91. mother river
Before we built roads, cleared forests, when we navigated with bare feet under the stars, the Mother River was our guide to fertile lands, to food, to the vastness of the ocean.
After the existing structures that bind us, those that take us from nature and keep us sterile, are toppled and roads no longer exist, the Mother River will still be there to guide us.
{Iva Williams · 28 March 2025}
Begin again.
This is the wisdom of the mother river.
Just as the inhale follows the exhale, as long as life is present, so does our innate impulse to begin again after every necessary ending.
19 years ago to the day - March 29, 2006 - we had an eclipse at this exact same point - 09Âş Aries. There is something about this eclipse which is inviting us to reach back towards the self of that moment, and help them rewrite their life narrative.
You can think of this as an exercise in imagination or a literal quantum connection with your past self. Regardless of which feels true for you, the impact will be the same.
This isn’t about regret, it’s about tending another lap on the spiral path. It’s about finding a touchpoint to the version of you who met that eclipse, 19 years ago, and embarked on a courageous journey of some kind, one which relates to the way you’ve grown and changed in your independence, sovereignty, and relationships.
Imagine that whatever that past self was struggling with, whatever choices they were making, you could send a tendril of loving compassion, connection, courage and care to let them know, “It’s okay to forge ahead. You’re going to make it. We’re going to make it.”
Imagine that as you stretch your consciousness back towards that younger self, something tilts and shifts in the cosmic axis, so that in some way, the present moment weave of your life is altered.
How would this threshold, this present moment look if you could subtly rewrite the narrative of your past? What would change if the doubts, fears, insecurities, self-harming tendencies, or inner obstacles of that self knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they would be held lovingly and healed in your future?
What doors could that unlock today? What strengths, talents, or opportunities might emerge if your past no longer defined your limits – but became the foundation of your power?
This too, is an eclipse. It’s the illuminating sun of our present day ego and identity coming into a unified field with the shadowy moon of our past selves’ emotional heart.
We are eclipsing.
I am eclipsing, and the Mother River is my legacy. I am leaning into the mystery and trusting that to gather women is and always has been my greatest purpose.
19 years ago, I was starving myself, abusing prescription pills, compulsively shopping for jeans I couldn’t afford on eBay at 1am, plotting how to escape my abusive lover, drowning in debt, addiction, self-loathing, and internalized patriarchal ideals. If I could only be skinny enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, tan enough, bougie enough… then I could be worthy.
The mother river is not a concept. She is not an archetype, or an idea.
The mother river is the quantum thread. As she was in the beginning, so she is now, so she will forever be. Not just the rivers of Earth, but the rivers of our blood, the river of womb blood stretching between great grandmother to grandmother to mother to daughter to granddaughter and on and on and on, carrying us backwards and forwards in an endless red thread of connection. Carrying each other’s strengths, loves, losses and wounds.
The mother river is the breath, ever-flowing, effortless, the animate force which lives and moves and has its being in everything - everything - in existence. When we forget, or lose ourselves, or feel far from source, she is still there, as close as the next inhalation (life), as near as the next out-breath (death).
The mother river flows between this now-me and that then-me sitting on the computer, late at night, obsessively adding size zero jeans to cart, designer jeans, $200 a pair, feeling her heart race knowing that she cannot afford them, but the credit card number is memorized, and the adrenaline is pumping, and perhaps these will somehow be the catalyst for everything she wants, for the embodiment of the woman she is aching to become.
Deep breath in - I stretch my heart with the inhalation to hold hers, breathing in Tonglen style, the Buddhist practice of taking and sending. As I breathe, I receive her suffering, her hope, her desperation and longing and lost-ness.
Full breath out - I hold her in wholeness in my minds eye, feeling the girl-child she was, and the woman she will become, holding her brilliance, sass, boldness, grief, creativity, inner critic - the thousand faces of her inner goddess swirl in my minds eye as I wrap her in opalescent rainbow light and send her compassion.
The tiniest pause, and her finger hovers over the mouse, twitching. A millisecond, and she scrolls on.
It is enough. I keep breathing.
The mother river is here, now, in the land under our feet.
In the first rosebud of spring.
In the warmth of the sun on our skin.
In the crack of lightning that stretches from sky to ground.
The mother river is here, now, in the ones around us.
In the spontaneous “I love you” of our children.
In the steady heartbeat of our fur-kin as we pet them.
In the spark of light reflected in their eyes.
The mother river is here, now, in our bodies.
In the intuitive dance which speaks a wordless prayer.
In the sudden rage which moves us to act on behalf of justice.
In the goosebumps and shivers of our knowing.
The mother river is here, now, in everything.
In the sound of birds at sunrise and sunset.
In the vibration of thunder, shaking our bones.
In the resonance of these words in your heart.
The mother river. Eclipsing is becoming a stone, and dropping into her cool waters.
The mother river. Choosing it is wading into the mystery, leaning back, and surrendering to the current.
The mother river. Remembering is knowing that when we have nothing left, no effort, energy, or force to seek her, when all we can do is lie down and cry, that those tears are also her endless flow.
We are standing - once again - at the threshold of massive change. In some ways, perhaps the greatest changes of our lifetime will unfold over the next two years.
Eclipses are karmic and cosmic waypoints. What if, instead of pushing, striving, fighting and cajoling yourself to become who you’re meant to be next, you simply stood here, in the mother river, eclipsing, and trusted that your next chapter is here, now, opening?
Tonight, listen carefully to your inner knowing.
A wisdom is being awakened in you.
It may not come in words, but you will know it.
It will speak to every single cell of your being.
It will permeate consciousness with singularity.
The collapse and dissolution into the Allness of Being.
The ignition and rebirth of the Spark of Life.
Tonight, sleep well and listen to your dreams.
When you wake, may you sense the mother river all around you.
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