The Prima Materia
The Work We Must Do With Our Mothers’ Dreams, Cells, and Memories
Prima Materia refers to the raw, unformed substance that ancient alchemists believed was the foundation of all things, the starting point of transformation.
It represents the essence passed down through generations—a mother's dreams, memories, and even her cells.
Just as alchemists sought to refine prima materia into something precious, the wisdom, experiences, and love of our mothers and grandmothers are the raw materials from which we shape our lives, our worlds.
“Those who know the truth…learn to love it.
Those who love the truth…learn to live it.”
— Br. John of Taizé
The more I learn about maternal bonds, the more mystical, powerful, and numinous they become.
A few years ago, I had a dream in which my mother and I were attacked by intruders in my late grandmother's house—a place where we had all lived when I was just a few years old. As someone who frequently experiences lucid and highly symbolic dreams, I understood the weight of this dream even as it unfolded, and it lingered with me after awakening.
I knew it was trying to tell me something important, but I couldn't immediately grasp its meaning. However, I had enough experience with dream communications to know that patience pays off and that, if I give it time, the messages often emerge when they need to.
A few days later, I read an article in a popular science magazine and learned that all the eggs in my mother’s ovaries—her ova—were formed while she was still a fetus in my grandmother's womb. This is the case for all of us who carry eggs and give birth. Since female fetuses are born with all the eggs they will ever have, my earliest materialization as an ovum occurred in both my mother and grandmother simultaneously. Our foremothers’ bodies, individually and collectively, are a sacred matrix where our pasts, presents, and futures converge.
With this new information, the symbolism in my dream suddenly became clear: it revealed the hidden traumas my grandmother had endured and how those experiences continued to resonate epigenetically and subconsciously within both my mother and me, as well as all the women in our line. Furthermore, it indicated that deep generational healing was taking place within my maternal lineage, a process in which I was to play a pivotal role—unearthing and facilitating that healing, putting to rest the tales of struggle, pain, scarcity, and fear that had plagued the lives of the women who came before me, and stepping into a full life of abundance, joy, community, and liberation—for myself, my mother, my grandmother, our ancestors, and our descendants.
What I now understand is that, for better or worse, the lives and spirits within the holy tripartite of grandmother, mother, and daughter are intricately entangled in ways that are deeply spiritual and inexplicably potent.
To take all of our mothers', grandmothers', and great-grandmothers' experiences—the known and the unknown, those that buoyed them and those that broke them—and transform them into rich soil from which we and our descendants will bloom… is women’s work.
To recognize that we are not merely vessels of our foremothers’ experiences, but active participants in the alchemical process of transformation—converting what they’ve endured, leveraging their joy and amplifying it, harnessing their brilliance into an unapologetic blossoming, turning pain into power and fear into fuel, using it to confront empire directly, dismantling colonialist and imperialist narratives that thrive on us not knowing who we truly are… is women’s work.
Awakening and agitating… is women’s work.
Going down into our own holy wells, excavating the gifts and wisdom of the prima materia that live in our mothers’ dreams…
In their cells…
In their bones and beliefs…
That is women’s work.
---
Beyond. 💫💫