"Mother with Father": Reintegrating Both Poles in Ourselves, Family and Culture

April 15, 2019

‘Mother with Father’ is the one nurturing force and source. - Mark Whitwell

During the last month, I’ve been writing a series of articles in preparation for Mother’s Day. While crafting these female-focused pieces, the news has been full of stories of masculine violence. This cultural separation between the genders is in high relief. Maybe it’s only natural that when there’s an inequality being addressed, we rally our tribe. In the gender equalization, it's cries of “team female!” Or “The future is female!” Yes, I’m thrilled at the big energy right now going toward creating equity for women (equal pay, healthcare rights, access to capital- you know the laundry list). At the same time, the future we're envisioning—the reformation of a world that puts life first—needs to invite men.

This got me thinking that the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day holidays actually reinforce gender division. Yes, we want to celebrate these special people and their unique role in our life—but what if we also begin to celebrate the union of opposites? The combined force that made us, that made our own children, that make all of natural life. What if we were to reintegrate the male/female polarity in ourselves, in our families and in society?

During childhood and beyond, many of us had to “choose a favorite parent” due to family alliances, divorce, or whatever. For us to be whole, the excluded parent, psychologically or otherwise, needs to be re-entrained into our hearts and minds. For some of us, we may have to rediscover the beauty in the mother. For others, we might have to find the divine masculine in our dads. And we might consider helping our children see both of their intimate creators as holy, too. We do our children no favors by pushing them away from the other parent (unless there’s an immediate safety issue, of course). They are half of them.

I have a wonderful friend and teacher in Mark Whitwell. His heart sutras speak to this rejoining of male/female as part of the evolution of whole earth consciousness. He offers this: “Mother implies father: Mother cannot be considered without father, nor father without mother. The female-male collaboration is the nurturing force of all life. All people, whatever their gender identification, are female and male as the very basis of all life. We are all strength that is receiving, participating in all of life in our own bodies. The cosmic mother/father arises as our own personal mother/father, and as us, in our own bodies, as a unitary one or Oneness. ‘Mother with father’ is the one nurturing force and source.”

What if we didn’t use the upcoming holidays as a way to reinforce gender division, but treated Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as a 30-day continuum? It could be a full month celebrating the two poles.

For all of our sons and daughters—and ourselves and the planet—I, too, hope and intend the future will be more female than it is now, and also the men we know and love are made more free to be all of themselves in the process.

We’ll still publish the Mom articles, because it’s beautiful to be female. AND, our Reverence Fund is in full effect: All sales between now and Mother’s Day have a doubled gift to One Heart Worldwide (an organization that saves women’s lives in childbirth), and to Mama Hope.