Today we are asked to consider both the light and dark aspects of the Mother Goddess and how those are reflected in our own lives. This is a tough one for me as I don’t see a lot of the typical Mother in me at the outset. I care about people and am compassionate, but not particularly nurturing in the common sense of that word. I am more apt to let someone struggle until they ask for help than I am to offer help at the outset. Then again, that’s how I was raised by my mother, which I think is a good thing, so perhaps that is how the Mother Goddess does express herself in me. Perhaps that is its own kind of nurturing.
They say Hera cast Hephaistos down from Olympus and into the depths because of his disability. She is often seen as cruel because of this. As a disabled person, however, I get it. My mom encouraged and enforced in me a fierce independence that said I CAN do things until I absolutely cannot do things. There is nothing that is beyond me until it is absolutely beyond me. I would rather struggle and flail than be coddled. When I truly did need help, all I had to do was ask, but none was offered until that time. The assumption under which she operated was that I was 100% capable, and that was the assumption under which she taught me to operate as well. It probably looked cruel sometimes, but it was the best possible thing for me. Sometimes little birds with broken wings need to be kicked out of the nest even earlier than birds with two good wings because it is going to take them longer to learn how to fly.
That’s the mother instinct in me, both for shadow and for light—looking as if it is shadow when in fact it is the brightest light. It is wonderful, upon reflection, to note how much of Hera was in my mother and, because of that, how much Hera has been passed on to me.
-M.
PS
Today is the beginning of the Mercury retrograde, so I’m glad, looking ahead for the next two weeks, I will mostly be doing contemplation and rituals to attune myself with the various energies of deity. Me and magic during the Mercury retrograde do not mix and I have had some magnificent magical backfires because of it.