It is often said that Athena, the Goddess of War, The Patroness of the City, had no mother and she was born out of Zeus alone. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown, armed, and armored, and she would spend her entire life proving that she was worth being called Zeus’ daughter. Athena’s mother Metis, one of the Titans, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, would hardly ever be mentioned through centuries of human history.
This account is not conflicting for the ancient Greeks believed that children were descendants of the fathers, while mothers did not contribute to the creation of their children.
This account is intertwined with the patriarchal system that we live in, a system where daughters are called, named and labelled as their “father’s daughter”.
This account tells my own story and that of many daughters of this world.
I was raised as my father’s daughter. Every moment of glory, every act of bravoure and every tiniest demonstration of wittiness were and are still being imprinted with my father’s name. From the beginning I have been referred to as “his daughter”. I have spent years proving that I was worth being called “HIS DAUGHTER”. My mother’s presence within my presence has been shadowed and despite my sense of self, I never questioned.
This récit ripples across the globe across culture, traditions, faces, names, colors and races.
Post one month to the 2nd Biennial Conference of She Stands Tall in Mauritius, I am gently emerging from my caving, pausing to soak within my words and I hold space for this truth:
I am just one of the daughters of a system whose mother has been denied of the acknowledgement that her daughter’s cells are made up of her, that her daughter’s beigness is imprinted with her beigness, that her daughter’s intuitive and cognitive intelligence descents from her legacy.
Patriarchy survives by placing authority and legitimacy of belongingness and lineage upon fathers. Most Women of our patriarchal system are ignorant of their matrilineal. Most Women of our patriarchal system operate as Athena from their head, we thrive and we strive to be proud objects and subjects of and for our fathers. Most Women of our patriarchal system have hardly any sense of identification with their mothers except from self-sacrificing, emotional care taking, over giving and submissiveness.
Most women from our patriarchal system invest and will invest in becoming unlike their self-sacrificing and over-giving mothers. I have spent years thriving to be something unlike “HER”. I have spent years running away from my body disconnects and my rhythms. And I know aware that we are endless on the same stride.
Weeks back I caught myself through my descend :
“Where is mother within me? How come I find no references of her within my system? When did this alienation happen? How did it happen? How has she lived this imposed disconnect for years? How painful and hurtful it is to be overturned from your legitimate place of the Wisdom Keeper, Magic Whisperer and Soul Healer in your daughter’s life?”
The act of being referred to as our “Fathers’ Daughters”, by default relegate our mothers to less of importance in our life. Many of you may not concur with my words, yet we live in a system that has rendered women to less of human, our references for beigness and success are attached to our fathers, while our mothers are symbolism of sacrifice, giving and caring.
I am slowly growing into awareness of the wisdom that women from my lineage and beyond carry within. A wisdom that we daughters of patriarchy have been denied of. This denial is connected to the disconnects that our mothers are born of and from.
I have committed to go home to my mother, I still have no sense of how to live with this unacknowledged, un-embraced and untouched part of my self. I feel and I believe I am now walking home to my sacredness, readying myself for the 2020 Biennial Conference on the Lands of my ancestors surrounded and led by the Nayar.
Love from my heart to yours
Megha Venketasamy
Image source: http://annieandaunt.blogspot.comPost © Megha Venketasamy, 2018. All rights reserved.
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