Dark Mother Series
ANNOUNCING Four Story Councils to Honour the One Who Birthed Us
More than myth, folk and fairy tales about Mothers or the mother wound, these stories dwell at shuddering edges of love and loss.
Mother as Soil and Seasons, Mother as Night Searcher, Mother as Terrifying Teacher, Mother as Hearth Tender.
Announcing the Dark Mother Series
Just in time for Mother’s Day, on the heals of Earth Day and the Full Flower Moon in Scorpio of Beltane in the Northern and Samhain in the Southern hemispheres….
Four Story Councils to Honour the One Who Birthed Us
Join us for our first story council gathering:
The Redstart Bird, Tending the Hearth
Monday May 11th, 6-9pm, East Vancouver*
There are limited spots, so please rsvp to save yours, get location details and a wee preparation task. A donation of $10-$30 is suggested but no-one will be turned away for lack of funds.
We will gather in a small cohort around the council of an old tale from the lands we now call Scotland where a tiny brown bird and the Goddess Brigit conspire to bring the gift of fire to the people of the earth. We will touch on the Not-Enough Mother, Hearth Tending, and other story threads. And, we will hold space for both gratitude and grief, where our personal stories can join the rich dark soil of story, to rest, release, reroot and regenerate.
*More dates and locations for this 1st and following story councils announced soon, in Vancouver, Salt Spring and possibly even in the Comox Valley…
Why Dark Mother?
So quickly the green fuse uncurls from the dark earth, the flowers unfold their heady scent and bountiful colours, and the roof top canopy fills out. We lift our faces to the Solar Gods, and forget the Dark Mother who began it all.
She of deep roots and rot. She of vast night and dream seeds. She of the gentle stream and raging storm. All Giver, and All Taker.
There has been horrifying talk of the motherless lately: the results of ancient and systemic severance without return.
We all have a mother, the one who taught us how to love and be loved. Or at least stumbled that way. We all come from the Great Mother, the one whose bones, waters, and breath make up our bodies.
I myself, have just returned from the ‘20-yearlong vision quest that is motherhood’ aptly named by a friend, without ceremony or ritual to mark my return.
This is not the place to share that story, except to say that immense grief and staggering gratitude have been constant companions. And, along the way, many tools, the old stories among them, have been gathered!
To rest in the arms of such storytelling itself can tap into an age old grief: for the old tales it seems are in a language our people learned aeons ago. When we were very young we were taken from Her. But when we hear the stories that rose from her body, we still remember her language.
The Dark Mother series is more than myth, folk and fairy tales about Mothers or the mother wound, these stories dwell at shuddering edges of love and loss.
Mother as Soil and Seasons, Mother as Night Searcher, Mother as Terrifying Teacher, Mother as Hearth Tender.
Above all Earth Mother, Cosmic Mother, Dark Mother.
As we till the dark, soil of these four stories, the themes of Severance & Return , a Mother’s Grief, the Death of the Too Good Mother, Facing the Dark Mother, the Exhausted One w No Time For Gift Giving, Father As Protective Yin, and the Wild Wolf Mother and more emerge.
I would love to share these stories with you this May and June. But I need to find a home on Salt Spring to do so!! Yes, I am between homes, or perhaps on tour!!
Help me find a long term home on Salt Spring Island? Host a Story Council gathering?
What Is Story Council?
This is a way of seeking the counsel of each other’s fire-lit faces, and something ancient that has arrived out of the earth 10000 years ago right on time! The wisdom of myth works its magic somehow with the trouble, grief and gratitude each of us brings to the circle. In this way, we might hold up the lantern and shine warm light into the darker aspects of the mother, we might catch the tiniest hint of a larger return and rooting, a way of kneeling in the dark soils and seeding regeneration.
“Traditionally, The elders would speak in stories. ‘Story’ also means storehouse and what can be found in stories is what keeps being lost and forgotten in the daily world. Sometimes a little story can open up an uncommon way of seeing a path forward that otherwise would remain hidden to simple observation or common sense.”
Michael Meade, Why the World Doesn’t End
Story Council is for you if you are:
~ Curious about the intersections of myth, ecology, and inner personal work
~ Yearning for a community practice
~Wanting to deepen your skills in inner tracking and intuition
~ Know deep in your bones that we are part of a larger story of becoming
~ Are feeling the downward pull into what some call soul work, the liminal, dark earth times, composting, and council of the more-than-human
~ Can feel something calling you
See you there!
Warmly and wildly,
Belinda White