Motherline | Recording
It is a red thread coiled
I cannot go astray
because I have hold of it
My mothers are on one end of it
My daughters are on the other
The moon is the labyrinth
I am carrying a vessel as old as the moon
There is salt on the rim
I thought it was broken but it was not
I thought I was broken but I was not
[...]
I have become watertight again
after all this time
- Sylvia V. Linsteadt, from "Time, and the Vessel" | The Venus Year
* * *
If you could see your own motherline thread as a line between points, each point the place where one of your foremothers gave birth to her daughter, starting with you and then reaching back and back and back, where would it lead? What would it spell? What could you weave with it, gathered up in your hands? What pain is held in it, making it too sharp sometimes even to touch, too thorny, like the sister weaving shirts out of raw nettles and not spring flowers to turn her brothers from swans to men again?
Even if your relationship to your biological mother is fraught, even if your recent motherline is full of trauma and loss, there is a thread of life, golden as what makes the morning, that stretches from womb to womb to womb into deep time, the miracle of life arising again, and again, and again, from the very earth into you.
My motherline stretches back to Puritans in Maine and Massachusetts, then Protestants in Yorkshire, carrying the devastation of colonialism. From there, the names are quickly lost. The line wheels out across England like raw basket spokes, sprouting willow buds. In some ways feels like all the waters of England carry traces of my motherline. I don’t know how far back. Maybe it crosses over to Denmark with the Vikings. Maybe it stays, flowering out of Scotland, out of Wales, out of Pictish tribes, out of Neolithic moorland people. Maybe it touches my paternal grandmother’s motherline in Ireland. A green thread, arising out of long ago hillforts and elfmounds. At some point further back it winds back across the mainland of Europe, down along the Danube. It winds back, chronologically, to the consciousness of Neolithic Old Europe, and beyond.
I offer this class as a love offering to my motherline, and to yours. I offer it as a place of sanctuary and renewal, a basket woven strong and loving with rushes from the riverbanks of my mothering England, a space to help you safely explore the warp and weft of your own motherline.
What does it mean to follow this thread like the golden ball of wool given by an old woman to find your way? What might we weave of these inherited lines of ours, like the heroine in the Six Swans story, to enact some powerful redemptive healing that extends through our families and beyond, into the wild communities around us? Do we weave with aster—gentle flower— or with nettle —sharp but strong nourisher— or both?
Using European fairytale motifs and creative writing exercises, we will tend to, and follow, our motherlines, listening for what it is they most need, what gifts they bear for us and our communities, and where it is they might lead.
May this work be a prayer for peace on our planet. May it be a prayer for the motherlines in migrating falcons, and gray whales, and great patches of wild iris, and matriarchal herds of elk, and all the threads that weave us together, children of Earth, born each of a mother.
_
It is a red thread coiled
I cannot go astray
because I have hold of it
My mothers are on one end of it
My daughters are on the other
The moon is the labyrinth
I am carrying a vessel as old as the moon
There is salt on the rim
I thought it was broken but it was not
I thought I was broken but I was not
[...]
I have become watertight again
after all this time
- Sylvia V. Linsteadt, from "Time, and the Vessel" | The Venus Year
* * *
If you could see your own motherline thread as a line between points, each point the place where one of your foremothers gave birth to her daughter, starting with you and then reaching back and back and back, where would it lead? What would it spell? What could you weave with it, gathered up in your hands? What pain is held in it, making it too sharp sometimes even to touch, too thorny, like the sister weaving shirts out of raw nettles and not spring flowers to turn her brothers from swans to men again?
Even if your relationship to your biological mother is fraught, even if your recent motherline is full of trauma and loss, there is a thread of life, golden as what makes the morning, that stretches from womb to womb to womb into deep time, the miracle of life arising again, and again, and again, from the very earth into you.
My motherline stretches back to Puritans in Maine and Massachusetts, then Protestants in Yorkshire, carrying the devastation of colonialism. From there, the names are quickly lost. The line wheels out across England like raw basket spokes, sprouting willow buds. In some ways feels like all the waters of England carry traces of my motherline. I don’t know how far back. Maybe it crosses over to Denmark with the Vikings. Maybe it stays, flowering out of Scotland, out of Wales, out of Pictish tribes, out of Neolithic moorland people. Maybe it touches my paternal grandmother’s motherline in Ireland. A green thread, arising out of long ago hillforts and elfmounds. At some point further back it winds back across the mainland of Europe, down along the Danube. It winds back, chronologically, to the consciousness of Neolithic Old Europe, and beyond.
I offer this class as a love offering to my motherline, and to yours. I offer it as a place of sanctuary and renewal, a basket woven strong and loving with rushes from the riverbanks of my mothering England, a space to help you safely explore the warp and weft of your own motherline.
What does it mean to follow this thread like the golden ball of wool given by an old woman to find your way? What might we weave of these inherited lines of ours, like the heroine in the Six Swans story, to enact some powerful redemptive healing that extends through our families and beyond, into the wild communities around us? Do we weave with aster—gentle flower— or with nettle —sharp but strong nourisher— or both?
Using European fairytale motifs and creative writing exercises, we will tend to, and follow, our motherlines, listening for what it is they most need, what gifts they bear for us and our communities, and where it is they might lead.
May this work be a prayer for peace on our planet. May it be a prayer for the motherlines in migrating falcons, and gray whales, and great patches of wild iris, and matriarchal herds of elk, and all the threads that weave us together, children of Earth, born each of a mother.
_
It is a red thread coiled
I cannot go astray
because I have hold of it
My mothers are on one end of it
My daughters are on the other
The moon is the labyrinth
I am carrying a vessel as old as the moon
There is salt on the rim
I thought it was broken but it was not
I thought I was broken but I was not
[...]
I have become watertight again
after all this time
- Sylvia V. Linsteadt, from "Time, and the Vessel" | The Venus Year
* * *
If you could see your own motherline thread as a line between points, each point the place where one of your foremothers gave birth to her daughter, starting with you and then reaching back and back and back, where would it lead? What would it spell? What could you weave with it, gathered up in your hands? What pain is held in it, making it too sharp sometimes even to touch, too thorny, like the sister weaving shirts out of raw nettles and not spring flowers to turn her brothers from swans to men again?
Even if your relationship to your biological mother is fraught, even if your recent motherline is full of trauma and loss, there is a thread of life, golden as what makes the morning, that stretches from womb to womb to womb into deep time, the miracle of life arising again, and again, and again, from the very earth into you.
My motherline stretches back to Puritans in Maine and Massachusetts, then Protestants in Yorkshire, carrying the devastation of colonialism. From there, the names are quickly lost. The line wheels out across England like raw basket spokes, sprouting willow buds. In some ways feels like all the waters of England carry traces of my motherline. I don’t know how far back. Maybe it crosses over to Denmark with the Vikings. Maybe it stays, flowering out of Scotland, out of Wales, out of Pictish tribes, out of Neolithic moorland people. Maybe it touches my paternal grandmother’s motherline in Ireland. A green thread, arising out of long ago hillforts and elfmounds. At some point further back it winds back across the mainland of Europe, down along the Danube. It winds back, chronologically, to the consciousness of Neolithic Old Europe, and beyond.
I offer this class as a love offering to my motherline, and to yours. I offer it as a place of sanctuary and renewal, a basket woven strong and loving with rushes from the riverbanks of my mothering England, a space to help you safely explore the warp and weft of your own motherline.
What does it mean to follow this thread like the golden ball of wool given by an old woman to find your way? What might we weave of these inherited lines of ours, like the heroine in the Six Swans story, to enact some powerful redemptive healing that extends through our families and beyond, into the wild communities around us? Do we weave with aster—gentle flower— or with nettle —sharp but strong nourisher— or both?
Using European fairytale motifs and creative writing exercises, we will tend to, and follow, our motherlines, listening for what it is they most need, what gifts they bear for us and our communities, and where it is they might lead.
May this work be a prayer for peace on our planet. May it be a prayer for the motherlines in migrating falcons, and gray whales, and great patches of wild iris, and matriarchal herds of elk, and all the threads that weave us together, children of Earth, born each of a mother.
_