MA Pose-8
'dea lacunas' mother with child
The 'dea lacunas' pose or 'breastfeeding-pose,' mother with child. The Mother most often holds her child on the left breast close to her heart and heartbeat.
Seated Isis Lactans, holding the child with her left arm bringing her left breast to the child's mouth (100 BC). These statues often are a supplication for future motherhood.
Megan's Ma Pose, March 21, 2016
We have moved to a new house and I am finally feeling settled. I prepare myself for the pose in my living room, siting with an imaginary baby cradled in a cursing position in my arms.
Not far into the pose Catori, my two year old, awakes from her sleep crying, "Mama, I need you Mama."
I enter into the girls room. Luna is still sleeping in her bed. I sit on Catori's toddler bed and she crawls into my lap. I hold her under my right arm and she nuzzles her head on top of my right breast. I wrap my left arm around her tiny body and recall our nursing time together.
She tells me," I need you Mama, I love you."
My heart melts, "I need you too! I love you my sweet girl," I tell her.
I whisper to Luna sleeping in her bed, "I love you too Luna."
Catori repeats in a louder voice, "I love you tooooo Luna!!"
Catori flips in my lap and places her head over my heart. We sit in the dark room under the full moon. She touches my face and we gaze into each others eyes.
We embrace until she drifts back to sleep.
Barbara's Ma Pose March 21, 2016
with Cindy Lou, 7 minutes
Preparing for the pose with Cindy Lou at her home. Two by two, side by side in arm chairs we are two mothers with our tiny doll children. Cindy Lou takes her blue bra off to get comfortable and I think “wow - she is really doing this pose!” Although I find out later it was my own thought and not hers. She brings in two dolls and I get into it. I grab a pillow to support my arm that will be holding the nursing baby as I breastfeed the doll. Really aware that we are moving beyond the image of the stone pose to a really soft pose. I am uptight getting the pose correct but once the pose begins I immediately feel my body “let down.” The breast feeding action allows a letting go of my body that was impossible prior to entering the pose. Wow, so this is part of the experience that I have never had. I feel my lower body drop after my upper body (blood) lets down. A warmth flooding my sex and my entire body. The gift of giving is a receiving of the gift back to the mother. The mother and child co-affecting each other even with just the intention of giving to a child in the form of a doll. Doing/acting out of this pose with another non-birth giving m/other made this experience more real for me.
It was fun to play breast feeding with another woman who was also at play alongside me. Projecting ourselves into the experience, not remembering it as a past experience, as the other Gestare member birth-mothers often share, but a brand new, never-before-experienced-quite-like-this happening.
“This supports higher learning”
Cindy Lou's Pose March 21, 2016. 7 minutes
with Barbara
the eye I
the One
is the protector; nurturer, guide, root, balance
the
provider, the seed, the growth and harvest:
replenish
restore
space giver and shared space
working together
a safe space - holding space
sacred
ritual
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