Held: When I Called God Mother

Part 4: A Life Shaped By Loss and Mothered By Love

Artist: Meinrad Craighead

Held: When I Called God Mother
Shaped by loss, mothered by Love

The first time I called God “Mother,” I was sitting in my bathtub, surrounded by steam and silence. It felt like both a rebellion and a return.

God comes to me unhindered in my tub. She wraps around me in the warm water and holds me, just as I am.

God, Higher Power, the Divine, Spirit, the Christ, The Great Mystery and Reality has always had many names, but She came to me in the form I needed most. It just seems to be what the Divine does. And so, She came to me as the Great Mother.

I hadn’t grown up with that name. I was taught to say “Father,” a God who provided and protected, who watched from a distance and judged from above.

But after my own mother finally stopped her dance with leaving me, and left for good to never came back, I needed Someone. I needed a Nurturing Love that could hold all of me. Not just the woman I had become, but every version of me still imprinted in memory and held in my body—the girl at the window watching for her mother’s return, the teenager who finally stood up to her and was consequently sent away for speaking truth, the young mother aching to be mothered herself.

For years, I believed that the ache would disappear if I worked hard enough, healed deeply enough, mothered well enough. But the longing never left. It softened, yes. It changed shape. But it never completely vanished.

And maybe that’s not a failure of healing. Maybe it’s a doorway.

Because over time, the ache began to lead me somewhere. Not to resolution, but to Presence. Not to answers, but to a Love I hadn’t always recognized, yet had always been there. Closer than my breahing.

I began to feel Her—this mothering Presence—in the quiet places. In the trees on my morning walks. In my long exhale in the tub. In my daughter’s unguarded laughter. In the way my husband held me when I wept for reasons I couldn’t name.

This wasn’t the physical mother I had lost and longed for. This was the Presence that had always been with me. That had always stayed. The One I had actually been reaching for all along.

She was steady, dependable, and unafraid of my truth and my grief. She mirrored my goodness back to me. She loved without limitation. Fierce in her love for me.

There was no grand arrival. Just a slow unfolding. Recognition. A quiet presence I began to notice in the places I once felt most alone.

When my daughter curled into me after a hard day and whispered, “You always make it better.” When I cried in the car and didn’t try to pull myself together but let my grief unfold and roll out like waves finally crashing on the shore. When I stood in front of the mirror, placed my hands on my cheeks, tenderly, and said, “I’ve got you.”

That’s when I knew.
She was already here.
She always had been.

So I began to whisper Her name: Amma. As it came to me.

It isn’t a new religion. I have long been a lover of the Christ. It’s a new name for a deepening understanding of the same Love. Naming is a way of knowing.

In 12-step recovery circles, we’re encouraged to lean into a Higher Power of our own understanding. For me, that Higher Power came in the form of the Feminine. Christ called God “Abba,” then the name that arose in me was “Amma.”

Across cultures and centuries, the Divine Feminine has been known by many names—Sophia, Shekinah, Kuan Yin, Pachamama, Shakti, Mary, Tara..You might know Her by another name. Each name is a doorway into the One Love that holds us.

I don’t believe God is a woman. Or a man. God has no gender, or all of them. But God came to me in the form of my deepest need so I could recognize Her more fully.

In Her presence,I didn’t have to leave parts of myself behind. I didn’t have to justify the past. I didn’t have to rewrite my mother’s choices into something noble so I could bear it. I didn’t have to perform spiritual perfection or crawl on my knees trying to be good.

I could just be.

Seen.
Known.
Held.

Loved.

And the more I felt held, the more I could hold others—my daughters, my students, the women in my writing circles who carry their own grief and wonder. I could sit with sorrow without rushing to fix it. I could offer space because I had been given it, too. My capacity to open to Love expanded.

Of course, I still carry the scar where the wound once was. We all have them.

But it’s not the only thing I carry.

I carry Her, too.

And when I remember that I am loved, not because I did everything right but simply because I am, I find a kind of deep rest I never knew as a child or even a young adult.

I’m striving less.
Chasing love less.
Trying to prove my worth less.

I have become
The one who can stay—with myself and with others.
The one who can soften.
The one who can keep loving.
The one who can return again and again to Her.

This is where the ache has led me.

Not to forgetting, but to reverence.
Not to erasing the story, but to embracing it.
Not to a neat, tidy ending, but to a Love that holds the grief, the joy, the longing, and the becoming.

A life shaped by loss, yes, but mothered by Love.

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If you, too, have carried an ache that you could not erase,
If you have longed for a mother who could hold all of you,
If you have wondered whether Love could still find you after everything,

Know this:

You are not alone.
You have never been alone.
Love has been walking beside you every step of the way.

She knows your name. And she loves you fiercely.

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A Closing Note:
Over these past four essays, I’ve shared pieces of my story—the ache of mothering without a map, the longing I carried, some of the myths we perpetuate about mothers, and the Love that met me. If any part of this journey has stirred something in you, I hope you’ll pause and take in this truth:

This may be the end of the series, but I hope it might be the beginning of seeing your story with gentler eyes. Of finding your way back to the Love that has always been holding you. Of whispering Her name in the quiet places, and recognizing that She’s been with you all along.

May you feel seen.
May you feel held.
And may you remember: Love knows your name.

Writing this series has helped me find new clarity and language for parts of my story I’ve wrestled with for years. I hope to carry that clarity with me as I continue working on my memoir.

If you feel moved to share, I’d be honored to hear what this stirred in you.

Can you remember being held by something greater, especially in a moment you thought you were alone?

What name or image of Love speaks to your journey?

You’re welcome to share in the comments or simply carry the questions with you.
Either way, thank you for walking with me through this series. I hope that in some small was it has been supportive.

Enfolding you in Great Love,

xo Mary