The "Sacred Journey" Story

[qos]

Adjusting to motherhood was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I had never actively wanted to be a mother or to have children. I got pregnant because my husband had always wanted children, and I wanted to do that for him. My pregnancy was difficult, childbirth an ordeal (2 weeks overdue, 24 hours of labor, C-section birth, in the hospital for a week after). Nine months after my daughter's birth, I was diagnosed with post-partum depression.

My biggest challenge was re-adjusting my self-definition. I had frequently defined myself in opposition to traditional female roles, especially that of Mother. Now, I was a mother. How could I also be the person I had been? And how could I be a Good Mother, when the only way I knew was my own mother's way of doing it? And she had not finished college after her marriage, and had been a stay-at-home mom until I was in junior high.

It was a huge step forward for me when I realized, thanks in part to finally starting to read Women Who Run With the Wolves that I could be a Good Mother in my own way. (Doh!) I didn't have to be a "tame" mother to take good care of my child. I'm not usually visually oriented, but I had an image in my mind of myself as an Indian girl running through a forest with a happy papoose on my back wearing a lost-boys bear-cub headcover waving a bone rattle, with wolves running beside us. I called the image "Mommys Who Run With the Wolves."

I wanted a real picture of that image, but I'm not an artist. So when I met GG, a friend of a friend who showed us her portfolio of imaginative portraits, I asked, "Do you accept commissions?" What followed was more than a year of collaboration. She listened to me describe the image in my mind, but we soon went beyond that. She collected photos of me, asked me to gather significant images and symbolic objects. She sketched, she dreamed, she asked me questions, and she sketched some more.

The picture went through several versions. GG took two art classes specifically to learn techniques she felt were necessary for what she wanted to achieve. Eventually, instead of the Indian woman running with wolves, I found myself looking at a priestess-storyteller who blends Celtic and Native American style, who walks between peoples and worlds, someone fully in her own power, with her child as a part of who she is. I found myself looking the eyes of the woman I could become if I was true to myself and my path. It was (and remains) an awe-inspiring experience to see my dream self presented in such vivid, beautiful detail.

(If I could post a copy of the image I would, but GG is not comfortable posting any of her work online, even with a watermark on it. If it were otherwise, it would be part of my "About Me" page.)

Comments

[queenofhalves]

that's awesome. i've often fantasized about commissioning an artist to draw some of the more important images in my head.