When things fall apart
The Dark Mother returns
Since the Lunar New Year / eclipse portal opening, I have been completely at the mercy of the Fire Horse; metaphorically dragged behind it to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with no obvious way out.
With the primary qualities of the so-named Fire Horse being intense, dynamic, and transformative, I should have expected nothing less than structural collapse and ego annihilation, but as most intense, dynamic, and transformative changes do, this one caught me completely off-guard.
As promised, however, The Dark Mother arrives fierce, terrifying, undeniable, and in service of your highest good.
It’s time to make a choice: pretend and suffer or be honest and live fully from my heart. In reality, The Dark Mother leaves no choice.
Mother Fire was a pivot I thought I needed to make to protect and grow my audience. I am running a business, after all, and audience growth matters. But after nearly five months of Mother Fire, the truth came out. I haven’t been protecting my audience, I’ve been protecting myself.
After weeks of screaming into the void, watching my literal resources evaporate, completely blind in the dark, I screamed my truth out from my gut, and the sun came out. The path was right there.
I’ve let myself be convinced that my business model was the path - for money, for freedom, for helping as many people as possible. I know many who are doing it and fulfilling the promise. It isn’t the framework that’s wrong, it’s that it simply isn’t mine. I’ve allowed other people’s voices and visions to crowd out mine, and I simply cannot allow it anymore.
The Dark Mother Art Studio is back - as The Dark Mother Studio.
*Dates to be announced.
My vision is guts.
It is unapologetic.
It is mysterious and experimental and expressive.
It is the result of ongoing tussle with my own demons. Because I also want to know it’s all gonna be ok. I, too, want to be liked and safe and accepted. But none of us has control over that.
And agency has nothing to do with control, but courage.
The Dark Mother emerged from my own postpartum reckoning with grief and rage, and my desire to hold space for that reality and process in other women.
Over the years I’ve learned many things:
Rage is an energy that needs a channel.
Your body is the conduit.
Loss is inevitable and grief is non-negotiable.
We cannot do it alone.
Now the inquiries:
What is the movement that tells its story?
What is the texture and shape of it on the page?
What is the razor-sharp sentence that when written becomes your sword of courage?
Half-hearted and half-distracted won’t get us there. Fear of disappointing or confusing others will not get us there.
We must enter the space of the unknown and make our bodies the channel. This is how the possibility of Knowing what must happen next emerges.
In all expressive arts therapy, the idea is that the visceral (body) and sub-lingual (imaginative) processing allows for more truth and clarity to emerge. It’s an increasingly vital outlet for humans who are constantly bombarded by “rational” explanations and unnecessary rhetoric.
I’m tired of learning from “experts” while my Knowing remains hidden in the closet, only to be retrieved in secret or in the presence of my closest friends.
Mother Fire is still happening - we start on Wednesday!! April 1!! I have an amazing group, and still open to more, but it will be much more visceral, guttural, and expressive than I’ve let on. Because I do give a shit about boundaries and relationships and sex and nourishment and personal mythology, but I don’t give a FUCK about sitting in front of you lecturing about it.
The teaching is in the movement, the engagement, in our complete, full-bodied reckoning with the rage and disappointment and lust and grief and desire. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s not a mountain to climb. It is a stream that you lean toward and dip your fingers into. It is a balm.
Inside this round of Mother Fire, we are learning to tell the truth and take creative action on behalf of our desires and unmet needs in partnership, refining and strengthening the ways we show up and meet that challenge while mothering. We are meeting the experiences of anger, resentment, rage, and grief in order to make ourselves suitable channels for the love, the expression, and the truth that our relationships require.
You have about a day-and-a-half to decide whether or not this is for you. You can schedule a 15min call with me to talk about Mother Fire, and I’m also taking new clients for 1:1 Somatic Sessions and you can schedule a call to talk about that, too.
New offerings are on the horizon, especially in-person. Stay tuned.
In love,
Stacey