Mother’s Day is here, and a friend recently sent me this poem by Emory Hall that made me think about how a woman can transform and evolve over her lifetime. And it made me want to honor all of the women I have been, and now am.

I hope you honor yourselves, and your mothers this Mother’s Day.

“I have been a thousand different women” by Emory Hall, from her book, made of rivers:

make peace

with all the women

you once were. 

lay flowers

at their feet. 

offer them incense

and honey

and forgiveness. 

honor them

and give them

your silence. 

listen. 

bless them

and let them be. 

for they are the bones

of the temple

you sit in now. 

for they are

the rivers

of wisdom

leading you toward

the sea.

-Emory Hall

In writing my memoir, Te’ora: From Vulnerability and Wounding to Wisdom and Freedom, I became keenly aware of how many versions of me I’ve been over the past 7+ decades on my journey from youth to elderhood. And yes, I’ve had to make peace with several versions of myself, forgiving myself for choices I made based on lies church and state had programmed into me, choices I made during dark passages while living in survival mode, and later, choices I made while recovering from the traumas engendered by those experiences.

This poem also makes me remember that I am my Ancestors walking. All those strong, wild, daring women of my long lineage…. they, too, all live within me. Those generations of foremothers who led woman-centered cultures during the matriarchal era, all those wise women who were tortured and eradicated when the patriarchy burned them as witches over roughly 300 years, and all my feminist foremothers who persisted and dreamed feminism back into the 21st century. 

I honor us all.

Sharing our stories of survival and “thrival” with each other is a loving gift of support to all of us who walk this difficult path. If you feel comfortable doing, please share your story.

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