I had been feeling the gentle whispers of Mother Mary trying to come through to me some months before I actually made space for creating her. As usual, a busy mother has a couple of thousand things to do. Life is a constant juggling act and I often find myself lost in chaos, struggling to come up for air. Why is it that mothers are known for being so bad at mothering themselves? It’s a contradiction in terms. Once that switch goes on at the time of welcoming our new baby into the world, our self-care switch goes off. We spend a lifetime trying to remember how to nurture ourselves and our sisters, and take some valuable time out to care for our souls.
Yet life, if it has taught me anything, has shown me that living on planet earth is all about contradictions. We just have to learn to navigate it as best we can and listen for the signs of when to shift gear. We don’t get to have the luxury of creating in peace. We have to make our own peace in the midst of conflict. We must choose the time ourselves and make things happen. This is what co-creating is all about. Hearing the inner call, shifting gear and then putting our foot on the accelerator.
But what happens when we are so much in a fog that we just can’t pull ourselves out? Life seems impossible. We can’t get out of bed, trapped in a state between exhaustion, indecision and desperation? Then we need to let go and trust in the universe. Like the first step in AA, we realise we are powerless in the situation. We hand things over. We let go.
And so the story of my painting of Mother Mary begins. I lay in bed exhausted and reached for my phone. I needed to reach outside of myself and tune in to a higher mind. I’d been struggling with a bad situation at work for months with no light on the horizon. I was ready to just give in and give up but knew that I wasn’t seeing the whole story. I tuned in to one of my trusted mentors on Youtube, to thank her for another enlightening message, and at the same time, found myself asking for help. Little did I know, but at the same time, she was trying to contact me to do some work for her. And so, the universe had stepped in.
That morning the wind was howling. There was a yellow weather warning and the park, where my studio is, was closed to the public. I had no intention of going in to work on my day off anyway (Monday). But when I got the call, I knew that I had to go in. Usually, working on a new commission like this would frighten the pants off me, but I was filled with so much confidence that the universe had heard my prayers that I wasn’t going to dilly dally and wait for the storm to pass. I got into the studio, and despite my neighbour’s noisy power-tools vibrating through the walls, I switched on my favourite therapy music, and started painting my Madonna and child, while singing at the top of my voice. What a way to start!
Later that evening I came home to the news that Notre Dame in Paris was on fire and the whole roof had gone! I knew it was an energetic sign of breaking through the ceiling of the old way of things. The new could no longer be contained within the old and it was time to start to birth the new and bring in the Divine Feminine.
I’ve heard that when we are called to work for the light, we will naturally attract the dark. It’s like we’re being put through a test. When I went into my studio the following day I cringed at the work I had done and immediately thought that it wasn’t good enough. That old fear and doubt crept back in and I had to face my demons. Once again, I had to stand up to them and soldier on. But my feelings about how the painting should look were all authentic.. It was important for me to realise that I just needed to throw down all my ideas without judgement, and then strengthen those ideas by researching and finding source material for the elements that the painting needed.
It took a few days to find all of the source material I needed, and, once started, the magic began to happen. The portrait began to come alive. As I painted, I set up a dialogue between myself and Mother Mary and started to hear messages and both see and smell roses. The feeling of patience, gentleness and love pervaded the scene enveloping me with an enormous sense of calm. I felt excited that so much was coming through that I wanted to contact the person who commissioned the painting and tell her all what I was experiencing. But before I could do that, I got a note from her partner to say that the formula they were working on for the new spray was changing and that they thought it should be made on a base of Rose oil. It was incredible to think that the three of us in separate parts of the world, were totally in tune with this project. Well, of course! It was going to be like that! It was confirmation that we were on the right track. I love how spirit is always giving us the heads up!
I always see the month of May as Mary’s month. And sure enough it has brought through many challenges concerning mothering and in my own situation, learning how to detach and give some tough love to those who depend on me. It was a month where my own family of origin was in crisis and combined with the full moon in Scorpio, there was a lot of difficult stuff to deal with. The message that I was hearing on a spiritual as well as astrological channel is that this is one of the final rounds before we are free from that which has been holding us tied. It’s the last hurdle. The darkest hour before dawn. I guess it means that we are finally learning what we came here to learn and that our souls are ascending to a higher plane of consciousness.
I am very glad to have created my beautiful, serene and gentle, yet strong, Madonna and Child, our Mother Mary.