A special episode for Mother's Day.
Mother's Day Reflections
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Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.
Please note that due to AI transcription, there may be minor spelling or grammatical errors in this transcript.
Julia Carmen (00:03):
Hola, beautiful light beans. This is Julia Cardman who Chihuahuas from the School Without Walls, the Indigenous Wisdom Podcast. See, today we're going to do a little something different, something something. Right now, in this real time as I'm recording this, mother's Day is just a few days away, so you'll be hearing this in May and maybe this May or you'll hear it in another month of being and may usually represents the month of Mother Mother's Day in Mexico. They have it every year's May 10th. They don't change it. It's that, yeah, so whenever you're listening to this, whether it's May 10th or May of whatever day it is, usually it's a certain Sunday here in the United States. I would like to share with you Mother Dragonfly. Okay? Mother Dragonfly inside of me is your life. Stop looking outside of yourself in unhealthy ways.
(01:33)
Mother of love is. You see this as you move through it all Just for today, just for today. See you without your thoughts of your human self and you see the light of you praise the creator that you live this moment of life. I love you and deeply care for your salvation in this life form of being you. See, you are the mother. What I'm going to share with you is something I wrote I didn't realize 20 years ago when I was 52 and I'm 72 now, so this is where I was when I wrote this about my mother and let's just get into it and then we'll talk story again. I have a little cafe about what is written down.
(02:50)
Here we go. Please don't ask me to take care of my 80-year-old mother. I would rather go out and save the world than do that. That's how I felt when I was asked to participate in the care of my mother, who I only spent a limited time with in the past. I come from a family of 12, two parents and seven sisters and three brothers. I left home when I was 16 and made no regrets about leaving. So here I am being asked to help out with this 80-year-old mother who had no clue who is she? Is she a Mexican woman who came here over 60 years ago and still can't speak English and actually has no interest in learning, or is she just a shell of a woman who walks around with all her past memories and waiting to die? I had my 80-year-old mother come and stay with me for four days. I was soon calling my sister Hope. Oh my goodness. Hope she'd get those. You please answer the phone, please. I'm thinking to myself, and guess what? She answered the call, the first ring. I think she felt something was up and I shared. I yelled into the phone that 80-year-old mother needed to come with a manual, like a how to do 80-year-old mother Hope had a good laugh and proceeded to educate me in 80-year-old mother 1 0 1. First you must always make sure she knows where you're at at all times. Otherwise she will follow you.
(04:55)
I mean, boy, I hope 80-year-old mother lives long enough for me to make it into the PhD program of at that time, just a little footnote, I had 18 grandchildren and now I know what grandchildren are all about. In 1 0 1, 80-year-old mother class, one must take at least one grandchild to mix into the 80-year-old mother grandchildren. In general, a wonderful buffer, at least for me, 52-year-old grandmother. This is where the sweetness of life comes in. The grandchildren brought into the mix, unconditional love, pure love of themselves, and of course to all around them baby, to preteen is the past. I have decided that I would rather not take care of 80-year-old mother way too many issues of the past for me to deal with. Do I have a choice? Do I have to take care of 80-year-old mother? I shared with the friend, how about we trade? I take care of your 75-year-old mother and you take care of my 80-year-old mother. You see, I like her 75-year-old mother and I know she will just love my 80-year-old mother.
(06:33)
I think about it. Too much guilt about the trade? Oh yeah, maybe not, but I would sure like to try it. Yeah, okay. Okay. I know I can't trade my 80-year-old mother to anyone, but anyway, sure. A nice thought and don't tell me you haven't thought about that yourself. So here I go. I will give it another try and take care of my 80-year-old mother who said that looking into the looking glass of 80-year-old mother was easy. I see me and my 80-year-old mother, or is it that I am her? Who knows? I do know that 80-year-old mother is not so difficult to take care of if I see me in her and bring on all the love I have for me because you see, we are the same 80-year-old mother and I. We cannot be separated because it is not the way it is to be.
(07:51)
As I love her then I love me in ways I have not been able to in the past as I see 80-year-old mother move into the last awakening of life. I see me in where I am now. I can choose to live in love of self or not. Do I love her? Yes. The question really is do I love me? 80-year-old mother is me and I am wondering if I will ever know who she is unless I know who I am. I see her in the mirror and I remember when I first started to look like her, and that is when I turned 50 and let my hair actually, I stopped dyeing it. I went premature gray at 18, so I'd always been dyeing my hair and I was a little concerned about shucks, what was underneath all that. Yeah, so when I didn't dye it anymore, let it do its thin. The most beautiful hair came through silver, just beautiful.
(09:22)
But the thing I noticed about my mom was her hair was less gray than myself. I started to call her my and that she was my younger sister and we had so much fun with the playfulness and then it happened. She turned back into 80-year-old mother, no more fun and games. She started to complain that I never come to see her or call her. I told her, just look in the mirror. Just look in the mirror, mama. And she would see me and most of all to tell me how much she loved me. That was the most important thing to do for me. She would never miss me as she would be able to see me every day as I was in the mirror. Every day when I see my mom in the mirror, am I telling her how much I love her or am I saying she was, I look like her actually, this is not nice if I can't do the same for her. Is it not?
(10:50)
How can we love ourselves and not our mothers? Are we not all one Forgiveness of the past hurts is the way I see that now. First, I must understand that I am not my mother. I and I am whole as me. One cannot cry and hope to regain a mother who was not there, one who did not protect. Am I still hurt that she did not protect me or am I wondering why I'm not protecting me? Now, 80-year-old mother has shown me how to love me as a whole being a being of light and power. She did this by showing me how she is and was powerless in her daily life. She walked around as a victim in a martyr, most of all without forgiveness of self. I see her sad eyes, longing to be loved and oh man, longing to be heard and longing to be seen and longing to be touched. See, my 80-year-old mother is a witness to pain and suffering, and I am losing to her healing for the same, to be forgiven, to be loved, to be heard, to be touched. The same thing she desires I desire.
(12:54)
Is this why I fell out of love with her? Is this why we all fall out of love with our own mothers or is that the main reason we could continue to be looking for the nurturing love from all those around us? Yes, understanding that all that we seek is right here within. Yeah, and understanding also, until we see how we're running away from our own 80-year-old mothers is just running away from our own soul of self, our beautiful human self, our beautiful spirit self. Until we see this and embrace this understanding, then you know what?
(13:52)
Then we continue to hurt and be hurt because if we continue in our day sleep of denial, then our own truth within will be silence with the noise of our human self that only wants that which we seek. Your 80-year-old mother is your light, not your darkness, your loose your light through all the darkness you may think she put you through your whole with or without her. And know this as we all come together to bring each other into our own wholeness of being this earth, life is what it's all about. To bring the wholeness of our own and most of all, to bring our own 80-year-old mother with them.
(14:52)
Taking care of my 80-year-old mother has been a gift of life for me. She not only gave me life, but continues to share her life with me and to me. One night before I laid my head on my pillow, I was wondering about how I could help my 80-year-old mother move through her sadness. When I woke the next morning, these are the words that came to me. Release the martyrs suffers in silence, always no one to see her pain, but all see her. The victim cries and screams out in pain and all hear her, but no one sees her pain.
(15:55)
A warrior of the light chooses who she tells and looks to other warriors of the light to heal her past hurts and future victories. Which one are you? Thank you for listening. Today I will be sharing more stories about my mom. She passed in 2019, I mean, yeah, 2019, and yeah, I'd like to share that story with you on how all that came to be. It was like I think about a good 15 years after I wrote this. She was 80 and she was 95, 96 when she made her final transition. I miss my mom. I get emotional about it. I was 52 when I wrote that, like I said at the beginning, and I knew my mom. I knew her in that so self of being. She's the one that bestowed upon a gift to me of the ra, and I wish that all of us can, I don't know if it's wish, but invite all of us to see that mothers are humans first. They're people first.
(17:22)
So remembering that the mother, like Mother Dragonfly says inside of me is your life. Isn't that beautiful? And I would love to share this song with you folks. It's actually the Mexican birthday song. My Madre Esper, esp from the time I was a little girl, my mother would sing this song to me on my birthday and then as time went on, she would play a record. She spent so much time looking for the best version and call on the phone at 5:00 AM wanting to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday with nine siblings and always knowing I would receive calls from them, at least most of them. She knew she had to beat the clock, and it was the same thing year after year, me thinking it was annoying, waking me up so early and thinking she would be around forever. We had a challenging relationship, so I would find myself thinking about the past and get even more annoyed. What a waste of time with the past. As time went on, I began to realize that life is truly in the moment and that love is life. I began to listen to the lyrics of the song.
(19:19)
This is the morning song that King David sang because today is your birthday. We're singing it to you. Wake up, my dear wake up. Look, it is already dawn. The birds are already singing and the moon has set. How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you? We all came with joy and pleasure to congratulate you the day you were born. All the flowers were born on the Bal F. The Nightingale sang, the Morning is coming now and the sun is giving us its light. Get up in the morning. Look, it is already Dawn. I would like to be the sunshine to answer through your window to wish you good morning while you're lying in your bed. I would like to be San Juan, and I would like to be St. Peter to sing you with the music of heaven, of the stars in the sky.
(20:36)
I have to lower two for you, one with which to greet you and the other to wish you goodbye. With Jasmine's and flowers, we come to greet you because today is your birthday. We sing. We come to sing to you, and I understood what my mom was saying. I love you. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Forgive yourself. You are perfect. You're loving. This is your life. Live it. Be happy. As I was the day you were born, we were able to resolve so much before her rebirthing and 2019, she lived to be 95 years old. What a gift my mother gave me to live so long to bring to me her daughter, unconditional love and honoring her on my birthday. We together healed together in love for giving me life. Amen. So thank you for joining us. We look forward to hearing back from you. Let us know what you think about this. Be kind, what you think about the podcast, and if you love the podcast. Yeah, sure. The more folks hear about it, the more our community builds and we can enjoy ourselves in this community of being and recognizing that we're all one. Okay? Always. Amen.