, I’ve realized so many things.
But yesterday, I realized something significant. What it means to be embodied…
First, embodiment is always present and future tense. It is an ideal that we are always working towards. Our bodies are always changing, so we want to remain curious about them. Our journey of embodiment never arrives.
Secondly, embodiment is not freedom from our experiences; it is permission to feel and own them and understand that what we sense within our bodies is our response to the world around us. Embodiment allows us to live in connection to ourselves and our environment.
It means that I can say that I am fearful. And by that, I mean I am full of fear. I am no longer interested in trying to be fearless. It is exhausting. It is impossible. Fear is my body responding to the uncertainty of the future. This is a reality. It is normal and natural. It is a waste of my energy, of my creativity, to try to escape the fear. I can feel this, accept it, and channel it. It fuels me to move forward, with fear, into the future.
It means that I can say that I am not enough. This is my body responding to my perception of the demands of the future. It’s normal and natural and indicates a time of growth and learning. I can lean into this, accept it, and add YET. I am not enough yet. And I’m working to become who I am intended to be. I can feel this, sense it down at the cellular level, and realize this is just my body making space for what I am learning. That space feels empty, and that emptiness is what I perceive as a lack of enoughness. But that space is waiting to be filled with who I am becoming. I welcome this…
I woke this morning thinking, “I am of my mother’s pride.” If you know anything about lions, the matriarchs are the pride’s hunters and caretakers. The patriarch is primarily a symbol of their strength. But the pride knows. My mother is a lioness and our matriarch. And I am “of her pride.” I am listening and observing her quiet, profound strength, and unrelenting determination.
I am choosing to embody.