My mother went on strike once. She heard about other women going on strike in the 70’s– on strike from housework, from being the emotional middleman, from being the one-who-does-it-all-once-the-door-to-the-house-is-closed– and she followed their lead.

“I’m on strike.” She stood in the middle of the living room with a pile of laundry in her arms. She dropped her arms and the clean laundry splayed on the floor.

We didn’t know what to do. One of us kids didn’t pull our clean clothes from the pile. One of us cleaned up only their share. One of us cleaned up everyone else’s clothes.

I begged her to tell me why she went on strike. To tell me when it would be over. She refused. I begged her to forgive me for not doing enough. She walked away from me. Not because she didn’t love me, but because she couldn’t square her love for me with how much she gave to me and everyone else. To talk to me about the true nature of her pain? She didn’t have enough energy left.

Unfortunately for us, this pattern continued in our lives. Even when I was an adult and moved away from home for years and years, when I came back to wherever she was living, I was immersed into the mystery of what-is-really-going-on. So much mystery created a felt sense for me that everyone kept secrets and you didn’t ask and you didn’t tell what you were really thinking. You held your grief and suffering, you cleaned up your tears, you left all your emotions for the moment you said good-bye. When I was 9, I dreamed of being taken away in an ambulance and of hearing my parents tell me they loved me one last time. I loved that dream. It was a favourite repeat– fear-of-death with love-at-the-doorway dream.

The strike. Lots of dirty dishes piled up. The dishwasher went un-emptied for more than a day. The toilet began to scum over. I think Mom hoped we would all see the invisible ways in which she supported us. The scheduling, planning, cleaning, cooking, homework supervision, kid supervision.

I believe she might have wanted to force my father into the bright light of interrogation and self-reflection. My father spent weekends in the garden and on the ride-on lawnmower he loved, especially with a six pack of beer on a hot day. I remember him saying, “Do you want to hire a maid?” My mother wouldn’t have agreed to spending money on someone else to clean. At least not when I knew her.

I don’t know exactly why the strike ended. Or how. Or even how long it lasted. I’m glad she went on strike. She showed me you can stand up. You can do something different. You can be the change. Though it didn’t appear anything changed, maybe it did and I didn’t realize it. At 15, I paid attention mostly to me and my needs and my problems.

We moved shortly after she went on strike, the last move of more than a dozen moves since I was born. The last move before I left my first family.

I wonder what would have happened if she’d sat in a circle with us and told us how she was feeling, really feeling. I wonder if we would have been able to hear her. Maybe we would have mocked her. We were un-practiced in emotional conversations that didn’t end with slammed doors or a silent response to being told what to think and how to feel. I wonder if she would have accepted our help even if it came? Maybe she felt guilty for even asking for help! I wonder if she knew what she wanted and needed or if she was mostly fixed on what she didn’t want and didn’t need? I wonder how life would have been different if she’d divorced my dad that year when she told us she was thinking about it?

I wonder how my life has followed the shape of her life without me being fully aware? I wonder if, before she died, she thought I made a good decision leaving the way I did, moving 3,000 miles away and making a life for myself in another country? She made a similar move from her family, though not as far…

I’ve lived with the uncertainty of my mother’s support for most of the days I remember. I understand her desire was not to push me away, but to not harm me. I understand that because when I am silent and brooding, this is the reason I give myself: I don’t want to harm anyone else with my emotions.

I’ve had such a difficult time remembering how hard it was to be the small girl, the pre-teen, the teenager and the adult daughter of a mother who wanted to protect me from the truth of her pain, her sorrow, her suffering. Our emotion practice was about hiding and avoiding. When she was dying of breast cancer, she only cried uninhibitedly with me one time. She was visiting her brothers and sisters, gathered in South Carolina, over Christmas. I was in Winnipeg with my youngest son, Ben, 2 years old and my husband, Dennis and his family. Ben and Dennis and I had all been very sick. Some awful flu. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be in Edmonton. I didn’t want to be with Mom. I think I mostly didn’t want to be.

My mother sent me a picture via email. She is on the stairs and all her brothers and sisters (she had 9 of them) and their families are around her. You can pick her out immediately, she’s the one with a red bald head and face and neck and arms and hands. Bright red.

“I can’t wear my wig,” she says, “It’s too painful. All the radiation. And I’m having a reaction. I’m allergic to sulfa drugs. I told them I’m allergic to sulfa drugs.”

She cried. She really cried. Sobbing like I’ve never heard her sob. She itched all over, she said, and the pain came in waves, like radiation from inside her. And the nausea.

I cried and cried. I didn’t know what to say. I told her I loved her. I told her I wished I were there. I told her I missed her. It was her last Christmas. I didn’t spend it with her because we weren’t in the kind of relationship where that was possible. Maybe we were each worried about our feelings spilling out and messing up the living room floor. I got off the phone and went back to a Christmas I didn’t want to have, but at least I could say, “my mom’s dying and she’s in a lot of pain and I wish I could do something."

My mother’s been with me for several years now. I started noticing her presence during Covid. At first I thought she was a ghost I couldn’t see. Then, I thought it was my mind giving me what I needed. Now, I think she came because we both needed her to be with me. She came to comfort me. I’ve told her everything. I’ve been honest about all of my secrets. She’s a great cheerleader. She holds me close and tells me one person’s healing matters. Talking to my mom was the only way I could get to the point of being able to be honest with my daughter, my sons and my partners in life.

I think she’s getting ready to change the nature of our relationship. I think I won’t be able to access her as often, as fully as I have. I think something new is emerging. I’m not certain what it is. Tonight, I made her dinner and we enjoyed it together. I wrote all these words about her. My mom. Judith Ann. She loved St. Francis of Assisi. She loved her sisters and her brothers. She loved me, my sister and my brother. A woman of honour and humour. Thank you for her. Thank you.

I wonder about the earth. I wonder about sitting next to water, really sitting with the land, and talking it out. Telling the honest truth. Thanking the water, the land, the earth, all the invisible beings for their support. Trees create the air we breathe. Water sustains our lives. Land is essential for keeping us alive. It could be an interesting experiment. I wonder what prevents us from trying an experiment like this?

As we look back on centuries of violence and oppression and begin to confront the very real wounds we have inflicted on the land and on each other, it is important that we don’t try to accelerate through the difficulty.

Ultimately, sorrow is not healed. It is held. It is honoured.

Sorrow is melted and blended. It moves with the body, not through linear episodes, but through slow, conscious, spiraled dance.

- Sophie Strand from The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine

Coherence and then emergence.

Make contact. Tune in. Listen.

Anything can happen.