The Red Tent… such a classic of our times!

The Red Tent. by Anita Diamant

In an op-shop yesterday and I found another copy of the Red Tent… I always pick up any second hand copy I find, as I am forever giving them away! Re-reading the introduction, so many moments that grab me, but this…

” The more a daughter know the details of her mother’s life – without flinching or whining – the stronger the daughter.”

So very very real that, hits something right on the top of my head. Tis the core purpose of the meditation that I offer in the ovulation section of Harnessing the Fertile Force… Mother line work I call it… being able to be with the truth of the woman that raised you. All of her, in her real shit and glory, how she has been forged and cooled.

We don’t see our mothers that closely any more, they are so very busy being the best mothers they can be, a cloak we all have thrust around us, in case the kids see… Just for the record, our “kids” see EVERYTHING. Didn’t you? You felt her, perhaps she, your mother, had no words, but you felt her. Her frustrations, her inner berating, her attempts to make your life so much different to hers… or not. Maybe you had a perfect setting, with clear and open communication at all times… YAY for you if you did, but rare… Most of us have a murky state to witness as adults as we turn and feel through our childhood… lots of places where we are unclear on what we did wrong…

For you see, we didn’t share the Red Tent… We would have had a completely different view of our mothers if we shared the Red Tent together… Can you even imagine that? A place where we as a collective of women would go to bleed, to birth, to grieve, to die. A sacred place stripped bare of all the doing of our outer worlds, so that we may sit and be with what truly is… in that space between Life and Death, where a mother could drop her mantle long enough to be seen by her sisters and daugthers for the truth she was feeling. an honesty we have rarely known.

This is what the Red Tent gifts us… an opportunity to glimpse a place where we used to live. Where we were raw, so close to life and death, blood and milk, that we knew it’s scent so clearly. Obviously we cannot live, nor would I want to, in such small tribes, with such woven lives, so dependent on each other for survival. Our times do call for the circle though, a space where we can call ourselves to our edges of truth. Can you imagine a circle with your closest sisters, and all your mothers?

I intend to offer the space for this… Mother line workings, where our womanhood is truly honoured!

 

My Mother Line.

At my Grandmothers 90th

Been quite some time since I wrote here… I have been processing the death of my Grandmother, and what that means to our family. Other health scares for our family have been fielded too, being present to them, the only thing that anyone can do.

Life. Tis ours to live as we can, not always as we choose it may seem, but perhaps we do choose, on some level, even if we just choose to ignore.

Gran died only a week after Seven Sisters. So, in lots of ways, I’m only just returning from there too, which was such an intense time as well.

As most of my work is about the bounty and beauty of being a woman, losing the Matriarch of our family hit deeply, perhaps much deeper than I thought. She was 95, this photo from her 90th was really her last real party. T’was her legacy that has been huge to bear, the stories of her, so much larger than life, than that tiny fragile woman laying so very still.

I was the only one of my generation that spoke at her funeral… I truly needed to. I am posting my words here in honour of her, my Granny Anne…

A Eulogy.

To let go…  to listen within… to let the grieving begin.

To turn and face the pain… the fear… to recognize the powerlessness to change this… for this is death… an end… a pathway closed beyond our vision… beyond… She’s gone…  She’d been going for quite some time… but seemed to need to linger… as long as she needed… As I accept the permanency of this corner turned, this leap across the divide made… I turn… and I invite you to, too… to focus upon the life lived by an invincible woman… a no nonsense, maybe not the best with children, take no shit, powerful woman…

When I really met her, in my 20’s, when there was no need for her to be responsible for me, I met the woman… the free spirit that flew off to Hawaii… that lived and loved Africa deeply… the writer, like me… only a little like her. My grief, as different from yours, as all of us will be… we all have such different views, perspectives, experiences of her… we would all have brought forward different parts of her, for her to experience…

I give thanks to the wonderful woman that made my wedding cake… That shared her wedding day in the beautiful Dandenong’s… I am grateful for the woman that would sun-bake nude no matter the noise of terrified teenagers… I give thanks for the stories I tell about her, tell myself and others of how courageous and power-filled she was… I give thanks for the truth of how fragile her strength was and how dependent she became and how that never seemed to diminish her absolute authority of her life… She know what she wanted and would have it thank you… for this I am grateful. That from her, this woman, loved me… as she loved all her family, fiercely… An era has closed… as the next generations flow… Her daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters, present, we all share that power now… as she has passed the baton… not that her son’s and grandson’s and great-grandsons are not cherished, nourished and loved but perhaps what they carry is a respect for women instilled by her… and to be fair, I never really knew her in partnership… But the legacy of a strong woman, is stronger daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters…. As we lay to rest our Matriarch, I am grateful to have known, loved and been loved by my Granny… May you rest in Peace Granny.

 

As I am learning to call myself a writer, as she described herself, I realize that there may not be harder words to write than a Eulogy for someone we love… Two weeks ago she arrived in my dreamscape, as I remember her from my 20’s, full of freedom and artistry. In the dream she was helping me achieve something… I am beginning to feel that her presence on the other side of my life is already bringing such power. May your Mother Line be clear and strong.  If not, then come and sit with me, for this is part of my life’s work.