Why Do I Hate the Word “Mother?”
As we played around with words for describing the mission of this website, and also a title for a manuscript we are working on, the word “mother” came up over and over. It always seemed to be a major part of the description, but my visceral reaction to this word, and my need to lean away from it is curious to me. I don’t feel like the word “mother” has ever been much celebrated in our history. Some sort of disdain for it often exists.
Still, it’s a role so many of us are. To me, everything about the word mother connotes a boring, sexless, routine woman. Or, maybe it’s because it’s so close to the word smothering that I lean away.
I looked up the definition of mother, hoping something would come out of it that could help me embrace this word, or at least reclaim it in a better way. I want to love this word more. I want to give it the respect and value that it deserves. To be a mother to anything is a deeply worthwhile role, and it’s required for life to continue. I wished the word mother could hold more cherished meaning than it does. What I really believe about the definition of mother doesn’t seem to be reflected to me anywhere. I deeply believe that to be a mother is beyond just a female relationship to her offspring.
A mother is someone who tends life with care. A mother is deeply aware of the fragility of life and immensely committed to the well-being of the person/other living thing to which she is tending. I believe we can be mothers to plants, to animals, to land, to children, to children that aren’t our children. We are tenders of life, not just the hearth. But to tend life, you must be loving and fierce, you must be wise, you also must know how to accept and grieve the inevitable heartbreaks. To be a mother is a noble life task, and so much more expansive than we allow it to be.
While I have a confusing ambivalence toward the word, I don’t reject this role in myself. I value it. Unfortunately, the Google dictionary definition was what I expected:
Mother: n. A woman in relation to her child and v. to bring up a child with care and affection.
I couldn’t accept this definition as the end of my search. I wanted a container to hold the expansiveness of an actual mother. Somehow I felt like the mystery was held in the word itself. In my determined quest with word play to reclaim this word, I went to etymology.
And then something happened.
I stumbled across an etymology of the word mother that described the origins of the word. Despite many different roots, “mother is based ultimately on the baby-talk form *mā- (2); with the kinship term suffix *-ter-." I found this interesting, thinking of my little ones and how so many of their first words had the sound, “ah” in them. And mmm, not only does that sound feel good to emit, but it’s easy to say, and it feels like “my.” Then add “ter” as a way to express relationship with the other to whom you are referring.
Then, one day while running and listening to one of my favorite podcasts The Emerald by Joshua Schrei, the other piece of the puzzle just fell into place. In the episode, “Holy River of Flows: Words and Discourse in a Declarative Age,” he introduced the ways sounds move through us, how somatic they are. He played a recording of his toddler and him saying, “ah” back and forth to each other, and I could feel the movement he was describing. I also couldn’t help but smile at my own memory of these first sounds from my own children. Then he said, “‘Ah’ the primal sound, and more on that later…” and that’s when the piece fell into place. “Ah” isn’t just one of your baby’s first sounds, it’s the first sound.
I went home and did my own research on this, and found over and over, “om” the first sound. In yoga traditions, “om” is a sacred mantra because it is the seed of all words, a universal sound, the first sound of every alphabet, no matter the language. “Om” is often considered the first sound of the Universe. The sound that initiated the creation of the universe. When you say, “om” over and over again, it has calming and healing effects. In Hindu traditions, it is spelled “Aum,” and it is the sacred seed sound that created the vibrations of life and our intricate awareness and consciousness.
As I sat with this new understanding, and the sound, “om,” I felt the container I had set out looking for. Mom. You are my “om.” Between you and me, the seed of life hums….”Om.” You are mine and I am yours, together we are resonating and amplifying life–Mom. I can get behind that. I can embrace the name some call me with new understanding now. Mom. MOM! Or, as my 13-year-old expresses via text when she really needs a check in, “Momomom.”
I’ll be in relationship with you and you with me, and we will watch the ripples of life grow. And now expand this to the more than human world and the land that hums most is in relationship with us and us to it. We are all moms if we choose to be.
References:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/mother
https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
The Emerald, “Holy Rivers of Flows: Words and Discourse in a Declarative Age,” Joshua Schrei
Various Google searches on the word “Om”
