Second Hand Abuse

In preparation for giving birth, it is vitally important to heal the gap in connection between the pregnant woman and her mother

July, 2009

By no means do I mean to say that the relationship between the soon-to-be father and his mother isn't important -- ideally, both mothers need to be on the same page with the pregnant couple about bringing this new human being into our world - without projections, expectations, or anxieties. This helps to establish strong, healthy protective layers around the Birthing Field, where the baby feels safe and builds the little body without pausing to hesitate.​

But in this short essay, I want to emphasize the tension in the female lineage in the family. These relationships often need a lot of healing by default. A pregnant woman needs to feel like she can deeply relax and trust her mother. With staggering statistics in domestic violence and amount of women dying at the hand of their husbands and boyfriends, as well as insane amounts of sexual abuse and rape, the mother figure often is experienced by a young child as a source of betrayal, of broken promise, of additional source grief and stress...

What I'm noticing is that the emotional abuse by maternal dis-empowerment during the early formative period of a child is rarely addressed and treated. When a girl learns early on that her mother is not there for her as a safe harbor, some very important bridges get burnt. Being a woman will start to mean feeling like a victim. And the most profound womanly expression - making a new human being - will reflect that. In therapy, most often the attention revolves around the obvious abusive patterns by a stronger and bigger person in the family - the male.

The fact that a young child has to deal, on top of that, with observing the mother's humiliation and the seeming betrayal of not sufficiently protecting her baby from physical, emotional, some times, sexual pain, is often overlooked. There is usually so much to work with in the outer layers of the 'pain-body', that there are just not enough tears sometimes to go any deeper...

But let's try to estimate - what hurts the child more?

Is it the actual abuse, or the mother's enabling of that abuse that leads the baby to give up on her, realizing that help is not going to come from Mom. When she takes the abuse and does nothing, she role-models an inability to stand up for herself, and express her creativity, her healthy boundaries, or her feelings. As impossible as it is to separate the two and tell which is worst, one thing is clear - the child experiences it as a huge, primal betrayal.

When a child observes the mother as a helpless victim, it does something to the psyche that will be very difficult for this child to access and undo later on in the adult life. It mostly goes untreated and un-articulated.

The obvious abuse by a male is so overwhelming, that it's hard to get to the point of conscious awareness of the underlying sense of betrayal by the mother, who did not have what it takes to protect and provide the child with the sense of safety of being alive. Thus, comes into play a very complicated inter-gender interaction, without a reference point of trust and deep intimate satisfaction. A new adult is left in uncharted territory to invent from scratch the basic principles of normal human tribal behaviors (which imply safety within the immediate family, common sense, compassion, self-care, respect for elders, sacredness of life and birth, rites of passages for different stages of maturity, initiations into specific activities, etc...) the lack the experience of seeing life's challenges met by individuals interacting together with a sense of belonging.

Most of the people I know and have met traveling around the globe are longing for that kind of experience - living in a community in which things make sense, where people don't have to struggle with stuff they did not need in the first place, support life styles that are not healthy for them and for the planet. I am not a scientist or a 'professional in women studies'. I don't study women and their issues - I am just a woman myself, with my own issues. And I do my best to understand what they are, when and how I got them and what I can do about it.

But above all, I talk with women.

With lots of them. Somehow, I ended up in this position of receiving lots of stories from women who want to share with me. I spend endless hours every day in front of my computer reading and responding. It just so happens that I am older then most of those who write to me; I've just had a bit more time to figure things out.

So, what I see everywhere - millions of people all over the world now want to live in harmony with each other and Nature. Why aren't we still? Let's just do it! Heck with all that nonsense! It's so 70ies...

If every one of us will make a conscious decision, starting right now, to live, act, think, love, etc, - the way our hearts desire, not being held back by fake identities, false believes, fear-based rules and conditions - what's the worst that can happen? The world as we know it will fall apart? Darn! Good! BTW, it has already happened, in case someone didn't notice!

What do we have to loose? If we start putting our money where our mouth is? We might catch a glimpse of what heaven on Earth is supposed to look like, before it's too late.

We can't make Dick Cheney understand the reprecussions of what he has done. So why bother? Let's not waste any more time and energy going after 'who done it'. Let's start with ourselves, becoming and being what our Soul aches for us to be, what our Spirit wants us to manifest into these physical bodies. It's ACTIVATION time! All the dormant forces of SHEER BEAUTY, KINDNESS AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, the TRUE POWER OF THE SOURCE, THE DIVINE INTELLIGENCE - are harmonizing and aligning right now, as we speak!

Welcome to the new World Order!

It is DONE!

Now it's a matter of simple maintenance. Grounded, down to Earth, clean-up-the-mess-and-have-fun-doing-it kind of approach. It's not about each woman all of a sudden expecting to be treated like a Goddesses by everybody, but about starting to act like one - boundless source of kindness and warmth, ability to recognize the Goddess presence in every living thing, especially other women. Each one of us is a carrier of this Divine Feminine Power to create, inspire, heal. That's what Good Goddesses do :):) - building each other up! - not competing with each other!

If we can forgo our addictions to drama, our neediness, our victim mentality, our sense of superiority with other sisters, our habits of scarcity and lack, our need to put each other down, the way women treated each other for centuries, we can recover our ancient sense of belonging, we can experience feeling unconditionally supported, truly accepted, and loved. BY EACH OTHER! Then we can help each other to raise our children to become peaceful guardians of Earth.

Then no one will be able to order our sons to go, march and kill. Then they won't have to vent their frustration and pain by raping women and becoming terrorists.

When we will have good mothers, we will have good sons, who will thrive on serving Humanity and Nature and not the Ones with Bigger Guns. It's up to us, ladies :) :) :) That is exactly why women were deliberately, methodically disempowered for thousands of years! Disheartened, confused women produce confused, disempowered offsprings! If they have confident, happy children with undamaged sense of right and wrong, - how do you make them kill each other?

We can not expect politicians to wake up and start taking care of us. That's not going to happen, it's against their religion! WE ARE THE ONES WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! And the time is NOW. Not soon, not tomorrow, not in 2012... NOW.

In love and Service,

Elena