The divided life and the divine mother
Parker Palmer writes of the divided life: having sensed that what’s within us is somehow unacceptable, we live contrary to it. In so doing we snuff our own inner light and suffocate our soul.
American life seems divided about Mother’s Day. Motherhood is a sacred institution, and Mom holds diplomatic immunity. One simply does not speak ill of her. Yet many of us are unsatisfied with what we got—or didn’t get—from this most formative person in our lives. So Mother’s Day stirs up a complicated cocktail of emotions.
Psychotherapist Jasmin Lee Cori writes about the emotional chasm that develops within a person who isn’t mothered well. When Mom is absent, disengaged, abusive or neglectful, her children internalize their pain—and their emotional growth is stunted. Perhaps this is the genesis of what Palmer calls the divided life.
