Hot Buttered Toast – Flight + Might
A fresh tendril. A new name. And the myth of the Nourished Mother...
Welcome to Mother Nourish.
A new name for this familiar, shared home… a name that speaks more directly to the mission that continues to call me, deeper and deeper, into this work.
Firstly, some housekeeping: paid subscribers will still receive slices of Hot Buttered Toast at 8am (GMT) on a Sunday, and there’ll be a heartier More than the Crumbs letter, on the first Wednesday of every month.
So, why the shift? As often happens to me, the feeling came first. Then the image. A very fragile veneer + the myth of ‘balance’. A mother, arms spread, wide shoulders broad, probably carrying too much but also unable to step away or put anything down because they’re holding everyone up; keeping it all together. That’s the M in the image above. Aloft, a dance, a leap, a tumble, stumble, trip and skip. Both flying and falling. M for Mother.
Then there’s our N – our Nourishment. Centred, earthed, rooted, bold, strong. I see soil, roots, warm skin… potential, warmth, love.
Our circle… the whole… something that is unbroken. No beginnings or endings. The moon. The womb. The earth. A cell. A seed. An ever-present reminder of our cycling, spinning, shifting, revolving, evolving natures. Nothing is static. We can be both new and old, dark and full, bright and in shadow.
The book I am writing – a book that explores the messy truth of midlife for mothers, many of whom are raising kids while navigating their cyclical journeys – towards perimenopause, through it, and out the other side – has one essential, elemental foundation: nourishment for mothers.
The deeper I get into the writing process, the necessarily deeper I am called into the living and breathing of this very real process of sowing seeds of rooted, inextricable nourishment into my own body, mind and home.
A conversation this week with the wise, warm, wonderful Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, whose voice is woven through this new book – awoke something within… a deep longing, a deep sadness, a deep re-membering – as we pondered the ‘myth’ of the Nourished Mother.
Does she exist? We asked. The mother who knows herself, unshakeably. Peaceful. Truthful. Vital. Strong. Playful. Curious. Able to feed herself well and draw on that fullness in the life she leads. There is no pretence – she is thriving. One look at her radiant, open, knowing face, and we see it (we feel it).
I won’t share the full breadth of our conversation here (it’s already half-way into the book), but what we realised was that the Nourished Mother cannot exist in isolation.
A mother who gives birth without support, does not know it. A mother who returns to work just days or weeks after birthing – bleeding and breasts leaking – does not know it. A mother who has no time to make the food she longs to eat, to lie down when her body aches, to read the poetry that ignited her wildness as a child, to wander fields and forests with friends, or alone, safe and free.
A mother who works and cleans and carries and cooks and mends and holds and fixes, every single day. Where are the aunties and the sisters? The grandmothers and neighbours? The women who carry our children the way we carry them… who kiss their knees when they fall?
The loneliness I have been probing, like a sore tooth aching in the gum, comes in waves. It is easier to turn away from the pain than to sit with it and let it share its lesson. The lesson this week has been a powerful one.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to MOTHER NOURISH with Emine Rushton to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.