Becoming Your Own Mother

The plight of women is our responsibility. But that does not mean apologising for the sins of the father, or suffering untold guilt because of them. What it means is that we have a responsibility to the women in our lives to sort our own shit out, and to not offload our insecurities, our petty egos, our fantasies and demands onto them. We have to become emotionally self-contained. That is, we have to become our own mothers.

This is easier said than done. That kind of phrase means nothing to us, because we do not have the conceptual apparatus to make sense of it. We can blame culture for that.

However, I will say this. I think it is the very definition of a man, when he has learned to become his own mother. When he has in fact tapped into that femininity within him that gives him an emotional strength to match his physical prowess.
That way, and only that way actually, can he be a well-rounded human being. Only that way can he mature his sensitivities to the point where he can see himself in others, in his friends, and most crucially in the presence of his family and his wife.

Without this feminine sensitivity, without the ability to become your own mother, your masculinity goes to waste. At best. At worst, it becomes a blunt tool, an illness.

However, as I said, this is easier said than done, and I could only hope to make a claim to having achieved this myself. Sadly, I cannot. The only thing I know is that we have to learn to face up to our insecurities. We have to be able to take a good fucking look at ourselves. Awareness is the first step towards spiritual growth. Factamundo!

So all I can recommend is learning to be at peace with your weaknesses, your desperations. When that innocent child starts to beg for his mother, don’t repress it. Let him have his say.

I can tell you now, he is not happy. He won’t be happy, and this is not a way to make him happy. In fact, it is a way of learning to deal with the fact that he is not happy. Get used to the idea that there will always be a part of you that is crying out, squawking like you just popped from the womb. This is just a fact of life, a fact of being a man.

Everything in our culture tells us to bury this emotion. In fact, we fail to realise that this pining for the mother is the first step towards emotional independence, and in our cases, towards becoming men. What blocks us from continuing this journey is when we refuse to listen to that child within us, when we rely entirely on the instincts of our mothers, and later, sadly, our lovers, to read the needs of this inner boy.

But, as you guys already know I’m sure, this is a path that leads to disaster, anger and suffering. It is the very thing that will stop you from finding the love of a woman.

We have to start listening to ourselves, allowing the inner child to go apeshit when he needs to, allowing ourselves to fail, to cry and to feel sorry for ourselves, and we have to realise that doing this for ourselves is the first step to reclaiming our masculinity. And what I mean by our masculinity, is just a sense of integrity as being of this particular biology, this gender.

When we discover integrity, we don’t have any need for arrogance, for bravado, for subjugating those around us (particularly women). We do not offload our emotional shit onto others. We are our own caretakers. Our own mothers.

In achieving this, maybe then we can become a source of strength and solidity for those around us who need it the most.