Tuath Tribe
The Online Newsletter of the Tuatha Dé

That's been my little bit of mythological understanding for the past seven months or so. Hence, the long absence of newsletters! I always find it ironic that the times in our lives that spur the most reflection are those which afford us the least time to record it.

The lessons of birth and motherhood have, unsurprisingly, been different than those I expected. A friend of mine who gave birth a few months before me had an experience more like what I was imagining, more like the kind of thing my mother had described. She wrote about it this way:

Life, Death, Rebirth
Continual, ever lasting but always changing.

Virgin and Mother stand to one another as flower and fruit and essentially belong together in their transformation from one to the other, and in this transition I feel that one can experience Life Death Rebirth in their rawest form. I feel that my pregnancy and birth of my daughter Niamh Izabella has coincided really well with the natural rhythm of the year and tied in beautifully with the festivals and what they represent. She was conceived at Samhain in the dark time of year as everything comes from the dark, Imbolc she was growing, Spring equinox and Beltaine the bigger she became then at the Summer solstice while the sun was at his zenith and everything was bursting into flower she was getting ready to make her entrance into the world then just a few weeks before Lughnasadh a time of harvest and abundance of all things, she arrived. My harvest!

I grew her and nurtured her in my womb for 9 moons and I give thanks to the goddess for her safe arrival, words cannot express the gratitude I feel for the opportunity once again to love and care for another small being, and the chance to guide and teach another in our tribe. I really do feel truly blessed that I have been able to partake in the wonderful birth process twice at home in a Birthing Pool with my family by my side. I felt that when I gave birth to my son the transition from Maiden to Mother was such an amazing Magickal experience and the imprint so strong that I felt it couldn't possibly be as powerful the second time but it was and is.

The birthing process for me was an extremely intense elemental Initiation. At the start of my labour I experienced Air, feeling very in control and clear with a feeling of lucidity. Then during Transition stage I experienced Water this is a very intense part of the labour so much so you almost loose sight of what you are going through it for, and due to not using any form of pain relief my natural endorphins had really kicked in and I was feeling very spaced out and extremely elemental. During the second stage of labour I experienced Fire. This is the stage where you are able to push, and I found that at this point you've got to use your will, and all your strength and stamina and courage like never before. And of course I experienced Earth when my daughter was born, the manifestation and grounding of it all.

I felt that during the labour I had to be more focused than ever before, and my Yogic breathing was invaluable all the way through, it was more intense than any thing I've experienced but at the same time an incredible feeling of satisfaction having this process coursing through your body and if you go with it and put up no resistance you really do become an Elemental Force and have ultimate Union with the Goddess. I feel very lucky that I was able at the time most needed to find her strength inside me, and feel at one with her! Nuit, Brigid, Epona, Isis, Dana, Inanna, All the mothers I give Thanks and Love. Blessed be.

Written Lammas 2002 by Lee Watson
(First printed in Birth and Beyond, and Sorath, winter 2003.)

Many thanks to Lee for letting me reprint her beautiful account. I wanted something to balance mine! :-) Without going into gory detail, I can tell you that my experience wasn't like Lee's. By the end of a pregnancy that was more difficult than some, less than others, I was utterly thrashed and around two weeks late by the calendar, 18 days late by the scans. I know due dates are guesstimates, but it was hard to trust my body when I felt so awful, and I ended up with an induction. That was Thursday morning. By 3AM Saturday morning, 41 hours after starting, the doctor (herself pregnant with twins) told me I had one hour to push the baby out before scissors and instruments came into play. I found that motivational. :-O Téa emerged at four minutes to forceps. I was glad to be in the hospital because I lost lots of blood, and the (intermittent) numbness afforded by the epidural helped me hold it together enough to push her out without further intervention.

The one moment in the whole process that felt overtly spiritual, though obviously it all was, was when I sang her birth song to her as I held her for the first time. I felt good that I managed to do that despite the fact that overall, I felt awful. Of course, like Lee, I know the Goddess and my Deities and totems, particularly Isis, Brigit, Inanna and Enlil/Bel, were helping. My own mother's prayers to Isis and all the prayers I know friends, students and family were offering to their Gods and Spirits for us helped too. A big thanks to all concerned!

I also know that Téa's indomitable will played a good part both in getting her into my womb and out again. From early on, I was aware of her as another being. Obviously she was in my body but to me, equally obviously, she wasn't part of it. She was her own person. A shaman I spoke with a couple of years ago told me she saw me with two children, but particularly asked with a laugh "Who's the little red haired girl?" Her hair is more chestnut than bright red, but the energy is definitely that of a girl people have seen me with for years in visions and journeys.

I've physically recovered well, and Téa is worth twenty or more times what it took to get her here, so don't be put off if you're considering a child. (Though I'm finding being a mother much more rewarding than the physical process of becoming one, so don't see adoption as a second-best.) I also know a good number of women who went through labours they describe as anything from pain free and blissful to bearably uncomfortable to spiritually transcendant as above. I'd even consider doing it again, which is where we get to what I feel the spiritual lessons have been for me.

Unexpected Lessons and Lessons in the Unexpected

First, the experience was far from the "vessel of cosmic fecundity" number I was anticipating. So what can be learned from this? Other than, as my student and friend Sarah said at a Mull retreat once, "Expectation is the enemy of experience." I expected that I'd cope well with pregnancy and birth, everyone in my family had. I often found myself thinking I should be doing better. Like some of my students, the perfectionist in me leads to my 'shoulding' all over myself when I don't perform up to my own standards! I had to try to apply my own advice, which is always hard. On one level, those of us in the helping fields often feel that, for example, a psychologist shouldn't be depressed, or a midwife should always have a 'perfect' anaesthesia-free birth. (My own view ended up being 'You get anaesthesia to have a tiny tooth pulled from a sensitive part of your body, and babies are a lot bigger!' But I freely admit that I felt this way when my endurance was at a low ebb to say the least. : - ) I also know that a big piece of the problem was likely the induction, which from what I've heard always makes things worse, one medical intervention leading to the next.)

Just when we think we're doing great, and evolving spiritually to our own satisfaction, we have that fight with Dad again, or the same old issue with fear or physical pain arises again. You see, growth isn't linear, but spiral. Points of resistance are like skips in a vinyl record, every time we get to that point again, the needle pops. Most skips don't go through the whole record, but peter out after they've been hit a few times. Likewise, we often find that most of our issues give us the initial shock of that 'pop' a number of times, but with diminishing intensity over time. Eventually, if we resist being too reflexively reactive by falling into self-blame and panic, they go away entirely.

So the first principle when these things come up is don't panic. It's only phenomena. My mother always says that the idea of all things as illusion or simply as arising phenomena described so well in Buddhist philosophy serves us well at times like this. It enables us to step back and regain calm.

Next, give yourself credit for something, anything, in the way you handled the situation, internally or externally. This may not be, "I retained full awareness of the person who swindled me as a fellow human being." It may only be "I didn't clock the rascal." It may not be, "I required only deep breathing to regain calm." It may only be, "I drank three tins of beer not six afterwards." (Or half a tub of Ben and Jerry's rather than a full one.) Nonetheless, give yourself credit.

Finally, address this new manifestation of the problem to the extent that you need to. As Sean Connery's character in "Rising Sun" said, the Japanese cultural ideal is to "fix the problem, not the blame."

Don't waste time blaming yourself or anyone else. Accept that you won't always perform as you might have wished. Don't use this moment as a chance to rehash every other time in your life when you faced a similar discomfort or difficulty. Adressing the problem adequately this time may only be a matter of saying, "Oh, that was an odd hiccup of awareness, but I certainly didn't react as badly as I used to, so I'll just keep working on the positive trend." End of story. Perfectionism leads to the problem. To solve it, gain perspective, praise yourself for what you have done well, and take steps to solve whatever problem there is.

Besides becoming more aware of my perfectionist tendencies and how to counterract them, my birth experience also underscored the truth that we all "get" spiritual experience in different ways.

Deity is in the Differences

What impacts on you spiritually won't necessarily be what impacts on anyone else and vice versa. Just because someone else has a huge spiritual experience giving birth, having a particular initiation, a near death experience or illness or doing a particular spiritual or physical practice, doesn't mean you will, or should. I get euphoric going for a run on a nice day, and combine it with a kind of Norse seidr practice where I focus that energy towards a goal. By contrast, my mother finds violent exercise miserable (she's always seen gyms as medieval torture dungeons) but enjoys quiet meditation. A run would be the precise way for her not to feel euphorically spiritual!

We have all these ideas about how we should 'get spiritual.' We may feel that the more rarified a deity or practice seems the better. We may think we should connect with Deity best as light, or a radiantly tranquil manifestation of the Buddha, or an angelic being. However, the form that invokes darshan, as Hindu tradition calls it, that direct lightning bolt perception of the Divine, for you, the form that conjures up your devotional ardour, may be quite different.

If what works for you as an image of the Divine is the Keith Richards meets Kokopelli archetype Johnny Depp plays in Pirates of the Caribbean, not a golden Buddha on an altar, respect that. (Note I didn't say Johnny Depp but the character he plays — worshipping actors and confusing them with their characters can lead to stalking! :-)

It's also well worth looking at what your current resonant image of the Divine may be telling you about what you need to know next. When I've had darshan at the movies, it's been fascinating how much useful information about my own path has come up in the context of reading about the character that evoked it, or the actor's understanding of him or her. Is the character 'Dionysian'? Maybe you need to let your hair down more. Is the character confident, cool, funny, passionate? What does that tell you about the qualities of being you're working to integrate at this time?

There's no better or worse form we can use to represent Deity since its all part of God/dess in flashing block capitals. Every word is another word for God. Any image is only a peg to hang our devotions on. God is too 'fat' to fit in our house, so we may as well do what works best. Go where your passion is. Go where you have fun.

I'm not sure if I've told this story in a newsletter before, but I used to practice broadsword with the Dawn Duellists Society in a church hall where a Sunday School also met. They had an alphabet of piety on pre-printed posters, God is A, Almighty, B Benevolent etc., but one had been changed. God is F, Fun, had been changed with marker to read F, Father! I felt bad for God, I mean, what person likes to be told they're no fun? Since God is everything fun certainly can't be excluded.

Different archetypal images will also resonate at different times. For obvious reasons I'm connecting strongly with the Great Mother as Isis, Bear Mother/Brigit, and Blessed Mother Mary right now.

Different music or other aesthetic supports to practice will also work at different times. I often listen to Irish or Latin chant for practice. The other day, though, Run DMC and N.E.R.D. fit the bill better.

As pregnancy and birth underscored the diversity of our individual experiences, motherhood has underscored the preciousness of each individual.

Our Unconditional Value

After Téa was born, the biggest impression was an overwhelming sense of her preciousness, just as a being, before she 'did' anything, and consequently a sense of the innate preciousness of all beings. I can even treat myself better, knowing I am my mother's and the Goddess's baby. If I think badly about myself, or am harsh with myself, I can think, "Would I want someone to treat Téa this way, even (or especially) herself?"

It's become harder in some ways to interact with students and people I do individual work with, because I feel their preciousness so keenly that it can be overwhelming. One of my doctors said that she felt the same after her first child was born. She went through a kind of crisis where she went from being able to do crash c-sections in Africa to being barely able to touch a person, because everyone was someone's baby. One of the midwives said new mothers should run the world and I can't say I disagree, although it's obvious we don't all feel the same.

For me, it's this sense much more than the birth which feels like getting a Goddess eye view of creation. Birth was something to get through to get here, it didn't bring me here itself, if you get my meaning.

A Keen Sensitivity

In the Francis Ford Coppola film, Rumblefish, the Motorcycle Boy's brother asks their father (played by Dennis Hopper) if the Motorcycle Boy is crazy. "No," the father responds, "the Motorcycle Boy's not crazy. He's got a keen sensitivity, and a keen sensitivity doesn't make you crazy." He starts to get up, then says, "But it can drive you crazy. It can drive you crazy."

I've wondered how much post-natal depression is born of the acute sensetivity to others' preciousness and sometime suffering that can come with becoming a mother. Being so sensitised has made my usual aversion to the news stronger yet at the same time I want to know what's going on so I can take more action, whether through protest, activism, donation, prayer, magickal workings, etc. A look at the Sunday paper is my compromise.

(Does anyone know of an internet or other source for general positive news? Let me know and I'll include it in the next newsletter.)

My taste in film and TV has definitely changed. No more cop shows, murder mysteries or medical soaps (my secret shame!). Seeing the unpleasant doings just doesn't feel entertaining anymore, since everyone's someone's baby. In fact, I watch less TV generally since I don't want any of us to waste time. David has kept William, a skull, on his TV for years to remind him (and now all of us!) that we watch in light of our physically finite lifespan. William asks, "Is this really what you want to be doing?"

Motherhood has changed my views on so much. I read a lot about the miracles of infant development when I was pregnant. I knew that babies could feel in the womb, responding to a hair's touch, from at least eleven weeks but I didn't know how much they responded spontaneously to complex human signals like their mother's voices from early stages. I found out that even very premature infants, who usen't to survive but now can, are capable of well coordinated expressive movements and communicative interactions with others. The idea that babies are unformed automata who have to be socialised into being fully human, like the idea that they don't smile responsively for months but only have gas, is well out of date. (As a new 3D scanner shows, they smile in the womb and there's no gas there!) That is, of course, without even including spiritual ideas of what constitutes a human being.

After all that reading I was pretty horrified to discover that non-emergency terminations are still allowed to six months in Britain. (The limit in most European countries is three months.) Thankfully this is under review now. I feel that there are implications to born as well as unborn humans of condoning termination late in pregnancy and continuing a culture where one in four conceptions end this way, as is the case in the UK.

I must emphasise here that I've done soul retrieval and counselling for women who've had terminations and have always felt great compassion for their pain. I don't believe deliberately ending a pregnancy is wrong in all circumstances, and wouldn't deem anyone a bad person for having done so. I don't and can't judge anyone for what they decide under incredibly difficult circumstances. It's just that knowing what I do now, I feel even more strongly that those decisions should be made unecessary so far as possible and that any decision should be made as early as possible and informed by all the facts we know now about human development.

I also thank the Goddess I didn't have to make such a decision before this information was available, when I was younger and could potentially have chosen a course I might regret now. (Please note that while I felt I had to say what I've said above to inform readers about new information which I found both important and distressing in some contexts, I don't feel I can give more details on my views at this time or enter into email debate on this topic. I know some of you may be surprised by my views, but I think it's important to make the point that there shouldn't be one expected viewpoint on this subject for any group, i.e. women, Pagans, etc.)

Changed Priorities

Although I've grown more sensitive to some things, other sore spots have vanished as my priorities re-order themselves. Like lots of women, I've had body image issues that I thought might lead me to nip and tuckery in later years. I figured the physical effects of child-bearing would only intensify these feelings but the opposite is true. The thought of risking my life and orphaning Téa to essentially move some meat around just seems stupid now. To spend money on it that would feed ten Sudanese families for a year also feels pretty inappropriate.

(Part of my re-evaluation of priorities has come from the realisation that I spent enough eating out one year when I was financially well off to feed a number of Sudanese families myself. I'll write more on this in the next newsletter, but, again, this isn't a judgement on anyone else's choices, just the way I'm feeling now.)

I haven't needed to make an effort to change priorities, it's just happened in a good way.

Which brings me to another point. I realised that I had been neotonous in many ways, that is, clinging to childish qualities in inappropriate ways. Like many of my generation, (and more than David) I feared having a child would take the focus away from my 'real' life of writing, teaching, intellectual pursuits, making art and music (and nightclubbing, moviegoing, procrastination, lying around!) God I was being dense! Téa is teaching me more than I would ever have learned without her in direct and subtle ways. I am learning how to apply myself to writing with a real fervor, so when I get the time, I can really produce. I know the end result will be that I'll accomplish much more over my lifetime than I would have if I hadn't had her, so my substantive fears were baseless. I've also cut out some self destructive patterns I've had with food, alcohol and smoking, so in real and linear time terms she's likely added years to my life.

No one should have or adopt a child who doesn't want one. Obviously too many people have already. But if those of us who think deeply about our actions and are really concerned with doing the right thing don't contribute to the next generation in some way, (having a child, adopting, fostering, mentoring, volunteering, or even donating money to children's charities, etc.) where will we all be in thirty years? It seems a good idea to have a sustainable (and lower or at least not increasing) global population, but also a population of caring, conscious people.

I am sure many of you who are long term parents are nodding sagely and going, "Ah, the zeal of the converted," which is true! I doubt I've told you anything new.

I guess I was afraid that I wanted to have parented well, rather than go through the reality. It's like writing. They say that lots of people would like to have written a successful novel, but damn few of them actually like to write. I was afraid I'd be quite pleased to have raised a nice child at, say, her university graduation, but wouldn't like what it took to get there, so I'm thrilled and relieved that I am enjoying the process so much.

Of course parenthood is not all smooth sailing. A comic at the Edinburgh festival (I can't remember her name right now) who's had a baby since she was last here said it was sometimes like having a small, manic-depressive, incontinent version of yourself! I certainly can see my temper in Téa from time to time, and she's recently really gotten command of her vocal cords and volume setting which rattles the old nerves. Nancy Mitford said, "Little children bore me — their voices bore right through my head." I don't find Téa boring in the dull sense though, it's great to see her growing and developing.

At a conference someone was talking about adult conversation dearth. I responded that I have had enough conversations along the lines of "I think my esteemed colleague will find these terms are used quite differently in the Old Irish if they consult Atkinson" to do me for a while! "Gee gee goo goo" is a bit of a relief. Anyway, Téa showed the conference that she fits well into the academic milieux. She has a PhD, having been four months in embryo when I got mine, and she can and does go "Blah blah blah blah blah," and blow raspberries, so can both give a paper and critique the papers of others to the normal standard.

So while I'm not terribly distressed by the change of priorities, I've had to try and figure out ways to include sustaining aspects of life and self-care like spiritual practice (and occasional washing!) Of course, I'm not alone in trying to work it out. David's done so much with Téa while working nearly full time. I also turned out to be blessed by the fact that David and I have a low enough income that we couldn't have afforded childcare if I'd kept working the Edinburgh based job I had. We're better off with my staying home. A lot of my more well-off compadres in the breast feeding group have put their babies in nursery to return to work to pay off mortgages, etc. I've never been so glad to have a low income by modern Western standards, which goes to show that our blessings aren't always what we think they are!

Time

Simple things have made a difference to my ability to continue facets of my life along with interacting with Téa. I've kept thinking of J.K. Rowling writing as a single parent and knew there must be ways to do it without outside help. David found a plant stand thrown out that turned out to be the exact right height to put by the bed, set my laptop on, and type one handed while feeding Téa or while she naps (like now).

I recently wrote an essay for a contest while shaking a jingly soft toy at Téa. This created hilarity when I told David on his return from work that it's amazing what I could get done typing with one hand and shaking an octopus with the other.

The Spirits told me to meditate at feeding times when I wasn't writing. I've also been doing practice and composing writing (in conversation with Téa and the Spirits) on long walks. These three simple changes have made all the difference between struggling to do anything along these lines and getting some work and communion in each day. While any hoped for schedule for internet courses and books has gone out the window, some progress is being made. Téa's the most important project right now anyway!

I've also found that chant and mantra are excellent practices while cleaning or doing other things. Indian tradition says it takes many repetitions of a mantra to create an effect, so building mantra into household tasks is a great way to get two birds with one stone and increase your spiritual practice by hours a day without cutting out other things. It also serves to occupy the mind so it doesn't spiral off into worries or negativity. In my case, Téa really enjoys the singing as well.

Time. The time, I know, is so precious. Having heard so many parents speak of it flying, I am really focussing on savoring each minute with her.

I've had panic around time as well, issues of physical mortality I wasn't raised to worry about at all, but which have arisen because I want to always be here for her on every level. Happily, at the Traditional Cosmology Society's last conference, on seasonal festivals, Neil Douglas-Klotz, the great Aramaic and Hebrew scholar and inspiring spiritual teacher, gave a talk that comforted me hugely. He said that in Hebrew tradition, time is like a caravan in the desert. The first time, creation, began the caravan and is still moving forward with it, ahead of us. Those in the future, "those who will follow," are behind us, so we can't see them, but we are all moving along together. Some sources see death as like an oasis, where we refresh ourselves before moving on. Like the Talking Heads song says, "time isn't holding us, time isn't after us."

At Téa's naming ceremony we got a sense of being part of that caravan. We used an Old Scottish Gaelic ceremony where among other things, water from nine waves, symbolising nine facets of her being, was poured on her head. She was the fifth generation of my family to wear the family naming robe. Bill Grant, a colleague of ours at Edinburgh University, said how great it was to actually see the ceremony performed, as opposed to reading it in Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica. Her God and Goddess parents, Steve and Gen, were in charge of the fire (incense) and water respectively. We felt very blessed by all our friends and family, as well as God/dess. It was especially wonderful to have Téa's Great Grandmother, Helen, there. She's David's grandmother and is a model for how we'd all like to be at ninety or any other time of life! She wrote an incredibly moving letter to us when Téa was born that brought home the sense of our generational continuity in the caravan, the line from the past to the following future, looking up to the same heaven. In the letter, she welcomed Téa and went on to say "I enjoy thinking of my greats who will go on to know a world coming after mine. It's a strange feeling that that thought gives me. For now I will look at the sun, moon and stars and know that we are all seeing the same celestial bodies."

Since Téa's birth, I've had feelings I interpreted as nostalgia for 'lost' youth, but David pointed something out to me. When I have the same feeling I had, say, in a gallery in Coconut Grove, Florida, at six, when I saw a painting that gave me an acute sense of power and possibility, smelling patchouli, in the cool, having walked in from palm frond dappled shadowed heat, I am actually feeling that sense of power and possibility afresh, not merely remembering when I used to feel it.

I was talking to Bel about it on a walk today, and he said that we have a tendency to frame our sensations as echoes of past experience as we get older. We do this simply because we've felt things repeatedly, so for every new feeling, we're remembering and re-invoking many more older ones simultaneously. It's a cumulative effect of memory. Like seeing things through a window of past experience, where each experience overlays the last, like sheets of photo transparencies. Current experience grows increasingly obscured, till eventually the light doesn't penetrate at all. Thinking that way ages us in a bad way. We come to feel that we only have echoes. All the more reason to release our awareness from 'history and memory,' as I say when I lead meditations. It's to free us for fresh experience. To remind us we're still alive, in this beauiful realm of being.

Tír Tairngiri is how the Irish literati translated the 'Promised Land,' literally, the "Land of Promise." That's where we live if we can renew ourselves from the first creation. Neil Douglas-Klotz said that this idea of refreshing the self from the first creation is one layer of what being born again of water and spirit means in Aramaic.

The joking of my first 'cosmological' paragraph aside, sharing Téa's life does feel on one level like being 'refreshed' from the first cosmic birth. Put another way, as Leslie, one of the farmers we rent our cottage from says, you can dance wildly around the house and otherwise play and do silly things because you're doing it with the kids.

The Light of Brigit

My next newsletter, (which won't be seven months coming!) will have some news about a project Christine Thomas has suggested. Christine is a shaman and life-coach who has been both a friend and ceile in the anama chara work I do for some time. (Her website is www.hawkview.net)

(The anama chara [pron. ah'-na-ma ka'rah] or 'soul friend' work I do can be likened to holistic life coaching. It's a kind of spiritual mentoring traditional in Scottish and Irish cultures. The word ceile, (kay'-lee) usually imperfectly translated as 'client,' was used in those cultures to denote a person in certain kinds of friendly reciprocal relations with another, for example, a farmer might be a ceile to his chief. Each would have rights and responsibilities to the other. In the context of the anama chara work, I use it to describe those I work with in this traditional mentoring exchange.)

As is always the case, the mentor often learns as much as the student in these co-creative ventures and I've been 'wowed' much more than once by what's come up in our sessions. Anyway, Christine has been inspired to create an online shrine to the Goddess and Saint Brigit, patroness of healing, smithcraft and poetry. A flame always burned to her in Kildare, and Christine has the idea that those who feel so moved could commit to lighting a candle for an hour a day, spreading Brigit's light around the world. Her idea really resonated with me and she's expressed interest in others' input and interest. Website design and animation will be a particular need. There'll be more in the next newsletter, but if you'd like to express interest email Christine via her site at: christine@hawkview.net