A bitch slap from the Dark Goddess.

Talking birth, motherhood and the Dark Mother.

I was talking to one of my mama friends about the deep initiation of birth and she turned round and said “It’s like a bitch slap from the dark goddess” and I’ve never heard anything more true.

Going into birth (and motherhood) I had all of these fantasies about what it would be like.

Fantasies that only the maiden can dream up in her sweet and pure innocence.

The reality of it all has shaken me up. But it has not broken me. It has required me to call upon deeper levels of strength, courage, wisdom and embodiment.

It has pulled me into the wisdom of my body and asked me to stand in my strength even when I think there is none left.

The amount of times in motherhood I have been in that place of the wounded maiden. That feeling of panic, that I can’t do it, that it’s all too hard.

It is this aspect of the wounded maiden that came out in my birth experience and caused my transfer into hospital.

And she comes out in my life, often.

She is the one who will purposefully leave the house a mess just to prove how much she is struggling.

She is the one who will speak her troubles aloud in the presence of others hoping for sympathy and to be told she has it the hardest.

She is the one who is STILL waiting to be saved.

Then, enter the dark goddess.

She bitch slaps her way through and says WAKE UP CHILD.

She calls me out on my immature ways, grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me until I see truth.

She buckles my knees not so I cannot walk, but so that I can build my strength from the ground up without reaching for anyone’s hand.

She has me on my knees crawling through the hedgerows getting pierced by thorn, only to emerge crowned and holy.

© Mike Croshaw - 2020

It is through these difficulties, these initiations, that we truly come to know ourselves.

That we stop looking outside for the saviour and call upon the well of internal strength that we all have but most do not know how to tap into.

The dark goddess will wake you up to all that you are. A formidable force, an eruption of power, strength and yearning, fiercely placed upon this earth with a unique and powerful mission.

She takes all the ways you outsource your power and forces you to find it within. Her ways are not soft and gentle, they are direct and impervious. Her medicine is not the sweetest but it is always precisely what you need.

The Dark Goddess isn’t bad. The darkness is from a place deep within the earth. The womb of all creation. The primordial pulse of the universe. She is powerful and she lets her presence be known. (Not to be confused with the shadow feminine, that is something different entirely, more akin to the wounded maiden I mentioned above.)

Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

I really feel the presence of the dark goddess in my mothering journey, I like to call her the Dark Mother.

She is the guiding voice which brings me home to myself when shit has hit the fan.

Whilst the birth I had was not what I had imagined, desired, or prepared for, it was the strength of the Dark Mother that got me through.

There was a moment about 15 hours in, when I had already transferred to hospital, that I heard her loud and clear.

“You’re just going to have to push this baby out whether you like it or not.”

She was right. All of my fear, all of my resistance and all of my worry were going to have to take a backseat so that I could actually birth this baby.

And it took calling upon her strength, standing up and roaring for my baby to be born.

The Dark Mother goddess is the true Initiator of Motherhood. As maidens we are the young initiates, waiting to be transformed. It is She who holds this Holy ritual and anoints us as worthy as we each the Otherside.

It is not how instagram-worthy our birth is, nor how close it was to our birth plan, it is how able we were to call upon the power of the Dark Goddess - whether you knew it to be her or not - in our moment of transformation.

How has the Dark Goddess served you in your journey?

Do you relate to her as the Dark Mother?