
Happy International Women’s Day! 🎉
You thought celebrating women was cancelled? 😂 It’s funny to watch insecure, fearful men try to claw back power from the Goddess. Feminine energy can’t be cancelled.
These days it feels like merely existing as a woman is an act of resistance. Certainly my existence as a free-spirited, independent, highly opinionated, ambitious, creative, wild, yogini is not the type of woman the White House wants to celebrate. I can hear it now…“Get back in the kitchen…” 🙄
Well, you know what? I do spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen, thank you very much. During all that time washing dishes and slathering peanut butter on bread my kids won't eat, my brain comes up with stuff I want to say. Then I sit down at the kitchen table with my computer and I publsih it. So, fuck off.
Here I am. 🙌👋🏻. Ready to defy. I resist by celebrating women. By experiencing joy. By sharing my truth, which, as outlined in the piece below, is not always joyous. But then, we are multitudes. We get to show up in the fullness of who we are. That’s what makes the goddess powerful. She shows up in the lightness and in the dark.
Here is my contribution to Siren Songs for International Women’s Day 2025.
| | |I walked down to the river at the New Moon to make an offering. To release my old self, the stories I’ve been holding onto, the past versions of me. It felt fitting, not only because of the potent planetary alignments but also as a way for me to greet my shifting identity as mother with the imminent arrival of our third child. Motherhood sharpens the yogic lesson of surrender.
I’m a different mother now, forged through six years of experience, two children. Dreams deserted, Self lost, and yet joy indescribable in the most mundane moments. My ears have both delighted in the sounds of toddler tickle-laughs and drowned in terror at the word cancer uttered as a matter of fact. I have been lucky to bear witness to my children’s wide eyes on Christmas morning, to share knowing glances with my son when my daughter is being “crazy.” Likewise, I view their toys constantly strewn about the house with complete disdain. My lips brush their essence with each goodnight kiss, but also pucker at the bitterness that escapes with my every pleading shout to stop beating each other up, stop banging plastic toys together while yelling at the top of your lungs. Quiet! My olfactory nerves hold on to the faintest memory of my daughter’s baby hair, while simultaneously being harassed by constant toots and smelly soccer shinguards. My children are still young enough to give hugs freely with no shortage of “I love you, Moms.” There are also plenty of full-frontal body slams as if I were a portal to another world they are constantly attempting to pass through.
Somewhere in between these pairs of opposites lies peace.
People keep asking me if I’m excited. If I’m ready for baby Z3(P0), due on or about March 5, 2025 (still not here…).
I am not.
I am not excited
I am not excited to give birth.
I am not excited for the pain.
I am not excited about the unknown.
I am not excited about the sleep deprivation.
I am not excited about my nipples chafing.
I am not excited about my nervous system dysregulating
from the crying, the touching, the suffocation from the fact that
my milk, my breasts, my touch, my voice, my body sustains life.
I am not excited to lose time
to write, to create, to be with my work, projects, and dreams.
I am not excited to lose me.
It’s going to hurt in different places, in different ways, on different days.
But I’m going to do it anyway,
imperfectly, inconsistently, incoherently.
I am going to love this baby with all my heart.
Love our family with every ounce of my being.
I’ll try to love myself, too.
I’ll try to keep writing and sharing and practicing.
I’ll try to love my life, but that may be untrue
for the moment.
I don’t need to be excited.
I just need to be.
Love, in all its forms.
Motherhood isn’t always exciting. Babies are unbelievably boring. But someday, who knows when, I’ll hear the coos and, soon enough, the I love you’s. I’ll stare into my baby’s eyes and see creation reflecting back. My lips will taste the sweetness of baby snuggles as my cells bathe in oxytocin. My nose will quickly retrieve the full memory of that baby hair smell. My hands will caress soft baby skin. Joy will bubble up from my heart. I’ll find peace again in those middle moments between ecstasy and despair.
There I will be, in the middle of it all.
Witness. Mother. Lover.
Yogini. Writer. Woman.
Wife, sister, daughter, friend.
All of me in the smallest moments.
Here.
Now.
Not always excited. In fact, often frustrated, enraged, irritated. Waiting for the balance to tip the other way.
Trying to remember that peace can always be found somewhere in the middle.
Calling all my fellow sirens, goddesses, women, mothers to contribute your voices to this collaboration. To showcase the strength and power of the feminine. Because we are strongest when we live in our authentic divinity. Because there is no masculine without the feminine. Because we’re all in this fight to express ourselves freely and openly, together.
| | |Check out how you can contribute your voice here. All women’s voices welcome!
Coming up this month
3/12 :: Full Moon Yoga Class - a recording of Chandra Namaskars + journal prompts to welcome the Full Moon
3/20 :: Spring Seasonal Cherry Blossom Yoga Nidra + DIY Equinox ritual ideas
3/29 :: March New Moon Nidra + reflection guide to harness the power and energy of the New Moon in Aries and a partial solar eclipse!
Live more intentionally
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With gratitude,
Ashley
Ah Ashley, thank you for sharing your words and your experience of mothering, all so deeply resonant — the daily co-existing contrasts and continual the loss/rediscovery of Self. Thinking of you in this liminal space and upcoming portal of change xx
Hell yes! I laugh at that exclamation to get back to the kitchen - that's my happy place and I do a pretty damn fine job in there, I believe:) Plus more...
Your poem is lovely; being excited is overrated. Motherhood is so much more complex than just being excited about all those things...we are deep, feeling beings, we hold it all, and excitement is just a tiny piece of it. Thanks as always for sharing your fire and your voice. So glad to be part of this online community!