“Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.” – C.G. Jung

It was my Mother’s birthday on the 21st of February. She passed from this world last year, and I’m writing this in honor of her. Her light remains bright in my life.

And we had our issues and wounds as many mothers and daughters do. We loved each other, respected each other’s choices, and we had our wounds. Those wounds certainly were not gaping and festering, but they kept us from truly understanding one another and being close.

Through reflection and inner work, I came to see and accept that my mother had her own wounds that had been handed down from generation to generation. Our wounds were ancestral and even collective.

When I first began working with cacao in personal ceremony, I encountered the whole, deep feminine, which was profoundly healing for me. The more I worked with IxCacao, who I came to call Mama Cacao, the more my mother wound was healed at all levels: personal, ancestral and collective.

In cacao ceremony at two beautiful spiritual gatherings this past weekend, I expressed how I had received the first of many healings of my mother wound in my very first personal cacao ceremony.

In my first of many ceremonies, I found myself inexplicably crying, rocking myself, and releasing an emotional burden that I wasn’t fully aware I had been carrying for a very long time. Spent and exhausted, I lay down, wrapped myself in a blanket and curled into a fetus position.

My original intention for personal ceremony had been to invite in and open to IxCacao, the spirit of cacao. It was only after I broke fully open, or She broke me open, that She appeared to me. I found myself sharing with Her how exhausted She must be from healing everyone (I do not know where that came from) and invited Her to come sit in my lap and rest.

She merged into me and I felt Her in my whole body, especially in my heart. My heart got tighter and tighter, and was so constricting that I asked why She was holding on so tightly. She responded, “I am not the one holding on.” She then said, “I will always be there for you,” which struck my heart like a lightning bolt of unconditional love. I felt loved for the first time in my life and I was able to truly love and accept myself.

I realized then that I needed to let go of Her. I birthed Her out of my womb and felt my heart open completely (and, yes, I know, this is beyond all rational explanation).

In this first experience with cacao, I was both mothered and mother. It healed my mother wound on such a deep level that my own relationship with my biological mother, who was still alive at the time, became more healthy and whole.

After working with cacao, I was able to tell my Mom, “I love you,” which was not something that our family did, and I was able to be all of me in her presence regardless of her expectations or wishes or beliefs. She would say what she had been “programmed” to say, and it didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I was able to laugh to myself, see the Truth and love her.

When my mother fell ill last year, and I was at her bedside when she died, I became the mother, showing a tenderness toward her that I did not know I had (never having had biological children of my own). This tenderness came from healing that deep, core wound through the feminine plant medicine of cacao.

In sacred ceremony, IxCacao becomes our surrogate mother, unconditionally loving us, showing us her deepest compassion, and sharing her infinite wisdom. She is our healer, teacher, guide, and mother. She comes from the earth and reconnects us to Mother Earth, to ourselves, to our mothers, and to all of our relations. She heals the original wound, which we all have; the wound of our disconnection from Mother Earth.

There’s a deep wound in people–that they have been so cut off from the source of their being, their mother, their Earth Mother. – Francis Story Talbott II

I’ve been blessed to witness how many women attending my cacao ceremonies have reconnected with their mothers, who have passed, and healed their relationships during their journeys. Their gratitude for this healing and their radiance is so beautiful to witness.

Cacao is healing heart medicine for the mother wound in us all. I share Her love, so that we may all reconnect to the source of our being, to the mothers who have come before us, and to Mother Earth, who bore us all.

Copyright ©2018 Soulscape Coaching LLC.