unable or unwilling?
examining the myths we've been assigned
Heads up: there is an image of a breastfeeding mother in this essay. If that bothers you, please talk to a therapist about it — not me.
I wasn’t expecting to see an exposed boob when I went to retrieve the mail one autumn day in 2019. But there it was in all its pink-nippled glory on the cover of Image, an art and literary journal I’ve subscribed to for years. Once my initial surprise passed, I was struck by the intimate familiarity of the photograph: a woman in a siren-red dress had fallen asleep while breastfeeding her naked young toddler, who had also nodded off midritual. The exhaustion of the mother leaked from the page the way the last drops of milk leaked from her emptied breast.
Leni Dothan’s Sleeping Madonna reminds me that women need our lived experience reflected back to us in sacred ways. It is not enough to be given idyllic Renaissance paintings of Mary and Jesus or renderings of historical female saints looking demure and pious. Such idealization isn’t always bad and can sometimes inspire, but if that’s the only spirituality of motherhood we are handed, we will inevitably feel ashamed and isolated when our own experience is much less palatable.
As a Jewish mother, Dothan has a vested interest in the customary portrayal of Mary and Jesus. In her Sleeping Madonna installation (which was originally a video on loop before it was a magazine cover), she says, “The iconic Mary becomes a real-life mother, weak and exhausted, unable to live up to her own myth.”
The above paragraphs are excerpted from my book Rewilding Motherhood, but came to mind again today and I’m choosing to trust the muse.
Unable to live up to her own myth.
That’s the part that really gets me; the part that dares me to ask horrifying questions like, “What is the myth I’m unable to live up to?” Or, more specifically, “Which of the many is the one asking for my attention today?”
I’m curious about this not because I’m interested in self-criticism, but because I’m interested in the truth. And when we start poking at the myths we are each asked to embody — whether that be Sacrificial Mother or Provider Father or Emotionless Male or Subservient Daughter, etc. — I wonder if we might just find that we don’t actually want to live up to them.
When I penned the above paragraphs three years ago, I thought I was unable to live up to the mythical ideal of motherhood. Now I know that I am unwilling.
There is a difference.
It is unwise to assume that a thing is best simply because it is socially accepted. Maybe you are not actually failing to live up to whatever myth you’ve been assigned; maybe you are practicing radical self-belonging and forging a way for yourself that is truer to who you are.
You’ve been told that straying from the myth will cause harm. What if that’s a lie? What if it turned out more beautiful than you could imagine?
There’s only one way to find out.
My wife went through two horrible rounds of breaking herself trying to breastfeed our children. Months of triple-feeding and mastitis later (both times) finally resigning herself in a complicated mix of shame and grace and self-assurance that this was ok -- that motherhood and breastfeeding have always been communal, life supported in networks not isolation, that for so long lives were just lost in situations like hers. The vast gap between how this inability to breastfeed and decision to stop impacted the two of us has been my most visceral window into what women hold and what holds women. Grateful for your writing as another window into that wild, verdant, scorched, grace-needing landscape.
The ideas we choose to reject (release?) are at least as important as the ones we keep. What a powerful reminder that the actual, physical images we’re surrounded by matter deeply. They’re not just an aesthetic reflection of our preferences and style, they’re mirrors into our deeply held beliefs, ideals, hopes and dreams. This was a much needed reminder that it’s good to let go of ideas that restrict fullness of being.