Lilith: Part I

Part I

There is a story of a woman who would not bow. Lilith, the first woman, born of the same clay as Adam, who refused to lie beneath him. She refused submission, refused to silence her desire, refused to fracture her wholeness. For this, she was cast out, exiled from Eden, demonized, named monster instead of mother.

And yet, Lilith remains. She lingers at the edges of our stories, haunting every woman who has been told she is “too much” or “not enough.” In looking closer at Lilith, we are invited to reimagine her not as a demon but as an archetype of the wild feminine. Raw, untamed, and whole.

I can tell countless tales of being ostracized and attempted to be humiliated when speaking my truth as a mother for my children, for myself, for all mothers and all children. I have spoken up to the face of patriarchy and been outcast. In those moments, Lilith has sat with me. And she has taught me.

Never stop speaking your truth. You may be ridiculed and stoned, and cast into the Red Sea, yet your sovereignty remains. And it is through the ridicule and the stones being cast upon you in which you will find yourself.

The sexual nature of Lilith is something that has taken me some time to work through. I consider myself a conservative woman, a devoted wife. A lot of the sacred sexuality component rides a thin line of distortion. For I believe fully in sacred sexuality, and the cosmic and divine realms we enter into during sex. In the bedroom, or rather the living room (we co-sleep with our two young children), I become the wild, untamed, raw woman. Yet you wouldn’t know this if you were not my husband. I dress in very concealing ways. I want the stuff underneath to be for my husband only. I see Lilith here. Not as a goddess showing us to taunt and tease men wherever we go, completely uninhibited and unhinged. But as a goddess showing us that in the sacred union of love, we need to be in a relationship where we can become completely wild, untamed, and unleashed. If Adam was cool with this, I am sure it would have been great. Yet he wasn't. When we cannot allow that wildness and ferocity to come out with our husbands, then that part of ourselves will be suppressed and cast into the unconscious darkness, and begin playing out in destructive ways, as we see with Lilith.

In Lilith we find a mirror that terrifies and frees us. She is the mother who loves with her whole being, yet refuses to disappear inside that love. She teaches that motherhood is not martyrdom, nor is it endless sweetness. It is wild devotion. It is the ability to rage when boundaries are crossed, to ache when something vital is missing, to revere the holy woven into the mess of daily life.

Part II coming next week…