Maiden. Mother. Matriarch. Birth and Death.

Whether or not it's popular or politically correct today to say, women have 3 major life phases that are distinguished by our reproductive stage:

Maiden. Mother. Matriarch.

It appears to me that we live in a culture that worships, attributes status to and is obsessed with the Maiden.

And no longer attributes any sort of meaning to the Mother or the Matriarch.

Rather it overlooks and even despises them both, seeing them as nothing more than distraction, ageing, being used up and useless.

There are endless examples of women who fight mercilessly to remain in the Maiden role: Madonna, JLo, Kim Kardashian, Shakira, Jennifer Anniston...

Dancing round a pole at age 50, perfect, with a flatter stomach than I, or you, had at 16.

We admire their ability to not grow old. To perform like women half their age. To ooze sex appeal.

To conceal all signs of motherhood themselves.

(Sometimes because they've outsourced or avoided it)

To remain eternally young.

You probably don't have to look far in your own personal life to find a woman/girl who is perpetually stuck in Maiden mode, hoping to hold back the hands of time interminably, refusing to step through the threshold, terrified of how her passage through it into commitment, stability, Motherhood, service and sacrifice might affect her body, her time, and her ability to fully contribute to the Machine.

Or to workout 7 times a week or to eat paleo.

I intend not to offend women who are frozen here (as I surely will), as it takes one to know one, and a few short years ago, I shared the same horror towards the pending alteration to my mind, body and freedom.

But it's not just about them, it's about us. The mothers who are still hesitant about fully embodying that role and becoming Mothers. Who still cling onto the lives we had before. The late nights, drinking or dancing or losing ourselves in Netflix until the early hours. Pretending we don't have small humans to care for tomorrow morning.

The anti-aging cream, the hair dye, the boudoir photo shoots that we plaster over social media for our uncles, grandmothers and 12-year-old neighbours to see 😬