“Cortado,” I confidently conclude.
It’s my new coffee drink of choice – petite and punchy, and pleasurably savored.
This past year, after following a heart-brightened nudge to dive deep into studying holistic pregnancy and conscious conception, I felt excitedly inspired to mama-prep my body and I unraveled my coffee addiction.
Instead of vampirically draining a cup out of necessity, my coffee sips are actually enjoyed. And here, in this plum-rich cocoon of a coffeeshop that has a butterfly garden, the cortado is presented and served in a charming, tiny pink glass.
Beauty and coffee all in one … yes, please.
The barista beams at my choice.
“That’s my favorite, too,” she cheerfully croons.
I rummage through my bag – clawing into the dark depths for my wallet. “And how is your day going?” I ask, making a point to see her, to slow down enough to make eye contact with this young woman who is about to whip up my coffee treat.
She brightens. “Well, today, I am here,” she motions to the counter, to the cash register, “and I like this so much better than busing.”
“That’s right.” I come here so often I know the regular baristas and I know their typical duties and shifts. “This is new for you.”
I think of how usually she’s cleaning up tables, swiping up the left-overs of girlfriend brunches and balancing emptied saucers and cream mugs. We’ve spoken a few times. She’s a recent or about-to-be high-school graduate. She’s young and mature all at once. She has Rapunzel thick blonde hair that she wears in a braid and silver butterfly earrings that match the enchanted décor of the coffeeshop.
“Here, I get to talk to people, and I really like talking to people,” she says with a sweet smile.
And I feel a proud and protective heartbeat. “Here you get to shine,” I confirm, because she’s a luminous young woman, as are many of the baristas who work here.
These women are younger than I am … about a decade or so. I adore them.
They tell me about 21st birthday celebrations in Nashville.
They sing along to Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift pop music that quietly weaves around lunching conversations and the soft chorus of diligent typing keys.
They show me their friends’ Instagrams – one thrifts and refashions the items she finds into stylish jackets, totes, and dresses.
They wear graphic teas featuring cosmic tigers and sunglass-wearing sloths paired with chambray shorts.
The two older women behind me compliment the baristas on the stylish, thickness of their manicured eyebrows … they are indeed Vogue worthy.
Situated at a side table, poised at my computer, I overhear the compliment and it catches my attention.
It’s not so much about the eyebrows (they are spectacular) but it’s watching older women kindly compliment the younger women, and it stirs to life an inner conversation that I’ve been having about the feminine, about the classical feminine archetypal phases and stages that women pass through.
And in that moment, with my cortado at my side, and my heart eager to get to writing, I realize that I am in a new archetypal phase of my life … I am The Mother.
I am no longer The Maiden.
I was the Maiden in my teen years and in my try-on-twenties.
Like Dorothy, I stepped out on the yellow brick road and experienced life – enthusiastic, optimistic, and brave, I pursued my passions in the professional and performance arena.
I fell in love, like head-over-heels, with soulmates and that one narcissist … and all of those men redirected me to loving more and more of myself.
I danced at clubs, and drank champagne. I put myself out there and I loved fiercely. I dedicated my whole-heart to my jobs … and I over-gave to the point of exhaustion. I adventured solo and moved to a big city on my own. There were stressful perils, challenges, devastating heart-breaks, lessons-learned-the-hard-way, like driving my car without oil… that only needed to happen once to ensure dutiful check-ups.
And yet, like Dorothy, I made the trip, and at the end of that particular phase, I came home to my own inner power.
I honestly feel that when I turned 30 Glinda popped me on the head and all that hustle-bustle energy got transmuted and repurposed … to softening into an deeper and calmer embodiment of feminine being.
I am no longer The Maiden. I have lived the life-phase of The Maiden, fully.
I am now The Mother.
I am The Mother to my creative projects. I tend to their growth, their wellbeing.
I am The Mother to my inner child. I ensure that I know and meet my needs.
I am The Mother to those who need me … beloveds who need a backrub, a hug, a listening ear, a birthday card.
I honor this new bloom of feminine being. I may not be a mother in the traditional sense (though an astrologer recently informed me that it is part of my destiny to have children in this lifetime … but those little souls have not incarnated earth-side yet!) but this archetypal energy is where I now dwell.
My sister Katie wisely has pointed out that our society is obsessed with The Maiden.
Women are pressured to look like we have the eyebrows of an eighteen-year-old for the rest of our lives, and that ain’t happening … at least for me, and listening to the older women compliment the baristas on their eyebrows I found that that I didn’t mind.
These days, I vibe with the natural look. Less is more for me. A little styling with a tweezer and maybe brush it up with castor oil before bed … and that’s it. In my Maiden days, though, I traced and colored in. That’s all fine. It’s just not where I am anymore.
And when I reflect on my Maiden-Dorothy journey, when I lift up like that hawk or that flying monkey, and see the higher perspective, I know that my skip around the yellow brick-road had Wicked Witches and Glindas.
I know how I want to show up … as Glinda, here for Dorothy, with my natural eyebrows.
And when my Wicked Witch cackles, because she has and she will, I’ll interpret that call to turn inward, to cradle, to mother, and remind her of her own unique luminosity. Because I think jealousy shows us that we have forgotten, momentarily, about our beauty, our gifts, our needed contribution to the world.
And that contribution will be different based on the archetypal life-phase we are in.
From Maiden to Mother, from Mother to the Mystic, from the Mystic to the Crone … the feminine archetypes are universal, ingrained deep within our psyches, and reflected in the phases of the moon, in the seasons, and each has its own special gifts to integrate for our own inner evolution and outer sharing with the world.
New Moon :: Maiden/Spring (optimism, new beginnings)
Full Moon :: Mother/Summer (celebration, community)
Waning Moon :: Mystic/Autumn (discernment, editing/tidying, finishing projects)
Dark Of The Moon :: Wise Woman/Winter (rest, stillness, wisdom)
These archetypes exist within all of us, and can be accessed at any time. It’s extra supportive to align with the cosmos, so I tend to outline my “doings” with the cycle of the moon, which mirrors my own personal feminine cycle.
We all can be Dorothy when we initiate a new project. We can all access the Mystic when we shrug off convention and conditioning and dance to the rhythm of our own wildly intuitive choices. We can all completely surrender to the restorative stillness that is the presence of the crone, the wise woman in the woods waiting for us to relax and rest in the knowingness of our beingness.
And now, with Mother’s Day approaching, with the moon blooming full, and the full moon represents the archetype of the mother, I am all heart-feeling to write about The Mother, to value The Mother, to revere The Mother.
In another coffeeshop, one blanketed by the sway of palm-trees, I overheard a group of young women, probably in college, moaning about the fate of becoming a soccer mom. “Dark!” they all concurred in between sips of iced coffee and bites of banana bread.
Inwardly, I cringed, and I also understood their perspective. I too used to share it to some degree, but it was a thought unquestioningly absorbed from the over-culture. This devaluation of the mother, of the feminine, is insidiously rampant in our culture, and when it’s brought to the light of consciousness, it transmutes to reverence and respect.
I sip my cortado and think of a scene from my try-on-twenties.
In my former life, I worked for a domestic violence organization situated in the lush, rolling hills of Kentucky countryside. Women and children found refuge and safety and healing at the farm, in the garden, and the executive director, a leather-jacket-wearing, Harley-cruising women’s kick-ass advocate once shared that she did this work for the mothers. She was there to hold those mothers, to rock them like children.
She was a mother to the mothers.
My heart swells at the memory. She is a Glinda for sure, a woman who believed in me, whose genuine advocacy inspires me today.
Today, as I sip my cortado, and thank the barista for a delicious treat, and the moon is full, I soften to breathe a prayer for the mothers, for the young women who are embarking on their journeys, for the mother-energy within each and every one of us … here to nurture, to uplift, to celebrate and comfort our community, our beloveds, and also, to mother our dearest, most precious selves.
My exquisite mama and late May baby … me!