A Mother's Seppuku

I've relapsed on cigarettes again. Instead of spiraling into shame or going into what I like to call Gollum mode, where I hide from the world and convince myself how bad I am, I've decided to write about it as a form of alchemy.

I’ll start by saying that I haven't advertised myself as being a high-vibrational cunt since I almost started a twin flame cult in 2022. This total cringe era ended rather quickly after realizing how full of shit I, and everyone else around me, was. After all, how could I be the high-vibrational person that I, and others, have wanted me to be after years of collecting traumas like trophies? Respectfully, or maybe not so respectfully, anyone bringing that high vibrational shit to me can shove it up their ass. 

For the rest of you, sit down and have a cigarette with me. (jokes.. maybe?) Because this is about to get real.

In class the other day with my pupils, we talked about naming our elephant as the first step in alchemy. Before starting the container, I knew that I would also be participating and going through the process with everyone who signed up. I promoted this curriculum as a container not only because it's backed mathematically by an enneagram, but also because I knew what would happen behind the doors would certainly be a magical transformation. What I didn't know was how potent this initiation process was going to be for me. This is my first time teaching alchemy, backed by the Fourth Way enneagram. And holy fucking shit.. my hat is off to Gurdjieff. I had originally thought my elephant in the room was my Lyme disease, and so that was going to be my focus this run around. It turns out that what lives underneath Lyme disease is much more inflammatory. I've noticed one thing about God and the universal mechanics of creation: when you ignore the actual elephant in the room, it keeps making messes in your life. You quite literally will not be allowed to pass Go until you make a decision to evict it from your life.

Since I was a young girl, I've carried the grief of the entire world on my shoulders. I come from a long line of mothers and their unexpressed shame, guilt, and grief that was never allowed to be talked about. I have such a bitter taste in my mouth regarding motherhood for this reason. No matter how much therapy or reflection I did around healing the mother wound, it always circled back to this bitter taste. A bitter taste of resentment that I now carry, that my mother gave me, her mother gave her, and her mother gave her. I don’t want to be like the bitter women in my family, and so I find myself being rather innovative when it comes to finding different flavors for my palate.

One of my therapists back in my rehab days called me a black widow and said that I'm dangerous. He was referring to me as being a man-eater. For a short period of time, I began to believe that he was right after experiencing the losses of both my boyfriend and my child's father within the same year. I carried so much shame and guilt around these losses and the existential grief that came with them. I still don't know if I am the black widow that some would choose to perceive me as. But I do know that these men were addicted to substances, that there was nothing I could have done to save them, and that I made the conscious decision not to go down with them. I know that I come from a lineage of women who carry an abundance of trauma caused by codependency to gross patriarchal structures. I know these patriarchal structures throughout society have performed rather underwhelmingly for men and women alike. I know how this codependency on these structures has caused either direct or indirect harm to women and their children. I know that the shame, guilt, and grief festers in these women's bodies, waiting for the right opportunity to arise; only to come out as a weapon instead of tears. I know that suppressing emotions can lead to autoimmune disorders or other physical and mental illnesses in women. I know that the trauma that the women in my family have experienced runs deep. I also know that I'm not exempt when I speak about the women in my family and their shortcomings. I've fallen short in my own unbecoming of these women and their codependency on patriarchal structures. I still choose to extend grace to these women, but more importantly, myself, for I know that I am the first one to tear down my relationship to these gross structures, to feel all of what these women buried deep within their bones, and to say enough is enough. 

Now I'm not one of those who suck their thumb and twiddle their fingers around trauma. It is what it is. It already happened. Find the root of it, name it, feel it, and get the fuck over it. By the way, my blog isn't where you're going to get the ethical Emma. This is my space, and I can take up as much of it as I desire. I was raised to be a cowgirl — a little girl who would fall, stand back up, and rub some dirt on her wounds. Of course, I'm going to have a true-grit approach to life. If I wanted to crawl into victimhood over my traumas, I'd surely have enough trauma to keep me there eternally. However, forever scares me. So just for today, I choose to stand the fuck up and get shit done.

The women in my family survived by becoming like machines. Not because they are heartless, but because feeling everything would have destroyed them. They learned how to suppress grief, to sacrifice their dreams, swallow rage, and perform emotional stability. If you were to ask these women who they were, they’d respond with labels such as wife, mother, or servant of a masculine God. All of these labels depend on their relationships to men and how well they can be of service to them. Generation after generation, their humanity was slowly traded for function. A machine does not stop to ask whether it is fulfilled. A machine does not question whether it is loved. A machine simply continues its programming, even while rusting from the inside out. I think that’s why this process of unbecoming feels so violent for me. To become human again, I have to interrupt the machinery. I have to feel the grief they refused to feel, speak the truth they buried alive, and tear out the parts of myself that only know how to survive through numb repetition. My relapse on cigarettes is not evidence that I am broken; it is evidence that I am no longer able to function mechanically without consequence.

This truth of mine cuts like a blade to those protecting that in which they are in denial, like Gollum protecting his precious. I know that I've hurt people while wielding this blade, and I now do my best to hold it with honor and reverence. But the truth is, I'm not perfect. I might be dangerous when it comes to squandering others’ carefully crafted illusions, but the truth is, when I stop cutting through my own denial, I become a danger to myself the most, hence my relapse that has pushed me into Gollum mode. All of the shame, guilt, and grief of the women who have come before me begin to fester into a deep rage. At this point, I see myself as having two options: surrender to Gollum or give the blade to Smeagol.

One of my favorite metaphors of atonement with the blade derives from Samurai in 12th-century Japan. Most people assume that seppuku means suicide. Although it does, it's actually a very specific ritual done in shame to restore honor to the self. Seppuku is when a person feels so much shame over their failures that their only option is to rip themselves open, expose their shame to the entire world, and redeem themselves through death. I find that there's something very poetic about this. Perhaps it's that only humans with the ability to feel deeply can do such a ritual. Machines do not have this ability to feel such shame, guilt, and grief that their only option at redemption is to expose their inner workings to the world. Call it whatever you want, but I believe that artificial intelligence has no business in the arts for this exact reason. To me, there’s nothing more beautiful than the raw and unfiltered nature of humans. The sinful nature that we disown, the emotions that we bury deep within our bodies, and our imperfections that we polish away. All of these— the impulses, the contradictions, the moments where we do that thing that we swore we wouldn’t do again and then have to dig our way out of the collapse— that’s where the art is. That’s where the real truth of a person's internal workings shows up. Machines are designed for perfect containment. They are not able to collapse, sit in the wreckage of it, and then create art out of the destruction.

One of my favorite spiritual teachers online, Mami Onami, did an online exercise about our biggest flaws and how what we perceive to be our biggest flaws are often our greatest gifts. I began thinking about both my flaws and what I'm really good at, and I've reconciled with my ability to feel emotions in the room that nobody else can or is willing to. After all, this is what began my work as a somatic medium back in 2023. Despite being damn good at this work, my spiritual clients didn't always get the most authentic version of me, due to the high-vibrational facade that I was perpetuating. However, before I was initiated into mediumship work, I was an unfiltered drug and alcohol counselor who smoked cigarettes in between sessions, with zero tolerance for any bullshit that my clients would attempt to feed me at times. Perhaps my truth lies somewhere in between these old versions of self. 

So maybe this is the part where my story stops splitting itself into Smeagol and Gollum, human and machine, or saint and addict. My relapse doesn't get to crown me as broken, and it doesn’t get to crown me as being awakened either. It's here to show me what I haven't metabolized yet. The elephant in the room isn’t something for me to conquer; it’s something to acknowledge so that I understand why it's there without turning it into a permanent part of my home, as the women in my family have done. Perhaps the blade I wield was never meant to be used on myself or anyone around me as some dramatic act of atonement. Its purpose is to tell the truth while remaining present in the wreckage it reveals. I'm learning that integration isn’t becoming one clean version of myself, but learning to stop exiling parts of myself into myth. My flaws and my gifts can coexist as one.

Today, I am the woman who feels everything and the one who resists feeling, the one who smokes and the one who teaches, the one who is both shameful and shameless, the one who has failed her children and the one who gives them everything they need to succeed, the one who holds the narrative and the one exhausted by every narrative built to contain her. And for once, all of it is allowed to exist in the same body without turning into a war. 

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers of the world. 🫶🏼