A Mother’s Journey Through the Elements

She is a great mother. Her fire is the fierce protection of life. When threatened, she rises like a mountain of earth—vast, immovable. Her power pours outward as love, a river forever flowing. Despite her great size, she moves with the swiftness of wind when she must. Within her lives the potency of emptiness, and she is strengthened by the nourishment of all the elements.

There was a time of great effort and gathering. The earth offered its dense fibers; roots and rushes tasting of bitter, astringent sap. Fire, embodied by the sun, kissed the flowering shrubs to form berries. She gorged on their sour sweetness, and I drank in their richness. When the sun climbed high, her thirst became unquenchable,and soon I would hear the sound of moving water as she carried us down into it. Water holds a sweetness no plant or flesh can quench.Then comes the buzzing air. We trembled, fear and reverence entwined, as she approached the bees.

She followed each hunger to its fulfillment,and every one of them led us here. Now we are deep in the belly of the earth. She sleeps. I am only a rounded warmth, nestled into the hollow of her body, as she is held within the hollow of the earth. We are buried among roots, blanketed by snow.

The summer sun still feeds us; berries and honey stored as fat in her belly across many months. Her heart has slowed, the river of our blood has slowed, the burning of life reduced to a quiet, slack rhythm that barely keeps us alive, exactly as we need.

In this slowness, I feed on everything she gathered. The life of the past sustains me; the children quickening in the belly of the future. Through radical surrender, we are nourished. We absorb the elements of what has been and allow time to drift. We give ourselves fully to rest. To hibernate at the edge of death is what brings life at the right moment.

This is the potent pause, between the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. In darkness, deep in the earth, something new is preparing to grow. We open to the unknown beyond the stars above while gathering energy in the soil below.

Time is a circle. This is a still point between the beating of hearts. This is Imbolc; the sacred in-between. Winter’s death has settled, and the promise of spring has not yet arrived.

For now, we wait. We gather strength by undoing, by resting in the purity of potential. We will know when it is time by the scent carried on the air: sap beginning to flow, earth thawing, milk rising in the bodies of mothers.

Until then, we rest.