Tags
children, Family, Love, Mother, mothering, Mothers Day, spirituality, Tao, Tao Te Ching
The novel I am working on is about relationships between mothers and children and all the ways that is expressed, from the most fearful and destructive to the most trusting and freeing. So I’ve been thinking a lot on this topic lately.
A passage that had a huge influence on my understanding of what “mothering” is, or could be, is found in the Tao Te Ching (CHXXV):
There was something complete and nebulous
Which existed before the Heaven and Earth,
Silent, invisible
Unchanging, standing as One,
Unceasing, ever-revolving,
Able to be the Mother of the World.
This Mother of the World, of course, is Tao, the all-pervading, all embracing, unchanging, and unceasing. It’s the thing that evolves, supports, nurtures, protects, and provides space for its “children,” all individual being.
A tall order for a mere human.
Yet something about that passage spoke to me as a woman and mother. It drew within me the desire to embrace my children in that spirit. And I found the mothering of my own two children improved immensely when I was able to step back and project in some way this more expansive sense of mothering that allows them to feel loved and supported without all the worries and anxieties and criticism and fear that accompany a mere human sense of mothering.
This mothering is not as personal, intense, or myopic, as the latter. It doesn’t hover, it doesn’t obsess, it doesn’t fret. It frees them “to be,” and is based on an immense sense of trust—in myself, in them, and in the universe at large. In God, or Tao, or some divine presence or higher power that embraces all of us, and gives each of us the capacity to mother each other.
This is not to say that I often meet this ideal. Far from it.
But I know that I mother my own children best and make fewer mistakes when I’m able to embrace them in that larger, more expansive way. And it feels more natural, less constricted, to mother that way.
I find this kind of mothering works best when all-inclusive. When I embrace all around me with the same mothering spirit. Not just my children, but all children, all people, all things—my home, my community, my work—even the individual objects that fill the space around me and the space outside my window. When I’m able to actually feel and identify with that potential, to “be” the “Mother of the World.”
Mothering, I learned, is a capacity that anyone can embrace: man, woman, child. You don’t have to be a mother, or have children of your own, to mother the world. When you adopt that stance, all things become your children to nurture, cherish, support, love—to help bring to their full potential.
Here’s wishing you all a lovely day of “mothering.”
I like the “all-inclusive” approach to mothering, Deborah. Male or female, the ability to nurture is not unique to one gender nor is it directed only to creatures of our own species. What a refreshing take on mother’s day.
Thank you! I appreciate that. Hope you had a wonderful Mothers Day.
Absolutely! To trust is everything. To leave be is everything. We learn so much by being parents. Unconditional love. Unpaid effort. Love is master.
So true, Elizabeth, we learn so much from parenting. How to love is number one. Thank you for reading and responding.
Hello Deborah. Mother’s Day has come and gone again, but your words ring true still. I very much enjoyed this version of mothering, which evolves, supports, nurtures, protects without hovering, fretting, or enabling (the last word mine).
Nurturing so that a child can achieve his / her full potential without being carried the whole way.
Now … how? 🙂
I love the last line of your comment. Yes, that’s what nurturing should be. But as you remind, the fretting and enabling is so hard to resist sometimes when our own seem so needy.