Mothering with the Feminine

This summer, I stayed with my youngest son for fourteen days in the hospital after a ruptured appendix. We celebrated his fifth birthday there on the summer solstice. As a healer, I knew that his body mind and spirit would also require extended healing beyond the urgent care period. The busyness of life tends to move on, but I have always viewed illnesses with my children as times of retreat. And so we deepened into the experience with extra rest, consultations with our naturopath, and daily power berry smoothies that we created specifically for his healing (see the recipe in my upcoming book: Wild Mothering). He and I traveled to Seattle by train several times to see a bodywork specialist trained in the Barral method of Visceral Manipulation (to restore full vitality to the organs). We found an amazing Thai restaurant, stepped into the sense of adventure that train travel invites, and relished our time spent together in this intimate way. This is the way of mothering with the feminine.