Mothering as Post-Colonial Dreaming

Mothering, for me, is a rebellious movement that rumbles chants beneath the feet of remembered entanglement. Mothering is being a creature of inter- and trans-species proportions, where nest and food are woven and foraged from ancestral vines and fruit, place-based belonging, and more-than-human languages.

Mothering, for me, is the mighty YES! that welcomes the gorgeous multiplicity bouncing with jubilant thunder from the body that has yet to be confined by binaries and human-centric narratives. A body that does not yet know the ways of extractive culture, though hears the telltale signs in the guttural songs of “consume, consume, consume.”

I wish mothering involved more sinking back into my hips, feeling the steady pace of my bare feet touching down, heel then toe, the way feet dream of kissing the land. Sinking back to with-ness the brilliance of this sleeping one sprung from my womb welcomed with raucous delight by a world that spends more time loving such a creaturely, sensual shape, rather than trying to confine, conform, and define.

Alas, mothering is often (though not always) a contortionistic dance where I bend repeatedly as a form of space-making. Making space through slanted trickster smiles and belly-burning screams so that the armies of western colonial culture stop their trampling march through indoctrinated, sleeping bodies of homogeneity.

Space-making as a ceremonial gesture that greets the monstrous with tender courtesy and ecstatic welcome. Where gasps of disbelief for the beauty before me pass over my astonished lips.

Mothering, for me, is post-colonial dreaming where the seeds of ancestral futurism speak in tongues of non-linear prophecy ( ). Where what wishes to be birthed into the world whispers possibility from the cosmic chasm of emergence. That place where past, present, and future entwine their golden veins of life-blood that feed into the endless ocean of creation.

If you practice listening with all your bodies, you can hear their whispers turning to song, and you can’t help but dance a cry of welcome. For such shapes portend a shift that is anything but forward moving.