Making A Pledge
Category: Uncategorized
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MOOSE, MILK and Me
October 17, 2021
It has been almost two years since I last lived on the farm, Moose was my friend, a large brown Swiss cow of great beauty, she taught me so many things about love, about nursing a baby and being connected to the land, and the seasons and the power of presence and communicating without out words.
Today is a very special day… October 16, 2023 of gratitude, anticipatory grief and loss but also a celebration of how we heal and how we are so intimately tied to one another. Every cell, every rock, every plant, every animal every spirt as a life force. I am amazed at the charm and cycles of seasons beckons us to take another look not so much with nostalgia, but with wonder and fresh eyes that we can see things differently at different vantage points over time. The synchronicity of the calendar and what goes on this day, and the days to follow as well as revisiting what occurred in some other time and place on the same day allows us such wonder and awe; if we choose to pause for a moment of reflection and grace.
I was not breastfed, not nursed by my mother. I was intensely loved and connected to my mother and other people and spirits on the planet so that my ability to attach grew and blossomed and thrived. My ability to love and to be loved was nurtured by those who were present and did what they could. Reserving judgment holding the light, just presence.
It is quite a story of irony in that my first attachment to a particular mother’s milk: a first food; golden colostrum was from a cow named Moose. She gave it to me as a gift of sisterhood and understanding of generations of sharing, standing in the gap as if she knew what I might need to heal me: mind, body, and soul. Sometimes we want something that someone else can easily provide. No words are necessary, but indeed there is meaning and after that experience the receipt of a gift or time spent, you are changed.
Every injury, every recollection, every transition, every loss, every separation voluntary or not every leave taking is an invitation for healing. Somehow opening that doorway for remembering. We acknowledge the land, the space, but do we also acknowledge what took place there and cycles…
On October 16, 2018 I was having surgery. My gut was not working, I had an obstruction and my sacred tribe encircled me with love, standing in the gap for connection and love and nourishment and holding on. Commitment, covenant, just holding the high watch of healing possibility and light in the face of the unknown, the unexpected; just waiting and standing by. Not so much what you say or do, but who you are, just being your best self. Probably the less said the better and there are things that words cannot convey. My sister tribe. They sang they danced they waited, they did everything but worry.
There is a language, how a space and how someone makes you feel that energizes and inspires you. Looking back, you can see what worked but indeed you can’t explain why or what indeed may have motivated you intuitively that it had such a profound effect on you and everyone around you. Moose was my mother; my first encounter with the mystery of mother’s first milk. Sacred cow. Sisters on a journey!
For some reason, Moose felt she owed us and she paid me back in spades.
One day very shortly after giving birth to a new calf. It has been the practice to quickly separate mother and baby. The first milk, the golden colostrum with all the rich antibodies is crucial to life sustaining bonding, attachment. Tears and moans of udders full and taught are no match for milking machines, powders and seeing your baby across the pasture just out of reach and range to suck. As if instructed by Moose, Vernessa collected the first milk washing her udders, sterilizing the jars, and hand pumping directly into sterile jars assuring her it would get directly to her baby and assuring her that she understood the precious power of connection. So much milk was Moose asked that it be given to me a secret pact was made to share the remainder. Raw, unpasteurized un homogenized the thick custard made coffee cream, fresh cheese, fermented yoghurt without a drop wasted. Generations would be introduced to what it may have been like for me and her to try something old and new… How could she know her milk would heal me…
MOOSE’s Milk Day ONE Colostrum
Today is the day, this October 16th
Moose will be “put down”- euthanized, heart failure they say, tumors blocking her last breath well timed, it is no accident that she would want me to know a season ended our lives and connection complete but never ending and we pay it forward.
Five or six years is a long time for a prized brown Swiss Dairy cow. We enjoyed our time together in the garden.
Our conversations about daughters and grandchildren and weaning and tears shed over separation and loss and the curious JOY of staying together each day with the rhythm of the seasons. Watching our daughters and sisters grow and caring for each other, nursing each other’s babies… saying goodbye…
What joy it is to be seen and known!
Cows jumping over the moon and chasing away chickens and critters and llamas and not liking turnip greens no matter what but liking beet greens and sharing her first milk with me. Knowing it warm and from the teat sent to me would heal all wounds.
Moose got a message to me of gratitude, parting at the fork in the road. She was urging me to move forward and do and be what only I could do and be when there was no one else. Just do your part. Separating mothers and babies, be it fences, heart ache controlling what we can…
the details escape me but the wound and the space is also the place where the light can come in. We met there once, and now it was time. Moose taught me so many things
I shall miss her…
Knowing your tribe…
Moose with her daughter and granddaughter
Weaning when you get good and ready… handling separations and loss and gathering those who would be willing to walk with you…
It’s never ever too late to heal old wounds.
Love knows no distance. circling back.
Gathering and Healing Our Tribe
Moose October 15, 2023. The day before the last day
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THIS MOTHERS DAY…. poems are prayers
OF all the ways I anticipated spending
and celebrating MOTHERS
I could not have imagined or made my MOTHERS Day up
Knowing full well there would be no ceremony with my bio TWO
Loving and grateful
Our schedules would not collide
So many warm greetings
Geographic land acknowledgments
from those occupying SPACE in my heart
Who have I mothered and yes nurtured me
Knowing full well
It was I
blessed more than they
tearing open my heart to unconditional love
I lift in prayer and thoughts
healing energy made whole again
My gratefulness
My chance at Holy Witness
When the Wise Women Gathered
Ordering Divine Feminine
opine about grief and loss
what we might therefore be about the business now
It is said as written and felt if not seen
Assigned at birth
no worser pain than to live long with the loss of your child
Mother is to go First
That is the Rule
Irony
It is I on this day
as if moved to the unspeakable
Poetry rescues
redeems
chimes in
As if there were a signature mark
competition of choice of worse and worser
Some of us might win Best Love…
Calling to holy witness
My all
Mothers of Dead Children
Mothers of Murdered Children
Mothers of Murderers
Mothers To and of Other Mother’s Children
We hear your Prayers
We grant you Peace
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PHOTOS: Kangaroo care for newborns comes to the Ivory Coast’s moms and dads : Goats and Soda : NPR
Can the warmth of a parent’s chest be a boon to babies, especially premature births? In the 1970s, Colombian researchers found it did. The technique has gone global. Ivory Coast is the latest convert.
— Read on www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/09/18/1121295549/photos-the-moms-and-dads-of-ivory-coast-are-falling-in-love-with-kangaroo-care -
My grandson on his cellphone
I know I have been accused repeatedly as in more than once of believing that nursing your little one will solve everything. I don’t really think that, but I do sometimes. I have struggled with the words to describe the grief and anger I feel. It is my responsibility to tend to that… I have been playing one of my favorite songs reminding me that I have agreed to bring the revolutionary love in whatever form that looks like at the time.
Home
Again, some days are easier than others and sometimes I connect the dots when I can find the dots in the multiplicity of ways that don’t make sense to other people. A writing friend explained that was what I do well when we are able to see things metaphorically from another perspective.
Do what you can! Nurse your baby if you would like! Your little one may be 17 one day or not or snatched away by something complicated or evil or simply in ways we don’t understand or can’t help making sense of, so we find something, or someone to blame.
I have suggested in a poem that I wrote this week that everyone consider adopting a 17-year-old whether you know one or not.
I was sure that we all know or have at least seen one, buried beneath a hoodie, or otherwise in plain view. You may know one of their parents who may need adoption, foster care, orders and prayers of protection for their grandmother and at a minimum some handholding for these times.
Here is the link to my poem below on adoption and my fervent prayer this Sunday morning that I can pray for all of us on their cell phones but especially my grandson on his cellphone and the seventeen-year-old who filmed George Floyd’s last moments crying out for his mom on hersand that we will all be able to do what we can if we just sit down a minute and share love when we are ready and able.
https://jacqueline-laughlin.medium.com/adopt-a-17-year-old-today-e65214ef3ac
Prayers: for Grandson on his cell phone -
FULL MOON MAGIC
RE-LACTATING OR BEGINNING AGAIN…
A Total Lunar Eclipse
I was reading something earlier today about the power of a knee jerk reaction to teach us something profound. The power of our emotional response can indeed be a window to something much deeper .
With all of this talk about missing infant formula, contaminated food sources, and broken supply chains; it is easy to miss the source of why our hearts ache.
This is a good time to allow space and time to get present and inquisitive with our impulses and urges that feel “automatic” and to get curious about from whence these seemingly knee-jerk reactions stem. Does that place within you feel like an aligned place of intuition and knowing? Does it come from your Higher Self? Or does it perhaps feel shaped by outdated conditioning and in need of an update… The invitation is simple: to slow down and get present with looking into why we do what we do. (Bonus points for talking it out with a trusted ally, practitioner, or therapist!)
https://www.astrograph.com/horoscopes/configurations/2022/May/15What if you or your little one could only eat one type of food… and it was taken away. lost, unavailable. Money couldn’t buy something not on the shelf. No disposable diapers, what would you do? How would you feel as a mother unable to sustain and provide? Who is to blame? This is the place and the time we are asked to sort out those feelings with kindness to ourselves and others. It is truly full moon magic. Awareness heightened beyond belief. It is painful, disturbing, this season of discovery and loss and change and longing for connection and understanding.
One estimate says 43% of baby formula is out of stock nationwide. The shortage is stressing out parents and putting babies at risk — here’s what you need to know. Marketplace Reporthttps://www.marketplace.org As with many shortages, the baby formula crisis doesn’t have just one cause.
Things really started getting bad in February, when the company behind Similac recalled several products over bacteria at one of its main manufacturing plants. That plant is still closed.
Similac maker Abbott Nutrition and just three other companies — Mead Johnson Nutrition, Nestlé USA and Perrigo Co. — produce almost all of the baby formula in the United States.
“It’s been this way for decades,” said Brian Dittmeier, senior director of public policy at the National WIC Association. “We’ve had large manufacturers that have consistently commanded the market space and edged out the competition. … You wind up with a situation where one plant closing for the matter of a few weeks has this ripple effect throughout the entire industry.”
It’s particularly dire with something like baby formula that is a necessity and that doesn’t have substitutes.
“There are many infants that can only tolerate one or maybe two types of formula,” said Carri Chan, a professor at Columbia Business School. According to Chan, some parents can easily switch their babies to any brand of formula that’s available, but some can’t. They need specific kinds for health reasons.
“And so when there’s a shortage in that area, there’s not a possibility to just switch to an alternative,” Chan said.If you had a baby recently within the past year or so, re-establishing your own milk supply would take some work and time, but it could be done. Stories of women who have adopted a baby and never having given birth seem far- fetched as to the lengths they would go for touch and nursing. where does the milk come from. How is it possible?
https://www.llli.org/?s=re+lactation
You could check out some resources that might help. Or you could call a friend if yuo know someone who is still nursing her baby. See if she might help you. Take your little one to the breast. See how it feels to reclaim your power for something you once had. If you even nursed a few weeks or a few months. take a shower together. Take your top off and your bra! If you ever had a baby, See what it feels like . All the hormones are still there. Prolactin, oxytocin, your desire might rise or not. It doesn’t much matter if you have milk, now does it?
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Losing A Mother
This pandemic of 2020-2021 has hit our mothers in many ways that are unimagined. Having a baby, nursing a little one and supporting one another through our stories is one way we make a difference in the lives of someone close to us or maybe some mother we don’t even know.
I listened to a story on the radio of a young woman who memorialized her mother who was lost in the pandemic. What was so sweet about it was the memory she shared about the daily ordinary presence she played in her life that allowed her to just go about the everyday business of her own life.
I write a devotional as part of a series for my beloved church family and while it’s not usually this personal, as I re-read it this morning, I decided to share it with you.
Many of you over the years have so courageously shared your stories of missing your mother. Even if it was not the best or most supportive relationship. It has indeed impacted how you have parented your own child.
I CAN ONLY IMAGINE
by Jacqueline Lois
Today as I share my devotion time with you, I took a peek at the daily numbers as we approach a half a million people all beautiful souls who have died from a novel virus. A life force that was looking for a host to land and thrive and grow with abandon is taking no prisoners, no son, no daughter, no parent, no sister, no brother is left unscathed.
I am struggling with the numbers creeping upward unabated as we all try to fathom the sheer weight of it all. It is easier for me to pray for each person, wondering about their story and wondering if I sit quietly for a moment and I can try to take it in without unending despair and grief. As millions recover, we hold them close and see them restored.
This hits home my house it hits home as I am the last grandma standing for a portion of my family tree. In less than two weeks, another grandmother and great-grandmother were called home to the Creator. Returned to the Source to stand in the gap on a different plane than the everyday where we are left behind to care and do and be our very best. Ancestors of two generations pass the gate.
The sudden and cruel devastation causes me to step in and look for ways to spread hope and encouragement. Love is the best of these virtues in finding the courage to be love.
I hope you will find a way that allows you to sit with me in pain, anger, and frustrations for whatever time you need. I see me and the other Grands surrounded by Glory wondering what their hearts would feel where their bodies fade, and they return to Spirt.
I like to say, we are not our bodies, we are Spirit. This does not comfort me in my hour of need. It does comfort me to imagine how it might feel to bow in praise, knowing the sweet peace that comes when all is well, and all is unfolding as it should.
I want to be good enough to stand in the gap and do all the things Grands could do and keep healing memories alive. Both my parents were raised by mothers who had no mothers in their living memory; not exactly orphans but their mothers were gone and watching, protecting from afar. I had the most wonderful loving parents ever.
Without Grace, and Love, where would I be? I am blessed to give love until my last breath and ever after. Amen!
Thank YOU so much Grandma Ann and GG!
You both have blessed us all your sons, your daughters with Mercy, Grace and Love. We will make you proud! Lives well -lived! Surrounded in Glory. Well done faithful servants! Your labor has not been in vain.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless 1Corinthians 15:58 (New Living Translation)
Here is a link to a wonderful song, “I Can Only Imagine,” with its images of love and hope. https://youtu.be/1v6nIjuTeCs
Thank you so much, Grandma Ann and GG!Backyard graduation celebration on June 30, 2020. None of us knew it would be the last family gathering with all present. From left to right is Grandma Ann (aka Antoinette Montague, 1960-2021), Taylor Meadows(2002–), and her paternal grandmother, Ann’s mother GiGi (aka Delores Marie Montague (1942-2021). Jackie is Taylor’s maternal grandmother and also delivered her. [Photo by our own Donald Burch III] You both have blessed us all, your sons, your daughters, with mercy, grace and love. We will make you proud! Lives well-lived! Surrounded in Glory. Well done, faithful servants! Your labor has not been in vain. “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.” –1 Corinthians 15:58 (NLT) -
MILK without MOM
Breastmilk AS A Commodity
My beloved Son and Daughter-in-law Emily just celebrated the first birthday of my fifth grandchild Ava Violet. She is still nursing! I couldn’t be more thrilled! She is walking; talking; dancing in her first pink tutu; and generally running the household in charge of her three year old brother. I am strangely grateful for this period of holy hibernation during our new age pandemic. This cataclysmic shift in the universe has had both parents very close at hand with few ventures away from home for this little girl except for daily strolls now that full time center-based day care has been closed in Southern California Coronalland.
Emily and I surprisingly talk little about nursing and breastfeeding. She loves me and knows I am a bit of a fanatic; but she also knows that I know that she is intensely private and that nursing her baby is her business and she’s got this…
She also knows that I am fiercely and intensely proud of this 365 day breastfeeding milestone: not just for her and me, and her daughter, and my son, and the blog but but but just because she is doing what she wants her way with delightful abandon. This is really good stuff and hope for the planet. It has been a tumultuous road with bottles, breast pumps, dizzying fatigue & fear, and a healthy dose of not good enough; work; worry: and wondering is she going to be all right.
It is with such humility that I get to selfishly witness such love. Pleasure, divine maternal attachment and what if anything she might gain for herself for this time for this “last baby” was her primary motive. Seems to me I guess for this go-round; willpower or perseverance was simply not required. They all figured it out! Love always wins!
Edging the mother out of the picture as the sole arbiter of nursing her baby is a trend that has ominous consequences for all but especially for the mother. During this last day of Breastfeeding Month 2020; I caught a reference to a workshop on Breastfeeding WITHOUT NURSING! Human milk for Human babies, but no touching, no connecting required, needed, or even perhaps desired. Mom and mom and baby interaction are essentially obsolete. How many ounces did I pump today? Not latching on; not a problem! How many little bags can I produce for storage today? We could get a freezer on sale. No value added for the time we spend together.
If the product is milk, even your milk, how can the product be delivered to the consumer without you? The stuff of scary science fiction or just relief from an unimaginable burden.
What if there was a vaccine for hate, a slow growing time for learning the capacity for giving, loving and nurturing and it had something to do for all us but especially that mom and that baby having that time to connect, to attach, to learn how and why we may experience belonging and pleasure and the sweet part about just being human. Where do we learn this? Where might it be taught? Who will teach us if we have lots of milk, but no MOM.
Tell your story, what happens after staying close to your baby; nursing as best as you can for that very first 365 days after cutting the cord?
References
Breastfeeding 365 