Greetings Beautiful Ones!Holding you in my heart and praying you are feeling nurtured as we journey through this new month—the fifth of 2025. May 7th is World Maternal Mental Health Day, with the entire month in the U.S. dedicated to Maternal Mental Health. Additionally, for those of us in the States, the 11th is Mother’s Day. While I recognize and honor that various calendars exist beyond the Gregorian one—and believe that many people, events, or things relegated to single-day holidays or fixed-time periods deserve more continual regard—I’m a fan of symbolism and a recognizer of permission slips. Wherever collective agreement and focus exist, so too does a spectrum of opportunity for transformation. Much gets to be illuminated, reflected on, and transformed when it comes to mothering, motherhood, and relationships with mother (in whatever ways that means), for all beings and things. The number 5 is connected to Ọ̀ṣun, a deity from Yoruba cosmology who is deeply tied to divine femininity, creativity, and the womb space. A whole lotta healing in those spaces. Both the 7th and 11th of this month fall on a day within one of the Ifa calendars that honors Ògún, Òṣóòsí, Òrìṣà Òkò (and more)—all male warrior deities whose individual energies are connected to the realms of breakthrough and fighting, direction and focus, planting and cultivation, respectively, among many other things. Ọ̀ṣun, too, is a fierce warrior. When I consider the intersection and collaboration of all these energies—and the symbolism and mythologies through which they teach—I am led to the following questions: What are we fighting for, and is it in the direction of our highest and individual good? In what ways is our individual and collective fighting preventing us from shifting focus… from planting new and different seeds that support us in breaking through outdated and irrelevant beliefs, and cultivating, birthing, and nurturing expanded versions of ourselves—balanced across masculine and feminine, male and female (and the shades of androgyny in between)?
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