There is the cliché that men do not read instruction manuals. Only last week my girlfriend and I were discussing one such example and how frustrating it can be to watch and witness. And then ‘bing’, I got it…
Men and women, alike, are born with these raw, innate animal instincts, be that doing/making/fixing or creating/nurturing/loving, but over time, through modern practices, we have forgotten to pass on the wisdom. The instinct is there but the instructions have been lost. We are called to roles, building, mothering, teaching, healing and all too often we assume we must know because our instinct is calling. The reality is that we haven’t supplemented that feeling with our fore-bearers generations of wisdom. System Crash and no back up!
Instead of acknowledging this, seeing that we need to spend time reading a manual, we plough on, attempting to convince ourselves and the rest of the world that we are doing ok.
I do get frustrated when my husband won’t read the instructions and I get frustrated when I see mothers struggle through their journey without the circle of wisdom holding them up. I truly believe we need to walk through our pride on all these levels, stand up and say ‘my instinct is calling AND I don’t always know what that means or how to interpret it, please help’. Just like we can bend the leg on the new BBQ or delete the cache of precious photos if we don’t check the manual, we can also leave our babies to cry and forget that breastmilk is so awesome if we don’t take some time to dig out, uncover and downright demand some ancient mothering wisdom from the global resources out there.
It won’t take long to learn, but it could heal a generation….