Relationships – Page 16 – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Mothers, Daughters and a Nation Crying for Help…

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During the past year I have noticed an increasing number of Internet stories/articles reporting the murders and /or more often murder-suicides wherein a parent has killed the spouse and their children.

Men and fathers are usually the assailants for cases involving a murdered spouse.

Children are usually the victims when mothers commit homicide on members of their immediate families.  

The act of any parent or adult killing a child is horrendous.

And yet, as the mother of three daughters, I am most taken when a mother kills her daughter (s).

As a psychotherapist I a to ask, “What

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Of Mothers, Daughters and Cracking Open the Pomegranate…

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A fruit of both the body and the soul, the spirit and heart, the pomegranate casts a net long and wide, deep and with breadth stretching into those areas of life perceived not with the eyes but with inner knowing that comes with age and experience.

The relationship between mothers and daughters is as old as humankind and time.

What could Persephone have been thinking when

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Of Mothers, Daughters and Pomegranate Seeds…

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The Greek myth of Persephone centers on the relationship between Persephone and her mother, Demeter.

Demeter loved her daughter, Persephone very much.   The story goes that the Greek God, Apollo, fathered Persephone by Demeter, Apollo’s sister.

When Persephone goes missing Demeter, quite distraught, searches every hill and valley to find her daughter and only child.

One can only imagine the multitude of emotions that flowed through Demeter.

The goddess of harvest and motherhood, marriage and the crone stage of female wisdom that comes with aging, Demeter led a life of holding her own amid her brothers Apollo (Zeus), Poseidon (Neptune), and Hades (Pluto).

Both Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stand at the center of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Initiation into the cult of Demeter and Persephone was said to prepare the participant to receive goodness and bounty in the afterlife that followed death.

Other beliefs held that those who underwent initiation would

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Of Mothers, Daughters and The Quality of Mirroring…

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Moments after a child exits the women, the obstetrician, or midwife cuts the umbilical cord linking mother to child.

Male children enter a journey of maturation into adulthood that ideally includes a father, or male guiding and supporting them.

As with all children she ushers into life, the mother of a female infant lays the baby upon her chest, nestles and feeds her, but unlike with sons, the mother serves as her daughter’s guide from birth into womanhood.

Who better than a man to teach and nurture a boy into manhood?

Likewise, none but women can best assist a girl in navigating the wilds of growing into a wise, compassionate, and prudent woman.

And yet, theory and reality, as with many life dimensions, often diverge.

That for which we hope often gives way to the probabilities based upon the facts of our present reality.

Many women and mothers have raised sons into excellent and wonderful men.

Likewise many men have nurtured daughters into women any parent or person would be proud to call daughter.

And yet one fact remains.

The umbilical cord attaching mother to daughter,

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Of Women, Daughters, and The Ability to Bear Children…

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A major factor that distinguishes women from men is that women possess the ability to bear children.

Whether a woman chooses to exercise her ability to conceive and deliver a life into this world, this capability marks her life and the purposes of all women’s life and in living,

That modern medicine has enabled females to conceive and give birth by choice, and without the physical presence of a man, the path women travel stands farther than ever from the one males trod in bringing direction and attaching meaning to our living.

While some would have us believe differently, female human beings are neither

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Of Daughters, Mothering, and The Willingness to Turn Inward…

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One of the most difficult aspects of being a mother is the requirement of self-reflectiveness.

As mothers we need to be able to look back upon ourselves, most particularly our time as children, and recall the difficulties and fears we faced in order to remain connected with our children.

Our willingness to do this is most particularly effective in nurturing our daughters.

“[D]aughters can model a great deal from a mother who is self-aware herself,” says Juanita Johnson in, Know Thyself First(Part 6 of Our Mothers, Ourselves: Mother-Daughter Relationships)

I address this at length in the blog post, Of Daughters, Actions and Self-Awareness.

While sons are

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Of Writing, Solitude, and Pieces of Heaven…

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The life of a writer is one of solitude.

We are either writing–or thinking (pondering) that which we have written and/or hope to write.

That I read your comment last week soon after my essay posted, but am just now responding evidences that we all have less money than time.

Or should I say,

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