A Mother's Daily-Life-Practice
- Didileia
- Apr 9
- 8 min read
Nourishing the Mother Heart
All life comes through mothers! None of us would be here otherwise.
When a mother trusts herself and her embodied knowing ...
In my experience, no-one has more inner fortitude and sustained heart-driven energy than a mother to protect and nourish her child. A mother’s courage is a formidable thing when she is steadfast in her self-trust with faith in the very life-force and Nature’s wisdom that flows through her. A mother is an almighty force when she stands in her heart, feeling the ancestral feminine strength that came before her to provide the gift of creating new Life and Nature to grow and flourish through her body and being. Her greatest challenge is releasing her protection and care from her grown child to support and encourage them to lead their own life as they so choose, no matter what she has provided and guided up to that point to the best of her ability and awareness. This is the natural adaptability of the Mother Heart in human nature; to provide the Soma for flourishing, then gather up her wholeness and flow on with her own life once again. Including another life as part of our own, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, is a profound possibility for mothers. Mothers choose a challenging path that is not for the faint-hearted; that is guided by pure, essential love to care for life.
When a mother doubts or mistrusts herself and her body ...
When a mother does not trust her embodied nature and inner knowing, she makes herself vulnerable to the many opinions of others. She stops listening to her own heart and intelligent mind that has enabled her to carry, grow, and birth this new life. She begins to close her heart and put emotional and mental obstacles in the way of the life-giving elements and energies that nourish her own body and being; the Life and Nature that flows through and upholds her. She begins to forget and separate herself within and without. This begins a downward spiral against her inner health and well-being as she divides her very nature with inner conflict and deep self-doubt.
The reality is that a mother is reliant for a long while on the kindness and support of others while she rests, restores, and learns to nourish another life in addition to her own. If she does not have love, security, and protection of her body, mind, and heart during this time, there are long repercussions on her child’s and her own life. Embodied stress, grief, anger, and bitterness can be more damaging to our body than an external toxin; flowing through a mother’s body and energy to affect her baby. I know this to be true. I honour the mothers who have managed to provide physical security as well as keep their heart and mind open to flow love through the lives of their children without expectation or judgement. For this to have happened, those mothers must have found support or had high self-regard and appreciation for their own life, with self-responsibility and inner integrity to not hold bitterness and anger which would disempower and harden them from within.
Mothers are different expressions of human nature. We each have our natural boundaries and limitations and strengths. A mother is fortunate if she creates and chooses to surround herself with love and security. This is a choice. I accept that I am responsible for the life-experience I choose, create, and craft for myself, and the way this impacts my children.
Mothers nourish Dharma/Purpose - diversity and wholeness of family ...
Well-supported mothers are the heart of strong, supportive, loving families. And in my experience, it is mothers who love each child enough to protect and nourish their nature to flourish as a valuable part of the whole. Diversity is not division but a rich, natural treasure chest of skills and strengths that make each family strong, vibrant, and uplifted to respond to the movement of life with its ebbs and flows, peaks, and valleys.
In my awareness, our nature in its wholeness IS our purpose, and to live this fully with well-being, using our individuality to add to life. So, I nourish each of my children in their wholeness as an important part of our family wholeness. It is not easy for a mother to stand for the change she feels is needed. It can be a lonely road to tread a new family path and make sure it is safe to follow. This is daily leadership of the quiet kind, often attracting fear and opposition, requiring deep self-questioning, self-trust, and a brave heart to notice and test by personal experience. Our North Star is always well-being and watching for signs of flourishing from within.
Unkind, unhelpful stories undermine the Mother Heart.
Highly-sensitive mothers need to cultivate an impermeable boundary of kindness to shield ourselves from harmful inputs, while diligently receiving what balances and nourishes us. We must be self-disciplined to cultivate our inner harmony and intentionally choose what we give our energy to. We must cultivate self-regard with a genuine appreciation for our own nature and life-opportunity, be self-responsible to tend to our needs, and use our gift of sensitivity to be of service with what comes naturally through us. We have keen embodied intelligence (and our children do as well) to know what is good or not good for us. We can always trust the unbiased barometer of our whole-body awareness much more than our limited intellect, or the waves of emotion and big emotional tides at the surface of our emotional mind. We must make regular space to dive deep and be present in the stillness and stirrings of our heart-space before responding to our life experience and circumstance.
I observe how it is popular for adult children to blame their mother for their personal character flaws and behaviours. And as a devoted, experienced mother who is always doing all that I can do, I feel this reflects a lack of self-responsibility for half of a mother-child relationship; which should become a balanced exchange of adults when we mature. Our mother is a life in her own right, not just our mother. And when we are young people flexing our power and testing boundaries, I know how it “goes down” and both parent and child must be responsible for our half of an interaction. If a young person pushes too hard and over-steps their parent’s boundary, it is natural for something to come unstuck without objective awareness and self-responsibility. And so, it goes on.
As an individual woman, daughter, sister, life-partner, daughter-in-law, and mother, I know very well that a mother cannot gratify each of her children in their individual ways of receiving love because she is her nature just as each child is theirs. She has the long-embodied memories and frame-of-reference, with experiential knowledge and her point of view. We each feel life differently and have individual challenges to understand and work through. We see this clearly through Jyotish – the eye of the Vedas – that supports our compassion through broad awareness of our patterns of human nature. As the third-born of four daughters, I see that my mother has always done everything within her own power and awareness to nourish each of my three sisters and I with her loving nature. It is my responsibility as an adult to appreciate her version of love as distinct from my own; and be aware of my own boundaries and limitations with each of my three children and their distinct natures. I feel fortunate to know Ayurveda with Jyotish and be able to directly observe and understand each of my children’s natures in a way that does not have to rely on emotional bias and intellectual opinion, but rather direct observation without judgement or conclusion. However, in the end, it is being present with absolute attention to quietly notice without judgement that is the tonic, providing clarity backed by pure love and kindness.
Self-empowered, naturally, in simple daily ways of well-being.
I have been deeply impacted by long-held stories and unkind opinions thrown around by other people, particularly within close quarters. I can only say that these have undermined my well-being, and I have had to work hard within my heart and mind to resolve my inner conflict. I take responsibility for how I have coped with this, and it is self-awareness and self-leadership through daily-life-practice that have been healing and transformative for me and my mother-child relationships. I recognise that I am the leader of my own life; that every one of us is, including my children. Now I appreciate my natural gifts of high physical and emotional sensitivity as my unbiased barometer, to know what is good or not good for me, and for my children when they were young. Family traits continue and we can learn, grow, and flourish together when we are self-aware and heart-led.
A synthesis of Vedic, mystical, and ancestral teachings grounded in natural law, continue to help me keep distance from my river of thought and emotion. I take regular deep dives to my heart-space and inner stillness. I am more aware of myself and what I choose for my inputs, digestion, and use of energy. In this way, I can take care of my own life while I care for my family. I nourish the other Mother Hearts in my family. And I provide a service to support other parents and individuals with these tools because I know how we affect each other within family every day, for or against well-being.
My prayerful intention is that we all become more self-aware and self-responsible as we choose, create, and craft our experience of life individually and together in family, and with our wider human family. I also pray that more mothers nourish their own Mother Heart to be open and radiant with our true feminine strengths of inclusion, connection, belonging, and essential love. It is our ability to feel that can prevent us from destroying all that is life-supportive. But we must choose care as our compass. Intellect is a cold, sharp instrument that has no feeling heart. It is up to the Mother Heart in life to flow compassion into our world through individuals and family. We need mothers and fathers to be in sacred partnership to provide strong, loving, guiding lights by our life-example, and lead and support our young people safely forward in life, particularly during these times. We need to affirm and nourish our natural diversity within the wholeness of family with its wisdom of balance and richness of skills and strengths, to fulfill distinct roles in the greater movement of life and nature on our Earth that we are all a part of. Together we can!
Fabienne Vailes echoed to me the Papua New Guinean proverb, “Knowledge is only a rumour until it is in the muscle.” This proverb is attributed to the Asaro Tribe of the Eastern Highlands in Papua New Guinea. I am from the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea and I was fortunate to grow up observing both my Papua New Guinean and Australian family members putting knowledge and compassion into action every day. It was through Kwato Island’s humanitarian mission of teaching vocational skills that I experienced the healing power of a life led by a common ground of humanity with a diversity of skills, rather than a tribal mentality and separatist views. My family are warriors, leaders, teachers, healers, artists and were key to Kwato’s successful mission, lasting throughout the decades in the family legacy of all people who received training there.
I like this PNG proverb which echoes other wisdom for me:
“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” (Zen proverb);
And, Mother Maya Tiwari’s leadership of a Path of Practice through Wise Earth School of Ayurveda.
My Vedic and Dharmic teachers have helped me reconnect with my ancestral lineage roots and wisdom. This is the heart-led path that I continue to walk with hospitality, care, and kindness toward others, and deep inner strength using tools that I find essential in my life-time; as my ancestral mothers have done before me to care for self and others. And mothers cannot take care of others without self-care.
I encourage you to draw on your ancestral roots and wisdom, value and evolve your experiential knowledge, and trust and use your embodied knowing with all of the gifts that come naturally through you to craft your best life and care for your family well.
