The wounds of the mother
They say I have my mother's eyes
They shine an English hazel when I rim them with Kohl
In honour of my Turkish ancestors
Strong women with strong arms sporting rolled up sleeves
ready to pound dough into flat bread to feed their children
They say I have inherited her power of spirit
her quiet voice
the un-elegant way she expresses her emotions
“You are just like her!” they cry in delight
And I smile
My wonderful, ever-giving mother is just like me
But then I realised that nobody ever told me I had inherited her wounds
Deep, dark holes in the ground
Tunnels that lead far away from the light
Wounds that feel like shards of
broken glass
broken dreams
broken expectations
that pierce the soul and deflate it
in a way that only disappointment can
So, one clear day
I surrendered and sat with them
I melted myself down
and became one with them
Loosened them from my belief that they were invaders of my spirit
And listened to them
sing their wisdom
Heavy
Like cascading water off a mountainside
“The tears you cry are not your own”
“The river you cry cannot be made alone”
“It is made from the tears of your mother's mother's mother's mother as this
river runs deep and far back.”
So I knelt down beside this river and I watched as the tears from my eyes
dripped into the duck-egg blue water and snaked away
I heard her message in her curves and the way she moved
like velvet
over and through all obstacles in her path
She said,
"Every woman who heals herself, heals all
the women who came before her and all
the women who come after her,"
And
at last
I understood
So I stood up, open to changing my mind about the world
and proclaimed that I didn't want the sadness of women to continue
I didn't want to watch them sacrifice, bow down, or martyr themselves any more
in the name of love
I chanted over and over to the sky
to the Goddess
to myself
that I will heal
because I would never want my daughters to cry my tears
So, when my mother is sad
I heal myself
When my sisters are sad
I heal myself
When I read stories of women around the world who are victims of violence
I heal myself
When a friend makes a choice she later regrets
I heal myself
When I think of my grandmother's difficult life
I heal myself
Because in my healing
I reach out and heal with every woman who ever graced this Earth
And every woman yet to walk it
