The Newness of Us All

I’m back! After two years of hiatus, I’m writing to reconnect and let my readers know what I’ve been up to.

I wrote my last post just as Covid entered our lives. It addressed how the pandemic was compelling us to go inward, into the realm of our inner feminine, pointing us to discover a deeper level of our true nature, uncovering our deepest desires, learning the sacredness that can only be detected by being still and immersing ourselves in the perception of our feelings.

Isolation—I pointed out—was not a prison but a respite from the relentless activity the world constantly demands from us.

I also recommended connecting with our inner masculine, which creates structure and discipline, to avoid falling into collapsed stagnation, which can lead to depression and despair. Instead, I encouraged us to use the creative inspiration of our inner feminine to motivate our inner masculine to make things, to create movement, and to build something new in our lives.

So, how did I live up to my own recommendations?

Well, one thing I did not address in my blog post was how to do these practices while facing excruciating loss and grief.

One year into the pandemic, loss came crashing into my life when my 103-year-old mother died.

I fell into deep grief. The grief of losing a mother, no matter how old she was, was bad enough, but the grief was not just the death of my mother. Even more intensely, I discovered my grief for the mother I’d never had.

My mother had not been a good mother to me, not even an imperfect-but-good-enough mother; my mother had a personality disorder that made her emotionally and physically abusive. My grief, therefore, required me to revisit a past of violence, betrayal, and abuse to find the parts of myself that were still conditioned and bound by her abuse, that still affected my life with fear, shame, and self-loathing.

Now, after a lifetime of healing the consequences of my mother’s abuse, it was time to do a final round of reclaiming myself, of committing myself to not repeat the patterns of behavior that had been transmitted to me through my lineage.

In other words: I had to find the good mother within myself. I had to love and treat myself as the good mother I wish I’d had. At the same time, I had to let go of any hope and longing to ever have a loving mother in this lifetime. That was unbearably painful, but very necessary.

I didn’t want to be swallowed by all this sorrow. I wanted to feel the sorrow, to let it envelop me, to dance with it, but not to engulf and drown me.

To be truthful, sometimes I did despair and obsess. There were days when I felt incapacitated.

Each time, I pushed myself up from my torpor into some form of action. I prayed to Divine Mother. More than ever, I realized, not just mentally but in my whole body, how important She is to me, to all of us, to humanity in general. How fundamental it is that Her Mother-Love be embodied by all mothers so that the children can grow into adults who have experienced that Mother-Love in total safety, in acceptance of who they are and in validation of their uniqueness.

This experience brought me back to practicing more intentionally the teachings of Adorata: The Path of Enlovement, to savoring the words that Mother Mary spoke to me. I realized I had to finish painting the illuminations of the book that I had interrupted years ago. I was impelled to finish the book and to prepare it for a wider publication, to offer it to more people. Look forward to my next posts to follow the development of this project.

When the pain rose up to a greater intensity, I wrote poetry. I wrote poems to my mother, for my mother, telling her what I could not say to her in life. Expressing my grief, my confusion, my longings and yes, my love.

During Covid I wrote the libretto for an opera about immigration entitled “Dreams Have No Borders,” which will be released soon as a film since it could not be performed live.

I also wrote poems about the struggles my community faced during Covid and the great fires that burned through our neighborhoods in Southern Oregon. These poems were set to music as an oratorio entitled “Six Feet Apart.”

During the Covid era, I wrote and painted and cried. I did it until the loss was accepted and the pain subsided in the background. I emerged stronger, clearer, and more open to love.

Many of us know that some losses accompany us for life, but their presence, while painful, can be the fuel that impels us to create deeper meaning in our lives. They can inspire us to be at service, to spread kindness, to put our creative energies to good use.

As far as my life goes, more than ever I am dedicated to transforming the internalized patriarchal constraints we’re all facing into equality, and to promote freedom from socially imposed stereotypes so that we can have a more loving and just world.

In the future, expect more posts about the Inner Masculine and Feminine and how their dynamics affect our lives. Also, I’ll share more about the Adorata teachings of Divine Mother in order to bring serenity and peace into our daily lives. We all need Mother-Love to flow more freely into our hearts so that we can feel loved from within, just because we exist.

All the rewards and confirmations we seek outside of ourselves are already within us. That’s one of the teachings we can learn from the virus that has compelled us to go inward.