Breathe
By María Alatriste
This month I did two things that changed my perspective and challenged my limiting beliefs. The first is that I went to a women's circle and the second is that I saw the movie that in Mexico has been translated as Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's Breaking the Circle.
The first experience is to make a meditation circle where in the middle of it an altar of flowers is made, incense and candles are placed, and an expert woman guide initiates rituals, meditation and empathic words to open our feminine spirit and share in that circle emotions that women commonly live.
At the beginning of the experience I thought I would manage to hold back and just listen to other women, but it turns out that she may have been the one who shared the most and even did it in tears. I remember saying something like "I don't get motherhood the way I expected" "my painful memories make mothering more complex than I thought". When I felt tears coming to my eyes I thought "this can't be happening to me here in the midst of strangers". However, it was a beautiful, healing and liberating experience. Besides, listening to the other women in the circle made me realize that we all share certain enigmas, but somehow we have decided not to talk about them among ourselves because the system makes us be on guard all the time. From my point of view not all spaces are safe to share our vulnerability, but this one was, I felt safe and it was comforting.
The second experience was at the cinema, the movie caught me little by little, as I was going with high expectations I began to despair, at other times I was confused and finally the plot was unleashed with great force. I won't make spoilers, I 'll just say that days later my head was still scheming. And my musings were a lot about motherhood and the boundaries I decided to set and the changes I faced after the birth of my son. I was unknowingly breaking circles, but doing so takes a lot of courage and a lot of unthinkable grief, because breaking circles comes at a price.
Maybe I am not the mother I expected for the same reason, maybe that's where some of my enigmas come from. Because I was not that complacent mother willing to be part of oppressive systems. Because I decided to live motherhood in a way where everyone said that it was not a sweet mom and willing to be the one who can always handle everything. Because on many occasions in any environment I was able to say "I'm sorry, I can't do this, it's not my priority". However, even when I was able to set limits I felt remorse, guilt and a sense that something was wrong with me.
The two experiences I made with reference to the circle gave me peace. On the one hand, I realize that in the circle of women we should make even more tribe, and make many circles, because women are sources of wisdom and we have much to teach each other if we share our will, resilience and even our vulnerability, we have much to share and at the same time much to comfort ourselves with. And on the other hand, the importance of breaking circles, that is, breaking patterns that we have decided to normalize in order to maintain supposedly happy scenarios that are simply sources of destruction of our genuine self.
If we are part of a system, be it labor, social, family, that oppresses us, that demands that we put aside our essence, will and our ideals in exchange for acceptance, it is important to consider breaking that circle. Because that is not a kind of love, but narcissism disguised as a supposed affection. And if we accept it, we decide to die little by little, to be what others want and to have little self-respect. What self-respect could we achieve with that? What lessons of willpower could we teach to the children around us? If we do not break with these patterns we hinder not only our own evolution but also that of the people around us.
Now I know that I am the mother I didn't expect to be, but I am the mother who challenged the system and that is part of a virtuous circle that I am not willing to break and I hope you won't either. I leave this masterful phrase from the book Healing the Maternal Wound by Bethany Webster:
"The price of getting real is never as high as the price of sticking with your false self" (2021, p.188).
Bibliographic references:
Webster, B. (2021) Healing the maternal wound. Discovering the inner mother and breaking through the patriarchal inheritance of pain, shame, subjugation, and silence that we women receive from generation to generation. Sirius
*Mexican writer and researcher who has dedicated herself to exploring issues of inclusion, diversity and gender violence from a critical and empathetic perspective.
Her first novel, Los relatos de Marta is the result of her nonconformity with the social norms that oppress women and her vision free of prejudice.
She is currently writing another book about the social concerns and nonconformities surrounding the phenomenon of Motherhood.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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