Kate Bush and My Tears

‘Disappointed Love’ by Francis Danby, 1821

Yesterday I was doing some dream tending, I was drawing symbols from a recent dream to give it texture, to bring it to life, to see what it might reveal for me.

While in this flow, I was listening to music and Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work came on. By the end of the song, I’d morphed from content woman scribbling to a bursting river of sobs. Fat tears coursing down my cheeks.

All of a sudden, I found myself in a pit of despair about the state of our world. Because some days, grief leaps from the shadows. My heart crumbles into smithereens, obliterates. It all feels too much.

How did we get here?

Why do we do this to each other?

Why do we desecrate our home, our sacred mother?

Why did the outer and inner masculine abandon the feminine?

There was no blame in these sobs - of myself - of anyone else. Just grief.

‘Chi’ by Lucy Campbell

This Woman’s Work was written by Kate Bush from the perspective of a man who is forced to confront an unexpected crisis as his wife goes into emergency labour.

Here is an excerpt from the lyrics:

“I know you have a little life in you yet,
I know you have a lot of strength left.
I know you have a little life in you yet,
I know you have a lot of strength left.

I should be crying but I just can't let it show.
I should be hoping but I can't stop thinking.

Of all the things we should've said,
That we never said.
All the things we should've done,
Though we never did.
All the things that you needed from me,
All the things that you wanted for me,
All the things that I should've given,
But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go away,
Just make it go away now.”

Photo of Kate Bush by Guido Harari

We know that the old ways are crumbling. We are in painful times. Death and birth can both be dangerous and excruciating.

I feel the responsibility to navigate this as best within the collective, and on a personal level for my two beautiful sons. To ask questions like:

“What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so? What must die in me in order for me to love? What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today? What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to? If not now, when?”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

But some days are not for taking action.

Some days you just have to grieve.

To feel it all.

To taste each rolling salty tear on a wet face.

“I know you have a little life in you yet
I know you have a lot of strength left…”

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A Powerful Question I Asked Myself

‘Mer-Unicorn’ by Susan Seddon Boulet

“What if I believed that I was created in the image of the divine feminine?”

This is the powerful question I asked myself. Let me tell you why.

From early childhood, it was explained to me that I was created in the image of God - in the image of the divine masculine. 

I never felt this to be true in my body because many of those who claimed to be the gatekeepers of this image in Catholic Ireland also told me that by virtue of being female, I was less than. I was worse than less than, I was intentional because I was a sinner. 

These same gatekeepers sent my older sister to ‘limbo’ after to quote former president, Mary McAleese, she was “buried in oppressed silence between dusk and dawn” in a collective grave. These same gatekeepers fated that my brother be born in a mother and baby home. 

And so, intuitively from my late teens, I disconnected from the divine because I could not see myself in this image.

‘The Journey Home’ by Susan Seddon Boulet

Between then and now, I’ve followed a long road home, a proportion of it unbeknownst to myself at the time but still, guided by my unconscious, my dreamworld, mythical and human ancestors and finally, by my body. 

Today, I wonder, well what if I had been told as a child that I was created in the image of the divine feminine? In the image of the Great Mother? In the image of the Goddess? 

When I first asked myself this question, I cried in deep sorrow and relief. Because of recognition. Because I could finally see myself in this image. 

I felt liberated.

And so, I’ve been exploring many questions around this, a few of which I share with you to explore yourself if you feel this call:

What if you believed you were created in the image of the divine feminine, the Great Mother, the Goddess?

What does this possibility invite you to feel in your body?

Who would this give you permission to be?

What would this give you permission to do in your life?

I am forever finding new meaning in this quote from Marion Woodman, it feels pertinent here:

“Only by discovering and loving the goddess lost within our rejected body can we hear our own authentic voice.”

For we are finding her. She is finding us.

‘Changing Woman’ by Susan Seddon Boulet

I will leave this blog here as I chant:

“I am created in the image of the Divine Feminine.”

“I am created in the image of the Great Mother.”

“I am created in the image of the Goddess.”

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