The Motherless Wild

There is a particular kind of longing that can live in the absence of a mother. Whether we have lost her to death, distance, circumstance, or the necessary boundaries of our own lives, there can remain a place in us that still reaches toward being gathered in, tended to, and carried. Motherlessness can leave us feeling strangely untethered in the world. We may have spent years being capable, caring for others, or even carrying our own mothers, only to discover that somewhere beneath all of that strength lives a much older desire to put our weight down and be held by something larger than ourselves.

The Motherless Wild is a ceremony for women who know this longing. We will gather on the land with what has been lost, what was never received, what remains unfinished, and what still lives within us. There is room for the mothers we loved and lost, the mothers we needed, the mothers we could not safely remain close to, and the mothers we may never have known. The wild knows something about belonging without asking us to explain where we came from. For an afternoon, we will let ourselves be daughters again and become curious about what it means to be carried by the earth beneath us, the women beside us, and whatever mystery we each understand to be larger than ourselves.