Methods and Maps to the Mother Well #1
Naming Guilt, Loss of Self, and Exhaustion + Ritual, the Natural World, and Movement As Metaphor
The Mother Well…
It started as a group of interviews with burned-out mothers in the Winter of 2024.
Here is a poem made from their words:
Unpaid labor.
There is no me separate from motherhood.
There is no self anymore.
I am creating the container.
I become tighter.
Keeping score. Scarcity. There is not enough for me.
I would like to feel joy.
I want community.
Gravity is bearing down on me.
Hollowed shells of humans.
More levity, please. This was the birth of Mother Well, a three-month-long offering to individual mothers using the Tamalpa Life Art Process (TLAP), as well as experiential astrology and flower essence therapy.
walk by the water I, the mother of all wells
From 2021-2023, I participated in an intensive practitioner training program with The Tamalpa Institute under the direction of core teachers Daria Halprin, Rosario Sammartino, Dohee Lee, and Natan Daskal.
Participants have a chance after the two years of core training to do a third year of practicum and to create a project for the practicum. Mine became Mother Well.
The set of interviews I conducted with mothers was moving. Through these interviews, I began to understand the common feelings of mothers with older children— namely loss of self, guilt, and deep & persistent exhaustion.
What a strange thing to encounter in other women my age. The experience created a sense of mission in me to allow these women some space, time, and support to feel their feelings, let go of the guilt, and begin a journey to meet the new self that emerges after the immediate, all-hands-on-deck first stage of mothering.
I had some questions:
What if mothers in this stage of mothering could know themselves again?
What if we could reclaim our time, or at least slices of it, thereby creating a new set of moveable but strong boundaries?
What might happen if mothers received this support?
I am still curious about how this work echoes out. What happens when we support mothers in our communities? I am not speaking about access to childcare or other concrete resources, although these are of utmost importance. I am talking about soul care.
How might supporting the soul of the mother ripple out into the greater community and be of benefit to all— changing all of our lives?
Brené Brown describes guilt as one of the places we go “when we fall short,” and she groups guilt with perfectionism, shame, embarrassment, and humiliation.
As I began to put together a program for these mothers, I wondered if the feelings of guilt were not more associated with shame. Brown describes shame as being a feeling of “I am bad” versus a feeling of “I have done something bad.”
This was delicate work. And deeply entrenched in our culture is the feeling that we are just not good enough, especially for moms.
message from the edge of water
In the next two months, along with my lunar newsletters, I will be writing nine newsletters about my journey with two mothers last Spring. These are in service to reflection and documentation of the project. They are also in service to a group offering of The Mother Well happening in April and May of this year on the land, at the river, and at Atrium Wellness at the Breathe Building.
During these first three of nine newsletters, I will be engaging with theory and map-making.
The middle three will focus on the project's meat— the participants' and my experience last Spring.
And the final three will be focused on what happens next— the eight-week group offering of Mother Well in April-May.
Methods and Maps
Ritual and the Natural World
Part of TLAP and of therapy in general, especially somatic therapies, is the concept of finding and naming the resources we already have. This is important because all of us have trauma, and when we look inward, the explorations can bring up past experiences either consciously or unconsciously.
Andrea Olsen says, “We begin in wholeness” (2002, p 9). Yet, we do not stay whole. As mothers, we are constantly being asked to split ourselves into tiny pieces.
Olsen goes on to say that we know our place through our experiences with that place and our bodies. “…we must put down our books, quiet our words, and simply go outside” (2002, p 9).
Thus Mother Well participants began the process by finding resources with a Walk by the Water. I felt this was a good way to begin— a ritual with water. An invocation of sorts, and a plea to the outer world to resource us mothers. This was a way for us to resource ourselves with the natural world, and to extend the dance and the metaphor into a larger expanse of space. The Tamalpa Institute works a lot with nature, for many years working in an outdoor studio for their practitioner training.
So we start by the water, and will again for the second invitation of Mother Well, which will be held in group practice.
Movement As Metaphor
TLAP also works with the idea of movement-as-metaphor. Daria Halprin, one of TLAP’s founders, writes:
“The entire repertoire of our life experiences can be accessed and activated through the body in movement.” (2003, p. 17)
This idea is paramount to how I worked with mothers in the first stages of MOther Well, and will guide the work going forward as well. It is well known at this point thanks to the research of somatic practitioners, that the body holds information that the mind cannot explain or at times even remember. Movement helps us to contextualize our experiences differently. This core understanding of movement-as-metaphor underlies the work of TLAP and the Mother Well.
As a mother and I moved at the confluence of rivers on Easter Sunday morning, as the shadows played with our bodies and the breeze created a rhythm between us, I began to feel a sense of resource and calm within the process. Healing is not a one-way street. I receive a lot of healing from being in process with individuals and groups. Being together— as humans and as creatures together with waves, light, birds, trees, spirits— is deeply resourcing. More next time on Maps and Methods. But for now, here is a poem that came from one of the Walks by the Water.
rekindling of wildness the parts of us that are untethered unclaimed so wholly (holy) enlivened by the all the sacred and in this companionship lose the self to find it once again
beginning the ritual
UPCOMING OFFERINGS:
1- April-May— GROUP FORM MOTHER WELL: Fridays late afternoon-evening
On land at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers at Kelly Point Park for two afternoon rituals
In studio at Atrium at the Breathe Building in SE Portland
Online orientation and 2 individual sessions online or home visit
2- April 13— COSMIC CORPUS: Monthly In-Person Astro-Explorations with collaborator Gina James! Sunday afternoons starting April 13
At Atrium Movement at the Breathe Building in SE PDX
Somatic, interpretative, exploratory, experiential community astrology
3- October 2-5, 2025— LIVING ASTROLOGIES CONFERENCE IN SANTA FE, NM:
Hosted by Jason Holley and the Hermes/Hestia Center for Living Astrologies
My workshop— The Artemesian Well: Exploring Lunar Depth through Movement Ritual and the Tamalpa Life Art Process
Other experiential workshops to experience astrology through a relational, imaginal, and embodied lens
References:
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Atlas_of_the_Heart/ZvwyEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=atlas+of+the+heart&pg=PR11&printsec=frontcover
Halprin, D. (2002). The expressive body in life, art, and therapy: Working with movement, metaphor and meaning. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Expressive_Body_in_Life_Art_and_Ther/BkKBGP-2PHcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=maps+and+methods+of+the+practice+daria+halprin&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover
Nagoski, E., & Amelia Nagoski, D. M. A. (2020). Burnout: The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Ballangne Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Burnout/DlnDDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=burnout+and+nagoski&pg=PR9&printsec=frontcover
Olsen, A. (2020). Body and earth: An experiential guide. Wesleyan University Press. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Body_and_Earth/dd7QDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=body+and+earth&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover