Reflections on Mother/Daughter Ruptures
And a few spring updates...
(Note to readers—I’m catching up and cross-posting some newsletters I have sent out in the past year or two in this space as well, so this is back-dated as will be a few others I’m posting. I will try to stay more current with things in the future! If you’re not on my other list you can join at www.jenhowk.com—just be warned you might receive some duplicates.)
Another long winter is finally (mostly) past us here in the Northern hemisphere. I don't know about you, but I enthusiastically applaud this development.
I have found in recent years that winter puts me into a kind of hibernation right along with Mildred my garden groundhog—I feel a strong urge to hunker down and rest and just…cook a lot of potatoes. Things get very slow, very quiet, very reflective. It is a time where I naturally feel less capacity and much less desire to serve the ever-demanding gods of Productivity and Optimization.
Now, however, on the other side of the Equinox, I'm feeling the energy change. With the return of the light and even a few warm-ish days here lately in Virginia, Mildred and I are ready to reemerge and forage a bit. She will spend most of her summer nibbling my garden and sunning her ample belly, and I have various projects emerging as well.
In addition to catching up with some updates to my podcast (and planting trees, always planting trees) I will be speaking at Vegan Summerfest in July and really hope to see some of you there in person! I'll also keep you updated in the next few weeks of some other developments and assorted schemes and ideas.
For this week, I've just uploaded a new episode of Face of the Deep about family estrangement, particularly between mothers and daughters. It's an emotionally charged, difficult, and delicate topic, and one that I think affects more of us than is commonly acknowledged. As many of you know, I lost my mom this winter, and grieving a relationship that is both so fundamental and also very difficult is very complex emotional terrain. There is also so much cultural baggage around being the “wrong” kind of mother or daughter, and so I feel strongly about opening the conversation to let people know they aren't alone as they grapple with these issues.
In that spirit, as a personal experiment, I've also opened comments on YouTube for the first time ever—I know, I'm shocked too. I am really hoping that it helps facilitate more dialogue and connection.
I will also be doing some podcasts soon in a new “deep dive” format, where I go in-depth on a particular topic in a small conversation with members of the Collective Unconscious. We will definitely be exploring other mother/daughter dynamics and complex grief, among other subjects. If you'd like to be part of that, you can learn more at
https://collective.jenhowk.com.
I hope everyone is welcoming the seasonal turn along with me, and as always I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas for any topics or questions you are curious about and would like to see covered in one of these podcasts.
Watch episode 13 of The Face of the Deep, “Strained and Estranged: The Mother-Daughter Rupture:”