Considering The Arc

Mothers As The Endangered Species

I pulled my first card from the Cantigee Oracle deck, which I read about in Xenia’s Garden of The Imaginal newsletter on Substack. The card I pulled, Touching the Star-Kissed Leaf, invited me to pull back from all the nit-picky details and zoom out on all the projects. And then to consider how your work fits into the larger picture of society, humanity, the Earth, and beyond.

I started writing my Morning Pulp (an adaptation of Julia Cameron’s Pages) with these themes in mind. I began with this delicious line from the Cantigee:

“Consider the greater arc of the piece.” 

Why am I doing this in the first place? I thought.

And from beyond came:

Why?

Because.

Because we are the endangered species. The mothers of the world are dying. And no one is saving us. They just keep telling us to drink more wine or be more perfect. 

We are trying to be healthy in a soul-sick society. Trying to get back to our roots. Trying to pull back from the bandaid medicine the world is handing us. Trying to do things differently than our parents did. Differently than we’ve been taught, conditioned, made to believe. We are trying to shape a new reality. Create a better world for our kids. Create.

Creation is a conjuring of something out of nothing. Light out of thin air. 

The work is hard and tedious and lonely. It’s too easy to get lost in the minutia of the day-to-day. Reach for quick fixes like doom scrolling and merlot. To make us forget how fucking hard it is. We are actively growing, healing, removing toxic patterns while simultaneously ushering the next generation of upstanding citizens and healers into the world, putting dinner on the table, and working full-time jobs.

We don’t even know what day it is. We don’t know what we’re doing but by god we’re doing it. We are living four lives in one. We are exhausted, and we need backup. But we don’t know how to ask for help. Because we’ve learned that asking for help means we are weak. 

So we put on a happy face and smile for the cameras and make sure our kids have nice shoes and know how fiercely they are loved.

While we are being torn apart and scattered into a million blisters of ash across freshly mowed lawns.

Reaching for each other in the dark. When we are finally allowed to glow bright. 

We are on fire. Illuminated from the inside. With rage, with fury, with the alchemical constitution of a revolution smearing our hands together and tugging at our feet.

We need leaders. We need fire starters. We need the kindling of circles and screams and tears and the sharing of stories. We are on fire. And god save the man, institution, or beast who tries to stand in our way. 

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I know what it’s like to need a kind of help that’s not on offer. I know what it’s like to be lost and not know how to ask for directions. To not even know where I’m going to ask. 

I know what it feels like to be drowning in a world someone else thought up for me.

To hate myself so much, I want to save everybody the misery of my existence and end it all. 

I know what it’s like to need life force breathed back into my lungs through creativity. But not knowing that’s what I needed because no one had ever shown me before.

I know what it feels like to be told my dreams are too big and to just make a gratitude list and remember how good I have it.

I know what it feels like to swallow the hums of my soul in a bottle every night for a hundred years.

I know what it feels like to walk the many miles to freedom alone. And I know what it feels like to walk it with someone else who shares the blueprint of your soul.

And I know which I’d rather. 

And that is why. 

That is why. 

That is my greater arc. 

That is just about everything of it. 

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