As former Good Christian Girls, it’s often at the feet of our mothers where we learned our first embodied lessons of self-abandonment disguised under the label of holiness.
Where we first learned to silence both ourselves and our inner knowing; as if something were deeply wrong with both feminine intuition and voice.
Where we learned to suppress our needs and desires; as if experiencing joy or pleasure itself somehow made us “bad” and “selfish”.
Where we first learned our value as women was in our serving and serving to the point of burnout; or that we were less valuable than men purely because of our gender.
These were never lessons we were sat down and taught in the same way that we learned the alphabet, but it are lessons absorbed, while sitting at the feet of our mothers, like the dutiful Good Christian Girls we were conditioned to be.
Absorbed in such a way that, when we move outside of the constraints of these “lessons”, that our nervous systems become dysregulated.. and we experience upper limits in life today.
As adults it can feel as if questioning this, bringing it up and initiating any kind of accountability is bringing women down or “mother blaming” women for the failures and impacts of a patriarchal society.
This isn’t about mother blaming. It’s worth noting that as a generation we have access to so much more freedom, support and resources than our mothers, grandmothers and generations before them ever did and this is worthy of reflection..
AND – While they may have done the best they could, there are very real impacts leading from not ONLY their lack of freedom, but their choices bleeding into our lives today.
This doesn’t mean we hate our mothers but it can create a complex relationship with both ourselves and our mothers that resurfaces annually on Mother’s Day..
And this is something to be grieved and healed.
But alongside the grieving – a complex walk I have personally taken –
The most beautiful thing I’ve experienced along this journey of healing and awakening is this:
I didn’t need to have the perfect childhood
The perfect mother
The perfect upbringing and mothering
In order to be nourished, heard, comforted and supported NOW..
Or in order to break free of the religious and familial conditioning that leads to automatic self silencing, suppression, stifling and self abandonment now.
The most beautiful thing is that God himself has stepped into not just my past wounds –
But into my world now, not just as perfect father healing my past, guiding me to truth, sovereignty, and secure attachment and so much more – but also in the role of mother.
This was not something I was expecting at all, as I grew up with the SCRIPTURE IS CLEAR crowd, God is always a man..
And it’s not even about the gender of God.
But one day was speaking to God while doing some inner work..
And was saying to him – “God I feel so healed from my father wounds. I feel so much more secure and protected and safe. And I deeply feel that YOU are now my actual Father which has been so healing and nourishing.. but I don’t feel that way about my mother wounds.”
“I sense that you are strong and protective as my Father, but when it comes to doing the inner work around my mother wounds, sometimes I just want a mother to hold me, to comfort me.”
And this was when he revealed to me that, if I allowed, the Holy Spirit has this same role (of “mother”) in my life and it blew my mind. That God in his multi faceted nature always provides exactly what I need.
The comfort
Nourishment
Feeling heard
Being supported
Without the dysfunction or strings that often come with it is available to me.
That day I learned at a deeper level a lesson I want to share with you today; that He himself is my comfort.
He is the perfect nurturing, consistent comfort and constant source of nourishment and he is here for me – and you.
“As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” Isaiah 66:13
God himself has become the foundation on which I am being rebuilt into the Spiritually Wealthy Woman God designed me to be – not from people-pleasing, performance or self abandonment – but from a deep resurrection from the generational toxicity and religious dysfunction handed down to me that only brought death to my life.
And that simple thing – that the Holy Spirit IS my mother, whispering life and comfort into places I previously believed unreachable, life into my conditioned perceived limits and awakening into my most powerful, sovereign, Spiritual Wealthy future
Co-creating with God in all his facets and quirks and qualities
To do my life’s work, and be the woman who owns her voice, her message and writing this today
Has been so healing and life changing.
So today my challenge for you today is this –
Yes today may be challenging and complex but you are not that little Good Christian Girl anymore who shrinks back and silences..
You are no longer a powerless little girl..
You are sovereign, strong and incredible woman destined to release incredible legacy and work into the world.
So here’s the challenge:
Invite THE Holy Spirit (be very clear you only want to speak to The Holy Spirit) about any lack that is surfacing for you today, whether that’s a feeling of current lack in your relationship with your mother, past lack from what you felt you didn’t receive or the future impacts you project from it..
And allow the resurrection and the LIFE to guide you into wholeness in those places so that you can live – not out of generational curses, but from generational life and legacy.
LS x
)