When Beth's Mother Died

Blaming the injury that ended her life on her daughter was a feminine betrayal by Beth's mother that our society can no longer afford. Those who let 'Tribe Woman' down are nailing our coffin shut.

We are at a crossroads in history. One path leads to an edified future, and the other circles back on itself like a snake eating its tail. There is still a choice while we have some autonomy, but there is an urgency now, so we need to be fully conscious. Can you feel the drag of archaic power coming from the snake’s brain? Full of dominion and blood-lust pulling us back into the cycle of oppression we have fought so hard to overcome. I don’t need to list the global events that support this theory because they’re obvious, but Trump’s reign, Roe v Wade overturned, Russia invading Ukraine, and the Taliban reconstitution, are a few.

If you are female, non-white or a member of a minority group, you are less safe. The only way to combat that is to unite. In-house fighting and betrayal are relied upon by the powers-that-be to enable them to retain control. While we are taking each other down, we are bleeding out our freedom. This code of conduct breach covers the spectrum from pettiness to double agents handing their fellow group members over for slaughter. An obscene example is Ghislaine Maxwell, recently convicted of recruiting and grooming teenage girls for her sex-offending boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein. I am angrier at her because I was raised in a world to expect it of him, but she sold us out. If we can’t trust our own, we are fucked. If we have each other’s back as our highest priority, we will kick the snake aside at the fork in the road.

I go back to Beth and the one faultline I didn’t explore in my essay, Beth Dutton - our new archetype, which was the impact of her mother’s death on her. Flashbacks to a younger Beth in the TV series Yellowstone show a strained relationship between her and her mother. Beth’s mother doesn’t like her for whatever reason, which is at the root of what is unacceptable to the feminine tribe. How the hell are we going to make this a better planet for women if we don’t like our daughters?! Serious help is needed to sort that shit or else be complicit in continuing the cycle of the snake.

Beth’s mother falls from her horse and blames Beth for the accident. She angrily directs Beth to return for help while her youngest son (and favourite child) attends her as she dies from her injuries. By the time Beth returns with her father, her mother has already passed. Beth accepts the total sickening weight of that responsibility into her soul like a brand. I blame the mother, who left Beth with scars and demons she didn’t deserve. Not only that, now she has to excise and exorcise them respectively before she can be fully present at the female tribal council. Some might argue that the effort to rise above this trauma enables a strength not possible without that transcendence. My response is that we no longer have time for this process. We need to fast-track our training, so we should start with love, not trauma.

Mothers and their sons require a whole other analysis, but fundamentally this relationship should be devoted to teaching men to love women, not just the mother. I have observed the mother-son dynamic with interest and, at times, alarm. There are often blinkers involved, which serve to exonerate bad behaviour and the exclusion of other women. Enter the daughter-in-law, another historically fickle relationship in the heteronormative world where women are often pitched against each other. Sometimes I want to scream, STOP! Stop the bickering, stop letting the team down, and stop being distracted by each other because it is enabling the snake.

It is time to raise children in a way that will herald a new maternal era because we will not survive without a global infusion of love and nurturing. Women must love their daughters and raise their sons to love women. We have to hold each other up if we are to carry the next generation on our hips. And we should contemplate the words of the prophet Kahlil Gibran who I forgive for his gender fluidity omission, given that it was written in 1923;

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said
"Speak to us of children"

Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you

You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow

Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
You may strive to be like them
But seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday

You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite
And he bends you with his might

That his arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness
For even as he loves the arrow that flies
So he loves also the bow that is stable

I believe in the human race. I am a glass-half-full optimist when it comes to faith in the evolution of our soul. We still have time to turn some of this destruction around, but first, we must exit the Colosseum. The battle has long outlived its purpose, and our punch-drunk cognition needs rebooting. We still need to raise our voices and hold each other accountable, but we must do it with love and a belief in what is possible.