EARTH PARENTING IN MARRIAGE

    In my journey mothering while intuiting the ways of the ‘forgotten people’, the Indigenous peoples of the Earth, I have continued to find myself facing my relationship with my husband and its ongoing web of entangled stories. Our journey is but one of the collective of our genre. We are the generation with choices, and statistics show we are still making black and white ones; good and bad. We are walking away from our problems in every increasing numbers and our children are left in a psychological chasm created by our separation. Or are they? 
    This article is not written with anything more than anecdotal reference from my own experience and observation. Throughout our relationship I have anchored our experience to our ancestors and the Indigenous model, which has allowed me the benefit of forbearance long before I even knew there was a word for it.  There is a bigger picture to our culture’s collective pain that we suffer in relationship and I believe my story shines a light on another way of looking at our present predicament.

      I could have left my husband more times than I would like to imagine.  He has left me at least that many.  We still have unresolved issues. We have four children together. We love each other. In times of survival that would be where the story ends and living begins. Who would care about past mistakes?  It would be a case of getting on with living and raising the children. In the Indigenous world, the fabric of their societies and marriage lineages and Dream time law would have safeguarded and held relationship in a way that doesn’t allow for comparison in such a short piece of writing. In any case there are endless examples of how different tribes dealt with marriage problems and that fact alone demonstrates that it was in the interest of the entire tribe to arrest problems and deal with them.

      When our problems came to a head I would spend time grounding my hurting heart with ‘earth’ jobs with the kids; gardening, looking for insects, walking and just being out in nature.  While we spent these times together it would allow for recapitulation, where the argument would come back to me in small waves immersed in understanding and compassion. Often one of the kids would synchronize with this understanding by bringing me something that represented it, like an emu feather which to me means ‘fathering’. Their spontaneous gifts seemed to be prompted from another world.  They were working with the angels in sustaining me with the fortitude to pray again, to dream again and to let go of the hurt. 

     In my wanderings in this kind of relationship ‘pea soup’ I have discovered that an important aspect of our current climate of relationship stalemate is individualism.  Our egoistic state is more pronounced than any generation before us, partly fueled by consumerism and also accelerated since the industrial revolution when families have been separated by the work force and schooling. (Which are relatively recent phenomena.)  
       When we compare Indigenous cultures we can see that their fabric held them as part of their tribe first and their individuality was sustained by the tribe.  We come from thousands of years of slavery, serfs and commoners; serving the elite, our individuality was not free to blossom. Now in our current culture it exists in spite of our family groups or communities; we are cultured to believe in our thoughts as if they are our individuality.  Instead often they are our ego and very often they are running the show.  
       So when I added this wider perspective to my individual problems, I found that they would shrink away to mere shadows.  Those shadows are the culture's pain body, haunting us from within our own minds as we, the next generation, carry the stories of our mothers and fathers.  “Men were generally not useful in the home.  Women were usually complaining and nagging.” These are just examples of common expectations of the husband/ wife experience. 

       When I step out of my story I can see how I have supported that cultural view of the fish wife at home nagging and complaining.  When I let go of expecting him to have simultaneous realizations that he too has let me down, I release the whole story and my authentic self can emerge.  My relationship is essentially with the now.  Now extends throughout time and connects me with a wider perspective.  I can see that my problems will be my children’s and were my grandparent’s until I release them; until I stop giving them energy.  That means trusting, leaping grandly into my inherited fear; knowing I have nothing to lose because love will always shine more brightly than any shadow.

     Indigenous women did not talk about their menfolk in negative ways.  They may have laughed knowingly and shared teasing looks but their children’s minds were not cluttered with this conversation that has littered our lives for many generations.  I remember how my complaints with friends about my marriage gave me short term satisfaction but did not relieve my problems.  Looking back I can see that they extended our problems as if they had been prayers for what I didn’t want. 
     I think often marriage break-ups are exacerbated by this kind of talking.This talking is however necessary to some degree because we are living so separately. We need to offload and talking helps us put things in perspective. I found that when the friends I confided to echoed my alarm and distress, my problems became exacerbated.  
      I discovered that other friends were able to listen and in the listening allowed the space of love to return, giving me back the presence of feminine power; yielding and softening.  This yielding is the power of women and I have much to learn about it.  Single parenting for so long has stifled my ability to yield.  In our culture  yielding is often regarded as a flaw, a weakness.  It is the primal state of woman.  Yielding is acceptance and is the birthplace of prayer. 

   In staying in my marriage with its ongoing problems I now understand that when differences arise between us, there is less resistance when I yield, surrendering the moment to the Higher realm.  Interestingly, when I alone work on what I focus on and stay grounded in my connection with the Earth then my husband rises to his higher self and equilibrium comes over us again.

      This is a wonderful realization, how I think about my life affects our whole family.  I have stumbled on the power of woman.  The flip side of this then threatens to taunt me.  That means all the problems were created by me and how I handled them.  Guilt is the inheritance of the modern mother.  Modern mothers have bags full of guilt that arise at varying times of our children’s lives and usually come as a hidden package that quietly motivates us at the level of sabotage.  I believe this has roots going back into our European ancestral antiquity.  I don’t spend time digging up that Pandora’s box.  I have just found that by accepting that it is the modern mother’s shadow I can  recognize that it is an illusion.  We have nothing to feel guilty about.  We do our best with the cloth we have.   

      Now let us get on with working with the cloth.  That work needs forbearance and the quality of yielding so we can quietly gather more information about what questions to ask and what to call in.  And so I accept our family’s story, share it where it is needed and then get on with the work I have to do in my own family; cleaning and lightening our load, enjoying each other and giving thanks for the bounty we share.