Robin, what an incredible legacy you are leaving in the world. What could be more important that "raising the mothers." I love that you are standing as a beacon of light for all these young women and urging them to listen to their calling. I am so moved reading "And I understand: raising the mothers was never about going back. It is about tending what remains—these invisible mycelial roots of memory and imagination—so that the next generation can bloom taller, wilder, freer."--thank you for galvanizing here what so many of us as writers and teachers want to do for our students, for our readers, our friends. We want the next generation to remember and to bloom. What a beautiful credo here Robin, thank you!
I'm so glad this resonates with you, Jerry. I know you are a teacher and a writer. What I so appreciate about your work is that you are not afraid to open your heart. I was just saying in the comment to Jamie is that I feel the young men I see may need a different touch--so many seem to be at a loss about how they are supposed to be. And unfortunately, the loudest voices right now are telling them to be tough, that "empathy is weakness."
I’m drawn back again and again to the Walt Whitman quote, “We convince by our presence.” In my current writing workshops and in my 25 years at the university, I taught that empathy is foundational. I cannot condone unkindness or brutality. It is in selfless acts of service and compassion that we find our way in life. I am a big believer that everyone has a purpose and our responsibility is to find what that is and to clear a space for it, to support and manage our gifts and our talents and to flourish. Peace within, peace without.
"I know that what I really want to tell them is something more elusive: how possibility is never finished. How each time we believe we have outlived our purpose, life finds another way to call us back onstage."
So uplifting, Robin. Your essay is for any of us, no matter our stage of life. I always say, "Creativity is ageless." It's wonderful to see different generations coming together in that spirit.
I love this essay, Robin! Being a mentor is so important, and you have positively impacted so many lives. It's clear that these students really count on your help. And congrats on your next grandchild!
I love this line, "How each time we believe we have outlived our purpose, life finds another way to call us back onstage." It's so true. And your going back on stage is a courageous act; I could never do this.
You say that, "Through my work on Releasing Memory and [re]member the world, I started to sense that what I was really doing was raising the mothers: giving voice to the generations who had been erased, buried, or forgotten." This is such an important mission -- too many generations and their stories have gone unnoticed and have been forgotten.
Your post reminds me of my daughter's biological mother, who will always remain unknown to us. I wonder often what her story is. There is no way to find her, as this happened in China. But I think of her often.
Oh, Beth, this is such a profound question—and one I know lots of families sit with. I wonder if you could find something of her essence inside Arielle—and sketch that?
Or might that feel like a violation of some kind?
It’s questions like these I weigh in writing here and for [re]member the world. I find the answers aren’t easy, but worth sitting with.
Such a sketch wouldn't feel like a violation. But it's so difficult to figure out nature vs nurture. She's a lot like me, but it's so difficult to figure out what she was born with.
Robin, you are an inspiration. Raising mothers. Sharing stories. Showing the youth and those we mentor how to find and to raise their voice. A crescendo. This is a beautiful piece. Thanks for leading the way in a world where we need leaders. 🙏💫❤️
Oh, thank you, Jamie. I appreciate that affirmation.
Interestingly, it seems the young women are most receptive. I wonder--would young men respond better to a male mentor? In some ways, my experience in working with the guys is that many are feeling lost--but too proud to say so.
I would agree. Men in my experience are slower to ask for help. The importance of elders as mentors is huge. My question is are there less elders now than 1-2 generations past? Even though we grow old are we becoming true elders?
Such a profound question, Jamie. I'm not sure we have the social structure for that, when the message is, "You can stay young forever if ______ (you eat the right foods, take the right supplements, work out, work hard, exercise your brain, buy the creams and lotions, visit the plastic surgeon. . .)"
"And I understand: raising the mothers was never about going back. It is about tending what remains—these invisible mycelial roots of memory and imagination—so that the next generation can bloom taller, wilder, freer."
This is beautiful Robin, it brings tears to my eyes. Just last night, at a women's 'deep conversations' gathering with 3 friends, we spoke about these very themes — one of the women announcing she is become a grandmother for the first time.
We found ourselves discussing the discourse employed by certain sectors of our society, and how we can sometimes unwittingly reinforce storylines that do not serve our lineage, those unseen parameters. You show us how to listen to the spaces and to bring the light in our stories into the infinite possibilities of future generations, our ancestors.
Listening feels increasingly like a lost skill in the increasing cacophony of our world, Simone. And yet, to me, it fosters what matters most--these "deep conversations" and deepening connections you are engaged in with your friends. I am so glad to have that inform your story gathering on behalf of (and how I LOVE this phrase!) "the infinite possibilities of future generations, our ancestors.
Thank you for tuning in here. Meantime, I'm curious--how does your women's gathering work? While I have dear friends, and several groups of women with whom to share intimate listening, I'm thinking of eventually broadening Releasing Memory into a regular salon gathering for meaningful conversations.
Curious about yours--just friends getting together? Or have you created a regular structure? Do you incorporate rituals for your meetings, or just get right into it?
🙏💖 … one of my nieces is 7 months pregnant, grandchild number 5 for my sister. I just know that she is in counsel with her team, l feel my mother’s energy about … it’s all synchronicity, l just had a meditation the other day (it is in the current draft of my next post), about looking at my soul’s plan with the team. My mother’s energy was present. I wonder what wisdom this new (re)member of the ancestral team will bring with her. 💖
The women’s gathering - we are the same 4, and each take a turn hosting and positing the question that we will explore, sometimes it requires watching a documentary, listening to a podcast, reading a book. We bring diverse opinions, and it is really about being able to hold the space for each other, an exercise in listening rather than pulling, if that makes sense? We aim to fit in 4 meetings a year. We see each other in other social contexts, though these gatherings are a deep dive. 😊🙏💖
Amazing! My daughter’s about to give birth any moment to her second daughter—37+ weeks. I was in connection with her baby about 10 days ago (now, I am assured by my own “team” she is ensouled and in the space capsule, unavailable for comment). This was in the post I was going to go with this week—about “knowing”, motherhood, Hamnet and what, even in our knowing we cannot know, but given the timing and daughter’s sensitivity, I have decided it is the better part of wisdom to take a “pregnant pause” on that. Will revisit once granddaughter is with us in this realm. All systems go—and fingers crossed!
Robin, I love reconsidering motherhood as an ever-looping continuum, beginning before our time, continuing as we grow and develop, give rise to our children, watch them mother, and, full circle, back to our grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
Thank you, Patti. The experience I had doing Hellinger’s Family Constellation work two years ago truly felt like that looping—not just a circle, but a spiraling. They were encouraging me so I could bring them forward into the spiral with me, and those yet to be (and now becoming)!
Thank you for this beautiful treatise on being a woman, mothering, and our third acts. I am about to embark on my own, thankfully, and look to your words as a guide.
Hello Robin, I have missed reading your brilliant work. This is one of my favorites. I could pull out many lines, like this one "We live in a culture that rewards beginnings but mistrusts continuations. Yet I have learned that life’s deepest artistry lies in returning enlarged by experience. The mother whose silenced dreams can now emerge. The actress who forgot her lines can still find her voice. The daughter who mourned the silence of her foremothers can still learn to listen."
Thank you for bringing forth our enlarged experience and articulating with enticing clarity.
Prajna, thank you for reading so deeply! You have gotten to the heart of it--even while we live forward, returning to the path enlarged by experience is a theme that is coming with ever-greater resonance.
Wow Robin! Let me begin where I usually end, because it needs saying straight away ... bravo! This was extraordinary! I felt like I was standing inside a long, luminous lineage of mothers, grandmothers, daughters, students, older selves ... all rising and returning through your beautifully expressive voice.
The way you write about your "Third Act" ... about raising the mothers and tending the silenced stories and carrying forward the ones who never had the chance to speak ... is such a profound offering! Your work in the world, the mentoring, the witnessing, the midwifing of story across generations, becomes its own kind of inheritance for the rest of us.
You remind me that becoming isn’t a single arc but a lifelong rehearsal ... a returning (ah, there's the synchronicity!) enlarged by experience. Thank you so much for the courage, devotion and imagination you bring to every space you touch. You're my inspiration and spurs, truly you are! 🙏💖✨🎭✒️📚
Oh, my, Deborah. Yes, it's true--we stand inside a lineage of mothers. That is what I saw when I did a family constellation two years ago this month--the energy of the mothers and grandmothers, encouraging, granting permission, to tell the story of becoming and becoming and becoming.
That constellation experience was tender and moving--it is one that I am trying to tell in [re]member the world. Not easy to put into words. Parts of my rehearsing how to shape that particular section of the story may show up here.
What compels me to continue exploring is not just "releasing memory" as the title of my Substack offers, and not a single arc, but the tracking of different threads pulling, tracking patterns in the warp and weft, continuing forward and returning to see what shape, what color, what picture I am weaving.
As I know you work your memory-keeping with thread and tile, I know you understand the tension between telling a story that follows a narrative arc and the true nature of our lives, with tears, holes, loose threads and broken shards.
Robin, the way you describe that constellation ... mothers and grandmothers gathering behind you, granting permission ... feels like a living transmission. I’m so moved by how you continue to follow those threads with such devotion. Your weaving of memory, lineage, rupture and return is its own art form ... and I feel the resonance of it in my own tile‑and‑thread work. I’m forever grateful for the way you're illuminating this path for the rest of us ... spurring us on with your courage, craft and beautiful voice!
And this won’t surprise you at all, but at the last Hellinger family constellation workshop I attended ... many moons ago ... I also found myself standing inside a long line of mothers stretching all the way back to the Great Mother, Herself. She had to "blow" her warmth down the line of frozen hearts to create even a little healing. So I could picture your line of mothers instantly. I ended up writing a poem about the whole experience in my first poetry collection.
So thank you for bringing that powerful memory back into the light. 🙏💖✨
It does, it does! When I think of the poems I've written in the last month alone they're all so grandmother-mother-daughter themed. So many of my poems and stories are. Hellinger's family constellation work is so powerful, what happened to me ... and you by the sounds of it ... continues to unfold. Healing the winter between mothers and daughters in my lineage feels like the theme of my life. I think this is why Anastasia's photo struck me like a thunderbolt. 🙏💖✨
Robin, what an incredible legacy you are leaving in the world. What could be more important that "raising the mothers." I love that you are standing as a beacon of light for all these young women and urging them to listen to their calling. I am so moved reading "And I understand: raising the mothers was never about going back. It is about tending what remains—these invisible mycelial roots of memory and imagination—so that the next generation can bloom taller, wilder, freer."--thank you for galvanizing here what so many of us as writers and teachers want to do for our students, for our readers, our friends. We want the next generation to remember and to bloom. What a beautiful credo here Robin, thank you!
I'm so glad this resonates with you, Jerry. I know you are a teacher and a writer. What I so appreciate about your work is that you are not afraid to open your heart. I was just saying in the comment to Jamie is that I feel the young men I see may need a different touch--so many seem to be at a loss about how they are supposed to be. And unfortunately, the loudest voices right now are telling them to be tough, that "empathy is weakness."
What is your experience?
I’m drawn back again and again to the Walt Whitman quote, “We convince by our presence.” In my current writing workshops and in my 25 years at the university, I taught that empathy is foundational. I cannot condone unkindness or brutality. It is in selfless acts of service and compassion that we find our way in life. I am a big believer that everyone has a purpose and our responsibility is to find what that is and to clear a space for it, to support and manage our gifts and our talents and to flourish. Peace within, peace without.
Thank you. That is a beautiful presence to live by.
May it be so.
"I know that what I really want to tell them is something more elusive: how possibility is never finished. How each time we believe we have outlived our purpose, life finds another way to call us back onstage."
So uplifting, Robin. Your essay is for any of us, no matter our stage of life. I always say, "Creativity is ageless." It's wonderful to see different generations coming together in that spirit.
“Curiosity is ageless.” Perfect!
I love this essay, Robin! Being a mentor is so important, and you have positively impacted so many lives. It's clear that these students really count on your help. And congrats on your next grandchild!
I love this line, "How each time we believe we have outlived our purpose, life finds another way to call us back onstage." It's so true. And your going back on stage is a courageous act; I could never do this.
You say that, "Through my work on Releasing Memory and [re]member the world, I started to sense that what I was really doing was raising the mothers: giving voice to the generations who had been erased, buried, or forgotten." This is such an important mission -- too many generations and their stories have gone unnoticed and have been forgotten.
Your post reminds me of my daughter's biological mother, who will always remain unknown to us. I wonder often what her story is. There is no way to find her, as this happened in China. But I think of her often.
Oh, Beth, this is such a profound question—and one I know lots of families sit with. I wonder if you could find something of her essence inside Arielle—and sketch that?
Or might that feel like a violation of some kind?
It’s questions like these I weigh in writing here and for [re]member the world. I find the answers aren’t easy, but worth sitting with.
Such a sketch wouldn't feel like a violation. But it's so difficult to figure out nature vs nurture. She's a lot like me, but it's so difficult to figure out what she was born with.
Robin, you are an inspiration. Raising mothers. Sharing stories. Showing the youth and those we mentor how to find and to raise their voice. A crescendo. This is a beautiful piece. Thanks for leading the way in a world where we need leaders. 🙏💫❤️
Oh, thank you, Jamie. I appreciate that affirmation.
Interestingly, it seems the young women are most receptive. I wonder--would young men respond better to a male mentor? In some ways, my experience in working with the guys is that many are feeling lost--but too proud to say so.
I would agree. Men in my experience are slower to ask for help. The importance of elders as mentors is huge. My question is are there less elders now than 1-2 generations past? Even though we grow old are we becoming true elders?
Such a profound question, Jamie. I'm not sure we have the social structure for that, when the message is, "You can stay young forever if ______ (you eat the right foods, take the right supplements, work out, work hard, exercise your brain, buy the creams and lotions, visit the plastic surgeon. . .)"
What would "true eldering" even look like?
Wow Robin! Incredible writing.
Thank you, my friend.
"And I understand: raising the mothers was never about going back. It is about tending what remains—these invisible mycelial roots of memory and imagination—so that the next generation can bloom taller, wilder, freer."
This is beautiful Robin, it brings tears to my eyes. Just last night, at a women's 'deep conversations' gathering with 3 friends, we spoke about these very themes — one of the women announcing she is become a grandmother for the first time.
We found ourselves discussing the discourse employed by certain sectors of our society, and how we can sometimes unwittingly reinforce storylines that do not serve our lineage, those unseen parameters. You show us how to listen to the spaces and to bring the light in our stories into the infinite possibilities of future generations, our ancestors.
Thank you. 💖🌀🙏
Listening feels increasingly like a lost skill in the increasing cacophony of our world, Simone. And yet, to me, it fosters what matters most--these "deep conversations" and deepening connections you are engaged in with your friends. I am so glad to have that inform your story gathering on behalf of (and how I LOVE this phrase!) "the infinite possibilities of future generations, our ancestors.
Thank you for tuning in here. Meantime, I'm curious--how does your women's gathering work? While I have dear friends, and several groups of women with whom to share intimate listening, I'm thinking of eventually broadening Releasing Memory into a regular salon gathering for meaningful conversations.
Curious about yours--just friends getting together? Or have you created a regular structure? Do you incorporate rituals for your meetings, or just get right into it?
🙏💖 … one of my nieces is 7 months pregnant, grandchild number 5 for my sister. I just know that she is in counsel with her team, l feel my mother’s energy about … it’s all synchronicity, l just had a meditation the other day (it is in the current draft of my next post), about looking at my soul’s plan with the team. My mother’s energy was present. I wonder what wisdom this new (re)member of the ancestral team will bring with her. 💖
The women’s gathering - we are the same 4, and each take a turn hosting and positing the question that we will explore, sometimes it requires watching a documentary, listening to a podcast, reading a book. We bring diverse opinions, and it is really about being able to hold the space for each other, an exercise in listening rather than pulling, if that makes sense? We aim to fit in 4 meetings a year. We see each other in other social contexts, though these gatherings are a deep dive. 😊🙏💖
Amazing! My daughter’s about to give birth any moment to her second daughter—37+ weeks. I was in connection with her baby about 10 days ago (now, I am assured by my own “team” she is ensouled and in the space capsule, unavailable for comment). This was in the post I was going to go with this week—about “knowing”, motherhood, Hamnet and what, even in our knowing we cannot know, but given the timing and daughter’s sensitivity, I have decided it is the better part of wisdom to take a “pregnant pause” on that. Will revisit once granddaughter is with us in this realm. All systems go—and fingers crossed!
Lots of love to you and the family, for her sacred arrival. 💖🙏 l
Robin, I love reconsidering motherhood as an ever-looping continuum, beginning before our time, continuing as we grow and develop, give rise to our children, watch them mother, and, full circle, back to our grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
Thank you, Patti. The experience I had doing Hellinger’s Family Constellation work two years ago truly felt like that looping—not just a circle, but a spiraling. They were encouraging me so I could bring them forward into the spiral with me, and those yet to be (and now becoming)!
So emotional. So healing!
Thank you for this beautiful treatise on being a woman, mothering, and our third acts. I am about to embark on my own, thankfully, and look to your words as a guide.
Karen, so good to hear from you. Thank you for your kind words.
And, oh my--to be a guide as you set off into this next act! So grateful.
Bravo, Robin.
Thank you, Jeanine!
Hello Robin, I have missed reading your brilliant work. This is one of my favorites. I could pull out many lines, like this one "We live in a culture that rewards beginnings but mistrusts continuations. Yet I have learned that life’s deepest artistry lies in returning enlarged by experience. The mother whose silenced dreams can now emerge. The actress who forgot her lines can still find her voice. The daughter who mourned the silence of her foremothers can still learn to listen."
Thank you for bringing forth our enlarged experience and articulating with enticing clarity.
with love, Prajna
Prajna, thank you for reading so deeply! You have gotten to the heart of it--even while we live forward, returning to the path enlarged by experience is a theme that is coming with ever-greater resonance.
I am so glad you are here!
Likewise, sister.
😘✨
Wow Robin! Let me begin where I usually end, because it needs saying straight away ... bravo! This was extraordinary! I felt like I was standing inside a long, luminous lineage of mothers, grandmothers, daughters, students, older selves ... all rising and returning through your beautifully expressive voice.
The way you write about your "Third Act" ... about raising the mothers and tending the silenced stories and carrying forward the ones who never had the chance to speak ... is such a profound offering! Your work in the world, the mentoring, the witnessing, the midwifing of story across generations, becomes its own kind of inheritance for the rest of us.
You remind me that becoming isn’t a single arc but a lifelong rehearsal ... a returning (ah, there's the synchronicity!) enlarged by experience. Thank you so much for the courage, devotion and imagination you bring to every space you touch. You're my inspiration and spurs, truly you are! 🙏💖✨🎭✒️📚
Oh, my, Deborah. Yes, it's true--we stand inside a lineage of mothers. That is what I saw when I did a family constellation two years ago this month--the energy of the mothers and grandmothers, encouraging, granting permission, to tell the story of becoming and becoming and becoming.
That constellation experience was tender and moving--it is one that I am trying to tell in [re]member the world. Not easy to put into words. Parts of my rehearsing how to shape that particular section of the story may show up here.
What compels me to continue exploring is not just "releasing memory" as the title of my Substack offers, and not a single arc, but the tracking of different threads pulling, tracking patterns in the warp and weft, continuing forward and returning to see what shape, what color, what picture I am weaving.
As I know you work your memory-keeping with thread and tile, I know you understand the tension between telling a story that follows a narrative arc and the true nature of our lives, with tears, holes, loose threads and broken shards.
Spurring us both on!
Robin, the way you describe that constellation ... mothers and grandmothers gathering behind you, granting permission ... feels like a living transmission. I’m so moved by how you continue to follow those threads with such devotion. Your weaving of memory, lineage, rupture and return is its own art form ... and I feel the resonance of it in my own tile‑and‑thread work. I’m forever grateful for the way you're illuminating this path for the rest of us ... spurring us on with your courage, craft and beautiful voice!
And this won’t surprise you at all, but at the last Hellinger family constellation workshop I attended ... many moons ago ... I also found myself standing inside a long line of mothers stretching all the way back to the Great Mother, Herself. She had to "blow" her warmth down the line of frozen hearts to create even a little healing. So I could picture your line of mothers instantly. I ended up writing a poem about the whole experience in my first poetry collection.
So thank you for bringing that powerful memory back into the light. 🙏💖✨
BTW, that image of the Great Mother, in your constellation, "blowing" her warmth down the line of frozen hearts to create even a little healing.
A big YES. And chills!
It was such a heart-healing experience, Deborah. In some ways, I feel the energy of that connection still unwinding—not apart, but together.
Thank you for affirming how that has transpired for you in your work, too. Doesn’t it seem like we are the ones to weave it forward?
It does, it does! When I think of the poems I've written in the last month alone they're all so grandmother-mother-daughter themed. So many of my poems and stories are. Hellinger's family constellation work is so powerful, what happened to me ... and you by the sounds of it ... continues to unfold. Healing the winter between mothers and daughters in my lineage feels like the theme of my life. I think this is why Anastasia's photo struck me like a thunderbolt. 🙏💖✨
Yes, that photo captures so much. Amazing, really.