For a woman who arrives at motherhood and finds she is not connected – finds that she does not like her baby, or her partner, or herself – may dissolve in a desperate and silent failing, a falling. We want to believe becoming a mother is an absolute joy: when we as women get to play the role we were meant to play, as suggested by literature and film, media and capitalism, our parents, even our peers. In reality, having a child is a profound, frightening, and exhilarating experience at the boundary of life, from which one comes back a transformed person. Most women bear this monumental transition to motherhood with a lot of hardship.

Matrescence – the physical, emotional, hormonal and social transition to becoming a mother – is hardly shepherded by Western society, as now mothers are largely expected to take an isolated unpaid maternity leave; most mothers no longer live near their own mothers and aunts so have lost a female tribe; mothers then return to work and are expected to carry the impossible load of full time work both in and outside of the home. Where is the honoring of matrescence? Is there space for it in our modern society?

The title of this webinar, Honoring The Heretic, responds specifically to the long-held narratives that revolve around the female body within the context of a male-orientated society. An actual mother’s body – round, sexual, changing, soft, leaking – is outside or Other to the patriarchal construct of Mother – pure, white, firm, thin, virginal. The maternal body is instinctual, sexual, creative, destructive – in short, human; not saintly.

The intention of this webinar is to create a space, safe enough for women to reflect on their more negative maternal experiences, and through creative writing, find ways to re-story those experiences. By articulating the more negative experiences, perhaps ones that have never been aired before, we can hold and expand the experience of motherhood and womanhood as authentic, acceptable and honourable in all its myriad facets – the good, the bad and the ugly.

The written word has the potential to bring the mother into full being. Through the writing process, we, as therapists (and mothers/mentors) – can engender self-empowerment and better understanding in our clients, of their relational role to the infant, and to themselves, and to find a way to access the authentic full range of the maternal body. The use of breakout rooms at this webinar will provide smaller, more intimate groups for sharing some of these difficult subjects.

As mothers, we have access to a multitude of maternal archetypes as part of the collective representation. This also includes the Dark Mother or the dark feminine – which finds little acceptance in the patriarchal contract. This seminar will discuss such archetypes as Inanna, Eve, Lilith, Kali, and the Black Madonna, which are as authentic and valid as the exemplar self-sacrificing Mother and need to be acknowledged to authenticate the complete spectrum of motherhood.

The webinar will offer readings to reflect on and creative writing exercises, such as freewriting structured towards reflexivity and poetry therapy using a relevant poem as a prompt for creative writing.

Together Deborah and Brooke will give voice and space to the dark experience of motherhood, and help participants build a broader understanding of the emotional range of the mother in themselves.

Specifically, this seminar will discuss:

• The split of Mother by patriarchal systems into Good and Bad Mother
• The authentic mother as having the experience of the dark maternal archetype
• The process of writing as a way of accessing and expressing the dark mother
• The concept of Mother heretic in history and in ourselves
• The potential for transformation by allowing the full expression of a mother’s subjectivity
• The Jungian concept of an archetype, specifically the Good Mother archetype (i.e., the Virgin Mary) and the Dark Mother (i.e., Kali).
• The possibility of the Black Madonna as an archetype that holds the full range of motherhood
• Post structural feminist concepts of subject, writing, and transformation from Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous
• The existence and non-existence of Matrescence in our contemporary culture
• The prevention of maternal isolation and violence by the writing of dark mother self

© nscience 2023 / 2024