Five Body Wisdom

The Mother Stage: Voices of Nurturing, Sacrifice, and Love

• Delia Q • Season 1 • Episode 4

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How many ways can you say the word "mother"? Divine mother, mother nature, mother earth, grandmother... The list continues as we delve into this powerful archetype that shapes our world in countless ways.

We've gathered voices from women across different walks of life to share their raw, honest experiences of motherhood—both biological and chosen. From the woman who knew early on that having children wasn't her path, to another who unexpectedly became a mother to her sister's children after tragedy, these stories illuminate the many facets of nurturing life.

The physical journey of motherhood receives special attention from our health expert, who explains how pregnancy depletes a woman's resources as the developing baby "borrows" nutrients and energy from its host. Morning sickness? Try electrolytes and ginger tea. Postpartum exhaustion? It's not just depression—it's nutritional depletion that requires deep nourishment and community support. In earlier times, the entire tribe would help when a baby was born, allowing the mother essential recovery time that our modern society rarely provides.

Perhaps most profound is our exploration of the psychological "mother complex" that stays with us throughout life. Even after our mothers are gone, their influence shapes who we are and how we move through the world. As one guest poignantly shared after her mother's passing, she felt both grief and a curious lightening—and recognized that now the real work of understanding her mother's influence could begin.

Whether you're a mother, have a mother, or embody mothering energy in other ways, this episode invites you to reflect on this fundamental human relationship and its power to both wound and heal. Listen, reflect, and perhaps discover new ways to honor the mother energy in your own life.

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Delia:

How many ways can you say the word mother? We're going to find out here on Five Body Wisdom interviews with our mother selves. I'm Delia Quigley. Let's get your feet tapping and your hands clapping you quickly. Let's get your feet tapping and your hands clapping. Well, that was quite an introduction, delia. How many ways can you say mother? Well, actually, I can do quite a few Divine mother, mother nature, mother earth, mother Mary, motherhood, mothering, ancient mother, motherland, mother tongue, motherly, virgin mother, mother goddess, great mother, ancestral mothers. Hmm, I think you left out mother fog. No, I didn't. That's not a word I care to use here. It's a bit derogatory. And we're not going derogatory here. In this episode we're exploring motherhood and all that is woven into the stage of life for many women. Well, just saying what a lot of people are thinking out there, do you?

Delia:

But all right, we'll leave that out of the equation. Let's talk about the word mother. Well, all right. So it's a word both universal. It's deeply personal. It carries serious weight across cultures, centuries, belief systems, and in this episode, we're going to explore more fully this mother stage, not only as a life phase for those who have given birth, but as an embodiment of something larger. We're going to hear voices from women from all different walks of life sharing their truths about what it means to nurture, to sacrifice, to love and to release. And let's begin with something I left out, one word, and that, my friends, is the word grandmother.

Linda Helms:

I recently became a grandmother this year, in 2025. And it has given me such an amazing understanding of what motherhood and the concept of mothering is all about. I think when I was younger, I wasn't as conscious or aware, although I did a lot of focus on the health of the baby and techniques that would support health and wellness for both my daughters. I had both the kids in the water. I did not use antibiotics, I only used holistic medicines. I was very conscious of that part of it, but I wasn't really aware of the power of being a mother inside and what that meant. I think I struggled for many, many years with my own self-worth. I felt very strongly that the weaknesses that I carried forth from my mothers and my ancestral women did not need to be passed on, and as I became more conscious and aware and started learning more about who I really was and understanding that I was a divine being and that I had the power to mother in the truest sense, meaning unconditional love for myself and then others, I started to really deepen my practice.

Delia:

And what about you, delia? I don't see any little toddlers running around your house. No, I knew early on, even as a child, having children was not for me. I don't know, maybe I was pretty selfish. I just really wanted to travel the world. I had so many things I wanted to do. I had so many places I wanted to go and see and I didn't want to have to put a child through, following me around from place to place, father to father. I made that decision early on and I stuck to it, and I think any kid that I would have had is the luckier for not having been put through it. That's a hard thing to admit, but there you go.

Denise Kay:

The most difficult thing is trying to parent and not be a friend, Finding that balance of listening and being able to say no. I remember going through the most difficult time with my son and saying to him I remember what it's like to be 17, but I don't know how to be a 47-year-old raising a 17-year-old. Those teen years were hard. Year old raising a 17 year old those teen years were hard. I'm incredibly blessed to say that they have grown into two very intelligent, adventurous, hardworking human beings who I now can call two of my very best friends.

Delia:

You've just heard from two amazing mothers who I have great admiration for. The first one was Linda Helms, who is a sound healer, and Denise Kay, a yogi and massage therapist, but actually a healer in her own right. Well, that's all very serious there, Delia. I know being a mother is serious business, believe you me. Well, what about your mom? Ah, my mom, she was something. She was a mother of ten children. There were three girls, seven boys, and she prayed for us every single day and those prayers were really powerful.

Delia:

As a matter of fact, later, when I was an adult and I was trying to make a move forward in my business, I kept getting blocked. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why I was getting blocked and moving forward. And then I remember my mom says she was praying for me and I asked her well, what exactly are you praying for me to do? And she told me something that she wanted to see happen not what I was trying to manifest in my life. And I told her don't pray for me unless I ask you to pray for me on a specific need, because you're blocking me. She was that powerful and we came to that agreement and when I really needed something to be prayed for, I would give her a call and say this is what I need prayed for, and she would write it up and they would post it on the bulletin board at the convent. So not only was my mother praying for me, but all the nuns at morning mass had me, Mary Delia, in their intentions.

Kuldip Rao:

What did I experience coming into and living my mother's stage of life? It was completely intentional. I had decided that if I was going to do this, I was 33 and it was time to get on with it. I just came to this decision that it was going to be now or never, and so when I found out I was pregnant with my first baby, I was very excited. It was all very intentional, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey of my pregnancy. In fact, I enjoyed all my pregnancies Before I actually had my first baby.

Kuldip Rao:

The thought that kept coming to my mind was I am going to be the mother. I wish that I had had the fact that I had this baby growing inside of me and that I was going to be giving birth, and in fact, I recall being very determined that I wasn't going to have an epidural, I wasn't going to take any medication, because my ancestors before me, who were farmers, had had given birth and had babies, and so, as a woman, I could do this. I would rather have had experience of just being totally present for every feeling that happened.

Delia:

That was Kuldip Rao we just heard from Quite, a Renaissance woman, world traveler, but really a fabulous astrologer astrologer.

Andrea Beaman:

As I was leaving my fertility phase of life and moving into perimenopause and postmenopause, I found myself very, very sad about not having children, because I was 40 something years old, married to my husband, and we didn't have any children. And then, when we attempted to see if we could have children, one of the things that came back in the testing was that my husband's sperm motility was almost at zero, so we couldn't have had children, even though my ovaries were still working. My uterus was still receptive, right. So in my desire to have children because it was so strong it was it was like my whole entire being was like I got to have a baby before I can't have a baby anymore, and during that time I actually contemplated having an affair behind my husband's back. I'm like, well, if he can't provide the sperm that I need, well, maybe I'll I'll get it from another donor. So I thought about all the people that I would potentially be interested in, and there was actually only one, and it was the UPS guy, mark. He was a really, really sweet soul and he had a really hot body. The only problem was he's black and my husband is Cuban, and falling on the side of white, so that I would never have been able to explain that. So, you know, as fate would have it, I just resolved to the fact that I wasn't going to have children in this lifetime. And it took a while. It took a lot of meditation, a lot of tears, and I just, you know, resigned to the fact that it wasn't my time in this lifetime to have kids. And, as fate would have it right, because the universe always has other plans we make plans and then the universe says, yeah, you know what your plan stinks, here's another plan for you.

Andrea Beaman:

So, in 2020, my sister committed suicide and, prior to leaving this earthly plane, she told me that she wanted me to care for her kids and her kids. At the time, one was 14, or did he just turn 15? Yep, just turned 15, and the other one was in his I want to say early 20s. So I got children. They weren't the way that I wanted to get children, but that's the way that I got children. That weren't the way that I wanted to get children, but that's the way that I got children.

Andrea Beaman:

That's how the universe provided for me that desire to be a mother as I was building my business, because I have a well-established health and wellness business. As I was building my business, even though I didn't birth children of my own, I received children from the universe, right From a much greater source. I received my sister, birthed them, she carried them through her body, her beautiful body, and here they were already, made for me. I didn't have to suffer the throes of childbirth, but I did get handed two beautiful children. So I'm grateful for that, grateful for my sister for being the woman that she was, grateful to the universe for providing me the opportunity to be a mom.

Delia:

One word, delia mother, and the floodgate of stories just swings open. What about the generations of women in a family who nurtured and raised together their girl children? Yes, this is a topic dear to my heart because I realized late in life that, having been raised in the military and traveled so much, I didn't have that access to my grandmothers or even my cousins or all the different aunts and uncles. We never got to be really nurtured by them. So when I was around 19, I met a young woman who became my best friend at the time and she was Cuban, or she was second generation Cuban, and she would invite me to all these huge gatherings of her family, and it was. They just embraced me. Grandma, great-grandma might even been in there for a while Mom, auntie, sophia. It was really an experience that I realized that I had missed, as I think about my own mother.

Debra Fernandez:

I also think about my grandmother, my aunt, my great-grandmother, the Cuban women that formed this just protective seal around us Children. We were all girls my sister, all my cousins and there was this feminine bonding and strength. I also look back at that generation of women from the Latin culture. They had these amazing skills that had to do with the home, which, of course, I did not follow in that path, but you know the amazing meals that they made, especially my grandmother yellow rice and chicken filete salteado. We all talk about how we've learned how she made her cafe con leche, but we never have been able to repeat it. I'm positive as I see her standing over her stove slowly stirring the milk that her love was a big part of why it tasted the way it did. I remember her, probably the first yogi I knew, who wasn't actually a yogi but who had that kind of deep focus and sense of self. Not everyone had the same good fortune that I had to have women in my family who put us first, above and beyond everything.

Delia:

So, delia, what's running a woman when she's pregnant? Well, that's a pretty loaded question because I mean, all her four bodies are engaged and full on during pregnancy All those nine months her physical body, of course, her mental body, emotional, her intellectual, wisdom, body and her energy. Body is all over the place. She has it, she doesn't have it, she's exhausted, she's ecstatic, but it's the physical body that's really reacting to a pregnancy. So here I'm going to let Andrea Beeman give you a few tips on how to deal with morning sickness.

Andrea Beaman:

Pregnancy is a magical time in a woman's life. I mean, it's unbelievable. You are literally building a human being inside your body. That is pure magic. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel so magical when you get morning sickness. Feel so magical when you get morning sickness, then you feel like it's the devil's the devil's inside you. What I like to tell clients is that when or morning sickness, when that comes, it's an, it's a signal from your body, like your body is brilliant, and when you're pregnant, your senses are heightened, your awareness is heightened, your taste buds are heightened, everything is heightened, because you're literally creating another human being inside your body and your job is to build it and protect it and help it grow.

Andrea Beaman:

If you are getting nausea in the morning, that's usually due to low electrolytes or adrenal fatigue. You may need to increase your minerals, and one of the ways that you can tell is that you start craving saltine crackers and salty crackers and popcorn and pretzels, right, because your body is craving salts. It's craving mineral salts, literally. So one of the ways to reduce morning sickness or to eliminate it is to have some electrolyte water in the morning or have a regular glass of water with a pinch of salt in it, right, that'll help to quell that morning sickness, that morning nausea that comes. And also ginger tea. It's a classic. That is a classic remedy for morning sickness. A strong cup of ginger tea, you know. Throw a little honey in there. I know people are like no honey.

Andrea Beaman:

You can't have honey with a baby, All right. So get cooked honey. Don't have the raw honey. Have some cooked honey, Right. So have some ginger tea in the morning. And what that does is it brings circulation and heat and fire into the gut. It starts to get everything revved and ready to roll. It's getting you ready to eat food for the day. Right, To support you and to support the little. Let's call it's story time.

Delia:

What do you have for us today? Well, you know, my mom was a really private woman, so I hope she's not going to bop me on the head from the other side for telling this story. We just didn't talk about things that happened, especially with our health, and when she was in her late 50s she became very sick, very ill. No one knew what it was. It was like she had just collapsed. Well, actually, the car broke down and, like her, she got out and tried to push it, put it in neutral, got behind it, tried to push it and she collapsed. They rushed her to the hospital. I was at the university at the time, not far from the hospital. Then I ran over burst into her hospital room and there she was laying in the bed like she was dying. And I have to say I had never, ever, seen my mother like that. She was just never sick. My whole growing up we didn't even know when she ate. She was so busy getting everybody to the table and feeding everybody, making sure my dad had his steak and his potatoes, and so we just never saw that coming. The doctors sent her home and told her to rest, but she wasn't getting better.

Delia:

And then one day there's a knock on the door and in walks this formidable, beautiful older woman, well coiffed, well put together, beautifully dressed she was the general's wife. In her arms was a grocery bag full of vegetables and she also had a juicer which none of my family had ever really seen like a legitimate one of those old omegas. She had a book by Adele Davis on all the vitamins to take. She also had a nice supply of vitamins and minerals vitamin E, c, lots of Bs. And she, in her Southern accent from Georgia, she said Mary, I know exactly what's wrong with you, honey. You're just worn out, you're plum worn out. You just had 10 children over the years and you have not restocked your body. So we're going to get you better.

Delia:

And she went into the kitchen, she put on a nice little apron over that expensive outfit she was wearing and she proceeded to make my mom a big glass of carrot juice and she told my mom you drink this and you drink this every day. She instructed her on how to take the vitamins and the minerals and that she was to read Adele Davis' book from cover to cover. And you know what my mom did. She did all of it and she became a real health food advocate. As a matter of fact, she had the whole family juicing taking vitamins. My father I could hear him now I'd be Jesus, mary and Joseph, would you leave me alone, mary, get me a hamburger somebody, because what had happened to my mom happens all the time to women after pregnancy. So here I'm going to bring in health advocate and allaround food and nutrition expert, andrea Beeman, to explain.

Andrea Beaman:

I remember when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, when women would give birth. After birth, they would usually be completely fatigued and exhausted and collapse, oftentimes into depression, and the doctors had named this postpartum depression, right, and they would, you know, give women antidepressants and all that stuff. So the truth is the baby, when you're building a baby inside your body, the baby is taking. It's kind of like a parasite, a cute parasite but still like a parasite. It's taking a lot of your mineral reserves, your reserves, your vitamin reserves, because it needs to grow, it needs to build its body and grow. So if you're not sufficiently nourished while you're pregnant or even before you're pregnant, then after pregnancy you're going to be completely depleted, exhausted, wiped out, depressed, collapsing all over the place.

Andrea Beaman:

If that is you after pregnancy, I would suggest very deep nutritional foods. So deep nutrition includes bone stocks, proteins, even good old fashioned soups, chicken soup, for gosh sakes. But you want to rebuild the minerals that were taken out. You know, throw in some cod liver oil, throw in some good quality fats and nutrients back into your system so that you can rebuild your own body and rest. You know, like when babies were born into tribes, classically the entire tribe helped with the baby. That's the way that it worked. The mother would rest, She'd be able to rebuild her strengths, She'd have however long she needed off to come back into her body and, you know, regain her energy and her spirit, so to speak.

Andrea Beaman:

But that doesn't happen nowadays. Nowadays, you have the baby and three hours later you're back. Oh, I got to get to the office, I got to get back to work. That's unnatural and it's unreasonable and it's unsustainable when it comes to after pregnancy, you got to get all the support that you need. I know that we women are superheroes that's the truth about that. But even superheroes need support. If you have the financial means, you hire a nanny. If you don't, but you have a sister or a mother or an auntie that can help, you invite them over. You have them live with you if they can. That's where communal living really works well, because everybody supports each other, especially when a new baby comes into the tribe, our human tribe. So think about deep nutrition, deep nutrition and deep rest. You just birthed a human being into the world. Wow, Take a break, put your feet up, relax, sit in front of the TV, eat some bonbons and get the support that you need.

Linda Helms:

There isn't one person on this planet that wasn't born from some womb-like experience, and so we are. That reflection of the womb, of the divine womb, and knowing that energy of unconditional love, which is the true essence of the mother, of the goddess, and whether you're a masculine or a feminine, that is the energy, I believe, that is going to take us forth into this new world, into this new earth, into this new era, and understanding that sense of being each other's mother, as the Tibetan's would say, is so deeply important.

Delia:

So, delia, any final words for your listeners.

Delia:

You know I had an interesting conversation just this morning with a friend of mine whose mother just passed away this past week, and what she told me was that she'd felt release. They had had a rather complicated relationship. They loved each other dearly, had had a rather complicated relationship. They loved each other dearly, and her mother's passing came with all the grief and sadness that one would imagine. But there was also this lightning. This psychic heaviness had been lifted and I told her I knew exactly what she meant after my mom had passed. But I also came to find that now the work really begins. All the influence of the mother, all that we carry with us from leaving the womb until we leave this physical body, all of that comes from our mother. And now it was time to really look at what it was that she brought to shaping who I am, who you are, in this lifetime.

Kuldip Rao:

Often I would quote Kahil Gibran 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.

Delia:

Well, Delia, if anything, this is not a topic you can get through in just this short 30-minute span. I know, I know, there's so much here about mothers. You know good mothers and bad mothers, ambivalent mothers, unmothered mothers, of which Clarissa Piccola Estes just so brilliantly showed us in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, and this would be the chapter Finding One's Pack Belonging is Blessing. I'm going to read just this little bit of the passage. The fable is about the ugly duckling. So she goes on to say here, in Kinds of Mothers, for most adults, if there was trouble with the mother once, but there is no more, there is still a duplicate mother in the psyche who sounds, acts, and responds the same as in early childhood. Even though a woman's culture may have evolved into more conscious reasoning about the role of mothers, the internal mother will have It is one of the core aspects of a woman's psyche, and it is important to recognize this condition, strengthening certain aspects, eriding some, dismantling others, and beginning over again if necessary. the same values and ideas about what a mother should look like, act like, as those in one's childhood culture. In Jungian psychology, this entire tangle is called the mother complex.

Delia:

Hey, delia, let's do a commercial break. Oh, okay, okay, because people should know that our sponsor is the Mindful Mandala Cards, what I call flash cards for consciousness. Rather than get weighed down by dark emotions, consulting the mindful mandala cards can shift you from despair to joy, from doubt to faith, from darkness to light. Yes, of course, I want to thank my guests Linda Helms, Denise Kay, Kordip Rao, Deborah Fernandez for her emotional piece on her grandmother, and, of course, Andrea Beeman for her wisdom and inspiration and you can learn more about all those ladies on fivebodywisdom. com and for episode five. All right, delia? Don't you have some people you want to thank here? We're already up to episode five. We're going to be focusing on the maiden whore. There's two beginning parts of a woman's life, so join me here for more interviews with ourselves. I'm Delia Quigley. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.

People on this episode

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Andrea Beaman

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Debra Fernandez

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Kuldip Rao

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Linda Helms

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