Alison's story:

Motherhood as  Initiation to Authenticity

 

Home is where the heart is. And at the heart of most homes is a mother who holds fierce love for her family and children.  Yet, in so many homes across the globe, mothers like myself get stuck in overwhelm and lose ourselves as we acquiesce to current unrealistic cultural expectations, akin to Super Mom Syndrome: do it all and don’t complain!  “Motherwhelm”, Beth Berry writes about it.1 It’s real.  And it is threatening the heart of our homes.

I was at the peak of this double bind of motherwhelm, when my son reached middle childhood seven years ago. Struggling through old survival patterns, I was more comfortable with being the martyr, than risking the shame and awkwardness of asking for help. I knew nothing about the evolution of human consciousness, nothing about child development and the very predictable changes in brain chemistry, all of which led to my son's surprising bursts of feelings between 7-9 years old.  

Instead of supporting my son in his vulnerability, I missed his quiet feelings and unconsciously avoided my own uncomfortable grief, anger, loneliness and fear by slipping into my most familiar survival strategy- “freeze”. A favorite stress response of many women with overwhelmed nervous systems, “freeze” sends the parasympathetic nervous system into overdrive, thereby cutting our connection to feelings, like an anesthesia to numb the pain. What I soon learned, in the process of numbing, is that we lose connection with our body wisdom, choice and aliveness. 

This is my story of how I discovered deep attunement to my body wisdom and to my children, in the height of my freeze, fears and my loss of self. This is my initiation to find my authenticity.

 

 I am devoted to Women and their children growing together towards confidence and authenticity, reframing the family overwhelm and new changes of middle childhood into a family that trusts the wisdom of the body to gently guide them to emotional well-being, while co-creating sacred initiation rites to honor key moments for each family member.

I offer my story to you so that you may feel my vulnerability, remembering that we all relate through our tender, exposing, humble humanity. I stand here as a woman, willing to show up with all the wisdom of the ages, and the messiness of daily family life, and share my story. May it inspire, awaken and invoke the Great Mother in us all, knowing that Spirit and the sacred feminine are interwoven, and both living in each of us, asking to be expressed through you and I as woman and mother

So, let me take you back… to revisit where I came from and what events led me here.

Growing up in the small village in Yosemite Valley, I experienced a special relationship to nature most urban families today know nothing about. The potent beauty of the wild surrounded, nourished and informed me. While I have many fond early memories of loving parents, and adventures with friends in the meadow, collecting bullfrogs, wildflowers and making forts, my own childhood wasn’t entirely ideal. Loneliness, fear, divorced parents at age 7, all mixed with the confusion of silenced ancestral sexual abuse, Catholic Church dogma and the overarching culture of the defaming and abuse of all things feminine. 

Raised with my sister by our hard-working single Mom, I sought comfort in nature whenever I could. After a move out of Yosemite to a growing agricultural city in California’s Central Valley, my respite was found in the few city parks that grew tall trees in town. Middle childhood brought a flood of emotions to surface, as my 7-year-old-self hated navigating the new burdens, especially being alone. 

My emotions were met with overwhelm and frustration from my young, struggling Mom.  I learned to cry myself to sleep alone, and then to eventually go numb.  Lacking a safe place to feel, I learned that clever survival strategy that surfaced earlier in my story as an overwhelmed mom. "Don’t feel anything." Fast forward to my sophomore year of college, when my recurring panic attacks had me running out of lecture halls, I knew I had to make a change.

Here began my first peek into Embodyment as an 18-year-old.  I dropped out of school and moved back to Yosemite with my dad.  In the wilds with the rivers and granite canyons of my birthplace, I returned to myself over and over.  Feeling myself as an integral part of this raw landscape, my college anxiety washed away downstream.  A new curiosity into the mind-body connection grew as I read my dad's books on meditation.  In my late twenties, I found myself diving deep into trainings on massage and yoga. Slowly, my feelings grew a little more accessible, as I dropped deeper into my body. Two years working at a residential treatment center for teens as a Wilderness Guide, opened my eyes to the challenges of raising children and how critical healthy parenting is for a child's well-being. And how magical a week in the wilderness is for even a rough, abused, inner-city kid who is longing for emotional safety, connection and joy.

Later in my early thirties, graduate school called to me, where I explored Ecopsychology and Wilderness Rites of Passage.  My love of nature now found its roots in indigenous wisdom and traditions of marking key life passages with wilderness immersion, community building and sacred ceremony.  I became a wilderness guide to teens and adults, honoring their initiation into new ways of being.

After attending my first Grief Ritual, an indigenous ceremony from the late African Shaman Malidoma Some, taught by Francis Weller at Sonoma State University, my emotional life was forever transformed.  I was initiated into an indigenous model of emotional well-being.  Once again, my love of nature as healer, was integrating in community and uncensored emotional expression.  My old patterning of shame and emotional overwhelm was released for a night, and transformed into a healing event for all involved. 

With a candlelight vigil in the forest, we sang songs as a community and took turns visiting the altar of people and lost beings that were honored and grieved.  We each chose a companion to support us in the ritual as we visited their images and expressed our emotions.  My heart was healing. I felt the possibility of a new aliveness coming back deep within.

When motherhood found me, I was in my mid-thirties and in love with my new husband. After a successful but arduous home birth, an old feeling hit me like a freight train.  I was terrified. I was left alone, with this beautiful new being, that I had no idea how to care for.

Lacking sleep and experience, my emotional well-being plummeted and my nervous system overload took me straight to my old “freeze” response. I continued for many years, as a young mom, to struggle through old survival patterns (Remember, that self-sacrificing martyr?).  

Before my second child was born, I had adrenal fatigue and one miscarriage.  I needed a revolution, if I was going to survive this mothering job. My son also needed support I didn't know how to give him.  Both his best friends moved away before he had turned 9. He started a new school in the third grade. His familiar life was gone, and the new learning environment with new peers spiraled him into anxiety and loneliness. 

My life was transformed once again when two amazing mentors and healers appeared in my life. One had already been initiated by mothering two children into adulthood. Together their support inspired a complete transformation in my mothering and my well-being.  Above all, I was guided to deeply listen to my body and unwind the freeze response that had protected me from my overwhelm in younger yearsThey introduced me to the trauma resolution work of Peter Levine, which I studied and practiced for 3 years, completing the certificate program.

Secondly, I learned to orient my parenting to my child's consciousness, meeting each one where they are developmentally, instead of where I am as an adult. Thirdly, I rested into a community of women and mothers sharing in their vulnerability while learning together from each other and from our heart-centered mentors 

The transformation in my life was profound.  After a simple practice on boundary setting in my somatic training, by verbally expressing limits with spatial proximity, I cried for hours, releasing grief from years of physical and energetic trespass. After that exercise, my throat had the ability to swallow uninhibited, where previously I had always struggled to even swallow vitamins. After each training, my return home to family life was flooded with new ideas of how to parent and support my children’s nervous system from my own parenting mistakes, as well as social challenges and other traumatic events, like earthquakes, medical trauma and the pandemic. 

Today, with tears of joy, I declare that I no longer feel lost, especially in my role as keeper of my family. My embodyment path has led me back to myself, with a new capacity to care for myself and my children, even in these early teen years with my son!  Still human, my motherhood has had lots of mistakes, however it looks very different than my earlier years. I am alive with humor, vitality and emotions that come and go.

What's different is now, I take time to express feelings.  I model gentle emotional care for myself and my kids.  I prioritize the relational love and connection, instead of the chore or the task at hand. And I repair, with deep humility, my relationships with my children and husband when I lose my temper or get scared and default to “freeze” and disappear emotionally and energetically.  I deeply love myself, especially my child-self, when she is in need of care. Instead of my old resentment for the burdens of family life, I am filled with gratitude for this invitation that mothering has gifted me, into my embodied emotional presence and aliveness. 

This is my invitation to you as Mother: to say yes to this deep heart initiation. For your aliveness and for your profound connections with your children. Mother Element is here to journey with you on this sacred path. Join us! 

1. Berry, Beth. (2020). Motherwhelmed: Challenging Norms, Untangling Truths, and Restoring our Worth to the World. Self published. 

 

The Mother Element Way 

As the founder of Mother Element, Alison first invites women to place themselves at the center of a healthy family culture by prioritizing their well-being as women. This starts with coming home to the body, digging her roots into a restored nervous system that tends to childhood wounds, so easily surfaced in mothering years.  Embodyment, followed by Relational Intimacy and Initiation are the 3 Keys to growing together into authenticity, through the changes of middle childhood.

  1. Embodyment
    • Come Home to your Body to profoundly care for yourself.
    • Create safety to express your uncensored feelings.
    • Tend to your child-self, as a loving Mother and learn the art of repair.
  2. Relational Intimacy
    • Know yourself as Nature to discover truth, peace and belonging.
    • Orient your parenting to your child’s needs and nourishments for their age.
    • Weave in chosen community/mentors as essential support.
  3. Initiation
    • Experience life as regenerative, honoring death and letting go as key to growth.
    • Claim your Family Values to inform your choices and sacred rituals.
    • Create sacred ritual to honor child competencies at key transitions.

For Mothers ready to rest into Deeper Wisdom

The 3 Keys to Family Transformation

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