Mushroom Mothers

Mothers Who Said Fuck the Rules and Ate the Holy Mushrooms

Somewhere along the spiral of my life, I learned that mothers were meant to be initiated. Not merely through birth, sleepless nights, and the slow erosion of self, but also through ritual, through immersion in the rhythm of the earth, through communion with something vast and ancient. But I inherited no circles, no elder women, no sacred spaces, no songs older than the white walls of our modern houses. Only the culture’s relentless whisper: be quiet. Be strong. Be productive. Be everything, except alive in the full, wild rhythm of life. Yet I’ve always longed for ancient wisdom, deep in my bones.

It was in that hunger, in the hollowed spaces of my bones, that the mushrooms returned. Not as a singular, revelatory night, but as a steady, living thread through my life. They are medicine, holy and wild, a threshold to the ancestral and the unseen. And yet, in the world I inhabit, this is considered dangerous, suspect, even psychotic. To commune with these sacred beings, to open yourself to their intelligence, their pulse, their teaching, is to risk judgment, to risk being labeled unfit, untethered, irresponsible. And yet, the same world deems it normal, even encouraged, to swallow pharmaceuticals in sterile capsules that deaden, flatten, and conform, but never awaken, never remember.

Through the mushrooms, I return again and again to the living world, to the pulse of rivers and forests, to the soil that remembers the steps of my ancestors, to the rhythms of seasons that speak in secret languages. They awaken the ancient pulse in my bones, the pulse of Celtic women who walked the edges of forests and hills, whose hands knew the shape of herbs, the chant of the air, the quiet hum of the earth. Through them, I remember that my maternal bloodline is a river stretching backward and forward in time, carrying joy and grief and enchantment, carrying laughter that ripples across generations.

The remembering comes in many ways. Sometimes as images: women kneeling on moss-covered stones, stirring cauldrons, drying mushrooms on racks, whispering songs across valleys, voices threading through earth and air, threading through me. Sometimes as sensation: a vibration in my feet, a quiver in my chest, a shimmer like sunlight on water. Sometimes as sudden, childlike wonder: the first dragonfly over a pond, wild blackberries bursting in sunlight, the thrill of noticing magic again, as if childhood itself were reclaiming me.

Through this ongoing communion, the mushrooms teach me the rhythms of life: birth, growth, decay, renewal; the turn of the moon; the rise and fall of tides; the patience of roots; the wildness of wind. They remind me that motherhood, and life itself, is not about control or compliance. It is about listening, attuning, opening, remembering. They teach me that the world is alive, enchanted, and waiting for notice.

And they remind me, sharply, of the absurdity of our culture: we normalize deadening pills, anesthetic routines, endless conformity, and call it care. But to sit quietly with the holy mushrooms, to awaken to the land, the lineage, the unseen, the magic, is considered dangerous. Even criminal. And yet, it is medicine. It heals, awakens, remembers, restores. It threads me back to my maternal line, to the women who walked between worlds, who understood the pulse beneath everything, who saw the unseen, who laughed and cried and loved with the earth itself.

Through these journeys, I have learned to move through my days not as a series of tasks, but as a living ritual. The world is my home, the earth my kin, the seasons my teachers, and my maternal line a map of enchantment I carry in my blood. Every mushroom, every sitting, every quiet communion is a return to what is sacred, to what is natural, to what is wild, and to what has always been holy.

And so, when the kitchen is loud, when the spoon feels heavy, when life presses against me, I remember the forests, the rivers, the stones, the wind, the wild pulse of my ancestors, the children whose wonder teaches me again to see, and the magic that pulses through all things. I return to the mushrooms, again and again, to step lightly into the rhythm beneath it all, to feel the earth’s heartbeat in mine, to let enchantment shimmer through the ordinary. And in that returning, the world opens again: alive, wild, ancient, and utterly miraculous.

I am Celtic. I am of the Otherworld. I am of women who danced with the land, who sang to rivers, who knew the secret songs of stones. I am a mother whose life is threaded through soil, wind, sky, and water, teaching my children to see, to wonder, to marvel. And the mushrooms—holy, sacred, wild medicine—remind me of it every season, every returning, every quiet, miraculous communion with life itself.