Home to Mama's Eyes

"Don't it feel good? Don't it feel right? When you come home to mama's eyes..."

I recall when I was around 13 or 14 years old and my mama used to come and collect me from school, maybe she was driving the Jaguar at that point, or the blacked-out Range Rover, either way, it was some fancy car and she was always dressed as if she was about to step off the Red Carpet. 

“The most over-dressed woman in Cape Town,” was her proudly claimed title.

My mom did not give a F. Not in the way that she did not care, she cared a lot, but she truly could not give a damn about what others thought or said about her. It was both aggravating and awe-inspiring. They were going to talk anyway, so she had probably decided at some point in her life, to do it anyway. A woman who was tall and proud and beautiful and smart, a woman who co-raised 6 little children. A woman who maintained swan-like grace even in the most tumultuous seas. You would never really know what went on below the surface because my mama was an Empress, an Ice Queen. She was the epitome of composure and regality, she was the ice that did not crack…

Until she did. 

I spent many years looking up to my mama, pedastalising her, and perhaps to some extent, her pedastalising me. I was the mini version of her and we were both keenly aware of the attention we demanded. In some way or another, we always seemed to be the object of other people’s fascination. So much so that we ourselves learned how to play the game of the precious prize to be won or shown off. A conditioned behaviour that must have come from so many years of compliments and subtle coercions. Of having power but not truly understanding how to wield it. Wield it in a world that does not have space for a woman in her power - and certainly not for two women in their power. And so when an environment cannot hold the embodiment of such power, that power becomes distorted, it becomes a power that implodes, a power that manipulates itself to survive.

A power that can trigger wars.

Wars within partnerships, wars between mothers and daughters, wars between friends. The shadow of power, which makes up so much of how we know and see power in our patriarchal construct, acts out in ugly ways. For a lot of my life I felt a constant sense of comparison. Of competition. As if there could not possibly be a place where more than one powerful being could take up space. An undertone of scarcity that kept me hiding my light or constantly feeling aware of not shining too bright. Never wanting to step on anyone’s toes, especially not my mothers.

What I did not know as a naive teenager was that my power was actually in my freedom. My power lay in my ability to leave. To stop playing the game and get out when it was time. A power that placed the world at my feet and the confidence to pursue whatever dream I could dream. A dream that could only ever have been paved by the women who came before me. By the sacrifices made by my mother, my grandmother. Women who had spent their lives carving out a little more room. A little more space. A little more access… 

94 years ago women were given the right to vote in South Africa. That means my grandmother was the first generation to have a voice. A say in the matters of her own life and the lives of her community. An acknowledgment that she was worthy of choice, worthy of decision-making. Some women who voted then are still alive today. The leap from my grandmother’s reality to the reality I am currently living is almost unfathomable. I am not surprised then at the horror that was expressed when I told my family I was leaving my fiancé and that I was going to pursue my own business and travel the world. Choosing not to have a child at that time and instead continuing the pursuit of my own personal liberation and contentment. Yes, me - a woman - a woman who had decided to put her needs and desires at the very top of the list.

I recall the tears streaming down my mother’s face when I told her on the train to Berlin at 21 years old that I did not want to become a lawyer. That I would not go ahead with my law conversion after achieving my Bsc and that instead, I was going to return to South Africa and start a sober raving business called LOKOH. 5 years of living abroad alone and studying my ass off to get my First and get to this point only to decide (just before I could apply for citizenship no less) that I wanted to turn around and come home… A steep ladder that I had dreamed of getting access to, a ladder that would require me to hustle really hard, a ladder that I thought I wanted so badly but a ladder that I actually did not care to climb. And so I did the scariest thing for me at that time, and I stepped right off. I chose not to play the game. The game of a woman who could be the man in a man’s world. It was one of the hardest confessions of my life because I hated the idea of failing. Of admitting my own defeat. My own fairytale ending of this life as a hot-shot lawyer in London. My own realisation that none of this was actually what I wanted. That yeah sure, I could do it if I really tried, but to what end? I somehow knew that I was still playing into the pedestal. Trying to live up to a reality that was not my own. That was perhaps the unlived dream of my mother… This decision changed the trajectory of my life and was the catalyst for my awakening.

An awakening of self and who I really am.

Who I am outside of the eyes of my mama. 

Outside of the eyes of the fed-up feminist who needed to show her value in a world that did not value her power.

Her true power.

It has taken me years of excavating and refinement and the deepest level of self-trust to get to this moment right now where at 30, I finally felt my mama understand why I made those decisions all those years ago. Where my mama’s eyes saw me for the very first time. Truly saw me. Saw me beyond the “me” that is her daughter, the “me” that is the part of her that could pursue the things she could only dream of pursuing, saw me for who I truly am -

A woman.

A powerful woman. 

A woman who has learned how to wield her power in service to the whole. In service to the awakening of other powerful women. A power that no longer lived out there or went to war in here. An embodied power that demanded the space around it be ready to receive it. 

Last weekend I was invited to guide a journey in the Red Tent at a beautiful festival in Cape Town called Retreat Yourself. It was the Red Tent that called me out of my slump of “what the fuck am I doing with my life.” It is the Red Tent that calls women home. Home to their bodies. Their wombs. Their hearts. Home to the embrace of their sisters. Home to their streaming tears and free-bleeding fears. A space dedicated to the rising feminine. The wild women. A red womb cave where we get to remember our primal nature as women. Women who can, but for a moment, live inside a space where our power is fully welcomed.

Revered.

Respected.

When my mom asked to join the festival I was thrilled (and nervous) at the opportunity for her to experience me in action. Be part of something that was held in a container that truly allowed me to go all in. She had come to smaller herbal workshops in the past and read my writing. She had watched my videos on Instagram and was prepared for the level of vulnerability and edginess that my work may bring up. Over the years my preaching had turned into action and so my mama had come to trust me. Not because of what I said but because of how I lived. When you breathe bliss and walk truth you become magnetic. When you become who you truly are, you call forth trust.

This is the moment when the student becomes the teacher. 

And so when all the women started to gather in the red tent and my mom walked in and walked straight up to the front and committed to going on this journey with me, I knew something in our relationship had shifted. And as I began guiding women into their bodies, and watched them strip themselves of their stories of shame and fear, I knew something deep was stirring. And when the heat rose, and the tears streamed, and the howls echoed through the festival grounds, I knew it was a homecoming of the highest order. A brightness that had burst forth, totally unrestricted. And when I looked over to my mama as she cracked through the ice, I saw something in her eyes that told me she was seeing me. 

And I felt in response, the deepest part of me finally being seen. 

And when the lines, “When you come home to mama’s eyes” blasted through the speakers, I knew the Goddess was with us and I felt the ice around my own heart and womb melt a little more. I cried out to the heavens for the sake of all mama’s. I cried out to the heavens for the sake of all daughters. For all the sisters who had this same ache. I cried out for the women who had no mamma and who could not be seen. I suddenly felt, viscerally, the eyes of every woman who had come before us beckoning us forward to dance a little more, to feel even deeper, to liberate ourselves just that bit further. We are the living breathing, bleeding expression of every female ancestor that ever lived. And with every layer of ice that we crack and every layer of frozen tension that we melt, we free our lineage a little more and a little more…

I will never forget my very first teacher, an 85-year-old traveling midwife, holding me in her arms when I was a very lost and very confused 21-year-old and saying to me, “One day it will all make sense, one day you will know why you have come here…why you have chosen to take this road…” When you start the journey of unraveling, of redirecting, of saying no to who you thought you must be to crack open into who you truly are, you start a ripple that will never stop. A ripple that can turn into a wave, a wave that will tear apart everything in your life that is not true. That is not you. It can sometimes feel like you have lost your way and forgotten how to swim - and so drown you will - only to be pulled ashore, newly equipped to ride out to sea once more. 

This cracking open and melting is the path of the feminine, the path of woman remembering what it means to be woman. Woman with a womb. A womb that carries the codes of every womb that came before you. “When you do your healing work, you heal seven generations back and seven generations forward…” - this is the belief of the Lakota people who understand that we do not operate in isolation. That there is a red thread that connects every womb, and that the space we heal inside of ourselves will impact every child born from that space. We are one gigantic weave holding up our humanity and we heal the whole when we commit to healing ourselves. 

I witnessed this in truth on that Saturday morning in the red tent. 

And when I finally got to embrace my mama later that night I felt the space we had created, I felt through the layers that we had melted away. I felt her heart in my heart and my heart in her heart. I realised that this was what it must have been like when I lived inside of her. When my first sound was her sound. Her heartbeat - my steady rhythm of home, of safety. And in that embrace, I let myself dissolve any old stories of loss. Of abandonment. Of feeling like I could not reach my mama. “I am right here noodle, I am right here. I am not going anywhere…” she whispered into my ear and I dropped another layer of armoury.

Melted away another layer of tension. 

I cried tears that were not my own and let the waters that streamed down my face soothe fears that spoke to original wounds. Mother wounds so hungry for healing. I felt the cosmic mama looking down on us and the earth mama drinking up our salty waters. I knew that this moment was sending a ripple out to every far corner of the world where a mama and daughter were reclaiming their connection. Remembering their sacred bond. Where mother and daughter were able to truly see one another. 

Feel one another. 

Forgive one another. 

And so when we made our way back onto the dance floor and Eminem (of all people) started playing through the speakers I knew it was the Goddess at play again. Winking at us to remind us that there was another woman in this space. My sister who was was so obsessed with this song. We looked at each other and both shouted in unison, “Maranda,” and cried some more. My sister, her daughter, was dancing with us in some other dimension where time is not linear or limited. Where what we do for ourselves is not only for us but for every woman, mother, daughter, sister… 

Something our little minds could never quite comprehend but that our hearts knew instantly. 

.

.

.

“here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”

I love you, Mama

Thank you,

Your Noodle.